Covid, exam times and post 16 maths qualifications
The latest assessment research from Cambridge speaks to key education concerns
New research from the Assessment Research team at Cambridge University Press & Assessment – the largest team of its kind in Europe – is published in the latest issue of Research Matters.
School strategies in emergencies, the length of high stakes tests and the impact of Core Maths qualifications are all in the spotlight.
The research adds to Cambridge's extensive research on the educational impact of the pandemic and on international exam comparisons.
In September, a report by Tim Oates, Cambridge’s Group Director of Assessment Research for the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), warned about Covid’s long term impact, generating national media coverage in The Guardian and The Times. The issue of how many hours GCSE students in England spend taking high stakes exams compared to other countries was highlighted in OCR's Striking the Balance report, as covered by the BBC.
Read the key findings behind our latest research:
Troubleshooting in emergency education settings: What types of strategies did schools employ during the COVID-19 pandemic and what can they tell us about schools’ adaptability, values and crisis-readiness?
By Filio Constantinou
This key new research by Filio Constantinou asks how crisis-ready schools are in the face of emergencies like Covid. In 2021, Constantinou conducted in-depth interviews with teachers at 13 schools in early, primary and secondary years in different parts of Europe (UK, Cyprus, Italy, Romania, Spain and Switzerland) on the strategies their schools used.
This research identifies and classifies the different strategies used by schools impacted by Covid, providing a useful starting point for any teacher required to deliver emergency education in the future in the face of challenges such as epidemics, conflict or climate change. The research also generated valuable insights into schools’ adaptability, values and crisis-readiness, providing key findings for policy makers.
The scale of the Covid crisis in 2020 was enormous. OECD figures estimated 1.5 billion students in 188 countries and economies were locked out of their schools. Apart from learning loss, school closures also caused mental health and wellbeing problems among students.
The research identified eight macro-level strategies used by schools covering safety (such as reducing the risk of infection), learning (such as remote teaching) and wellbeing (measures to support student mental health). These were categorised into defence strategies – those aimed at providing protection against the crisis, such as ‘bubble systems’ of smaller classes – and recovery strategies – those employed to mend or reverse harm, for example, surveying parents or testing to diagnose student learning needs. A further analysis classified schools’ actions into suspending existing structures, exploiting existing structures, or lastly, developing new and creative solutions.
The interviews revealed how schools sought to address not only student learning needs but also safety and wellbeing. In addition, they aimed to provide all students with the same or similar learning opportunities – for example by measures such as video recording online lessons.
Conclusions - more defence strategies needed
- The learning strategies used by schools were more in number and more varied than the wellbeing ones. Therefore supporting student mental health is an area that schools could invest more resources in to become more crisis-ready.
- The recovery strategies designed to mend or reverse harm caused by Covid drew upon existing resources and structures. This suggests that schools in the study have mechanisms in place – albeit more for learning than wellbeing – to support students’ recovery in the event of future emergency.
- In contrast, the defence strategies consisted of suspending activities or devising new ones. This suggests there were no existing structures in place which schools could exploit or mobilise to defend themselves against the crisis.
- Overall, schools seem to be better prepared to fix damage caused (to recover) than to prevent it from happening in the first place (to defend).
Exam times
How long should a high stakes test be?
By Tom Benton
This new research looks at how long an exam needs to be to give reliable results and compares test lengths in England to those in other education systems around the world for exams taken by school students from ages 14 upwards.
A picture emerges of the wide variety of approaches taken around the world and the research makes some broad recommendations on test lengths which depend on the purpose behind the assessment. One key finding is that the total exam time for GCSEs in England appears relatively high compared to total exam time for 14 to 17 year olds in other countries, such as Ireland or New Zealand.
Students in England take 3.5 hours of exams per GCSE subject and an average of nine GCSEs. For some of the other high performing countries considered, the assessments involved less time per subject than the GCSE taken in Engloand. In Ireland for example, high stakes qualifications for 15/16 year olds are awarded based on shorter exams than in England. In some other countries, students tend to sit formal examinations in fewer subjects.
As Benton’s research sets out, decisions about test length require a clear understanding of the purposes of assessment; is it formative or summative for example; how does it combine with other information to impact on decisions about a student’s future? Shorter test lengths identified in Australia (Victoria) or Canada (Alberta) for example for 14 to 15 year olds may be due to these national tests having primarily formative purposes.
For students at the end of their secondary school education or taking university entrance exams, the research identifies that students typically take six hours of exams per A Level subject, or 18 or 24 hours of A Level exams in total. This is not a particularly unusual length for students' final examinations before university in other countries.
Five recommendations on the length of high stakes tests:
- A test should be at least 90 mins long if the assessment is expected to have a direct impact on decisions make about individual students.
- A test could be as little as one hour per subject if the purpose is to assess on overall performance across subjects (rather than within each individual subject)
- At least three hours of exam time per subject is not unusual internationally if the assessment is for students’ final qualifications before university.
- If a new qualification needs to be directly comparable to an existing one, their exam lengths should be reasonably similar
Core Maths
Core Maths – who takes it, what do they take it with, and does it improve performance in other subjects?
By Tim Gill
This research drills down into the Core Maths qualification first introduced in 2014 in England, with the intention of increasing participation in maths by post-16 students who were not taking A or AS level Maths. The aim of introducing Core Maths as an option in the post-16 curriculum was to support student performance in other post-16 courses, such as Biology or Economics, with mathematical content.
The research uses data from the National Pupil Database for 2021/22. Approximately 11,500 students took Core Maths out of a cohort of over 400,000 students. Most of the students (78 percent) had achieved grades 5 to 7 in their GCSE Maths.
Almost half took Core Maths alongside three A Levels, the most common combination being Psychology, Biology and Chemistry. Another popular combination was with the Extended Project Qualification (EPQ). Students taking Engineering vocational qualifications such as OCR’s Cambridge Technicals were also the most likely to combine with Core Maths.
Key findings
- For A Levels, the study found taking Core Maths alongside had a potentially beneficial effect on grades achieved in seven relevant A Level subjects, but the effect was very small. For Level 3 vocational qualifications, taking Core Maths had a benefit in terms of grade achieved by students in applied sciences only, where it had ‘significant positive effects’.
- The percentage of female students versus male students taking Core Maths was 48 percent which is a more even split than for A level maths.
- Core Maths students were more likely to attend comprehensive or sixth form colleges, than FE or independent schools.
- In conclusion, unlike previous research, this new research provides some evidence that students taking Core Maths achieved better grades in some subjects with a mathematical element than those not taking Core Maths.
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