GCSE results day is full of highs and lows – for us teachers too

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/21/gcse-results-day-teachers-grades-exam-system

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After weeks of simmering fear and nerves, results day has arrived. As students once ourselves, it is perhaps easy to remember the rollercoaster of emotions that today’s 16-year-olds will be experiencing, but for their teachers, the emotional tumult is a lived reality. The morning leaves us clammy and restless. We apprehensively search out grades too. Many of us will have woken up a few hours earlier, logging on to the IT systems of exam boards to see how our classes have fared – waiting to find out at school proves too long to stomach.

Even with the advent of performance-related pay, the anxiety and dread that teachers feel isn’t all about what it means for our wage packets. Teaching students for four hours a week over a two-year period means they are more than just a name on a register. We care about how they do because we have built relationships with them. Our overwhelming desire is to have students gain the results they deserve and have worked hard for. We want to see them move on to the next stage of their lives with all possible avenues open to them. Now more than ever, the stakes seem precipitously high.

This is particularly so when you consider how political meddling has resulted in the constant shifting of goalposts. From grade boundaries shooting up within the same exam year to the sudden scrapping of speaking and listening exams in English mid-course – a mere 20% of the final mark, no less – students have been treated shoddily in recent years. They have had to carry on regardless amid a public discourse that paints their exams as too easy and thus not as valuable. By extension, their teachers are seen as largely inadequate in preparing them for the global market.

When all goes to plan, however, there is nothing quite like the joy of seeing students’ relief and happiness at having done well. The adrenaline coursing through their veins bursts out in jumps, screams of elation and the vigorous hugging of peers and sometimes members of staff. It is a truly infectious spirit. Some are so stunned and humbled by their achievement that they can only manage to stare at their results in amazement. It is a wonderful privilege to be the one reassuring them that it is in fact true.

Inevitably, others will not be as successful, be it an A that wasn’t an A* or a D that was one mark off the golden C. In this era of greater teacher accountability, we worry about how colleagues will judge us. Explanations for why a student performed poorly on one day will have to be given. And despite knowing that you may have done all that is possible to help them succeed, the sense of responsibility for your students’ disappointment can at times feel suffocating.

Seeing students who have worked so hard all along, having attended after-school and half-term revision sessions, fail to gain their desired grade is gutting. Unsurprisingly, at 16, their sense of perspective doesn’t quite allow for a zen-like understanding of failure as both inevitable and instructive. Seeing them crushed leads you to ponder how unfair life can be. Inwardly, many of us will rail against the exam factory and its inability to quantify the worth of the person in front of us. Yet we are left having to acknowledge our part in the sorry system. It is a day of highs and lows.