Former Harrow head: 'Idle boys are hit harder by scrapped A-levels'

‘Idle boys are hit harder by scrapped A-levels’: Former Harrow head warns that male pupils need tests to inspire them because they are ‘afraid’ of exams

Barnaby Lenon said male pupils ‘do not particularly want to impress teachers’, and in contrast to girls, won’t work unless they ‘are afraid of the exam’ 

Boys will suffer most from A-level exams being cancelled this year as many are ‘idle’ unless they have the pressure of a test, the former head of Harrow has warned.

Barnaby Lenon said male pupils ‘do not particularly want to impress teachers’, and in contrast to girls, won’t work unless they ‘are afraid of the exam’.

It means some boys could pick up grades on A-level results day tomorrow that are lower than they may have got with exams.

In addition, they could be moving on to university having not learned essential parts of the curriculum.

It comes after exams were scrapped in favour of teacher assessment for the second year in a row, due to the pandemic.

Pupils are braced for volatile results, with Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer last night predicting ‘chaos’ caused by disadvantage ‘baked into the system’. Mr Lenon, now dean of education at the University of Buckingham, has spent much of his career teaching boys, including also at Eton and Sherborne.

He said: ‘Anyone who is against making pupils take exams has never taught a class of adolescent boys. Exams are successful because they make pupils work.’

This year’s grades will be based on classroom performance, coursework and mini-tests.

Mr Lenon said trying to teach a course with no exams at the end is a ‘hapless task’ and this is especially true with boys. 

‘Exams put pressure on pupils, and that is why they work,’ he said. ‘Girls are much more likely to be keen to impress teachers, so they work hard during the course. Boys do not particularly want to impress teachers. In my experience of teaching boys, 60 per cent are relatively idle during the term but most make a big effort revising for tests. Exams are a key part of motivation.’

It means some boys could pick up grades on A-level results day tomorrow that are lower than they may have got with exams

He believes exams are of ‘tremendous value’ because they help pupils ‘commit information to long-term memory’ and enable them to become an ‘educated person’.

Mr Lenon is currently overseeing the training of state school teachers at Buckingham and is also chairman of the Independent Schools Council. His predictions on how boys and girls will fare under the new grades regime is backed up by recent research. The regulator Ofqual has already admitted that teachers deciding grades in 2020 were ‘slightly biased’ in favour of girls rather than boys.

And a report by Professor Alan Smithers at the University of Buckingham found this was borne out in results, with female candidates increasing their lead in their share of A and A* grades.

From a 0.1 percentage point gap in 2019, the girls surged ahead by 3.3 points in 2020. Meanwhile Childline said calls over exam panic have more than doubled in just a year. Between April and June this year it delivered 1,812 counselling sessions to pupils worried about scrapped tests – more than twice the 861 in the same period last year.

This year, the overall proportion of top grades is expected to be 40 per cent – even higher than last year’s record – because of generous marking by teachers.

However, there will be variability between individual pupils, with some losing out as the new method of assessment does not suit them. And even if a student performs well, their relative performance compared with peers may still look bad if all grades go up. Yesterday, Sir Keir said the lack of ‘standardisation’ in teacher marking will disadvantage some students.

He said: ‘This week’s big moment in so many young people’s lives is being risked by the chaos and incompetence at the top of this government. The abject refusal of Boris Johnson to get a grip has created huge extra stress for students and baked unfairness into the assessment process.’

A Department for Education spokesman said: ‘Exams are the best form of assessment but in the absence of those this year, there is no one better placed to judge young people’s abilities than their teachers, who see them day-in-day-out.’

‘Swap A-E exam marks for 1 to 9 scale to combat grade inflation’

The way we grade A-levels may be scrapped to combat the grade inflation seen over the last year, a think-tank says.

The Higher Education Policy Institute believes the current A*-to-E scale may be overhauled in favour of numbers. It would mean marking A-levels in the same way as GCSEs, which already have a 1-9 scale following a reboot in 2017.

Teachers have been deciding grades again this year after A-level exams were cancelled for the second year running. And as many teachers will give borderline cases the ‘benefit of the doubt’ it is expected 40 per cent of grades will be A and A* – similar to last year – compared with the usual 25 per cent.

Nick Hillman, head of Hepi, said: ‘Grade inflation will be hard to unwind in future unless we move to a new grading system, perhaps substituting letters for numbers, as has happened at GCSE.’

A Department for Education spokesman said such speculation is unfair on the thousands of hard-working students and said in the absence of exams ‘there is no one better placed to judge young people’s abilities than their teachers’.

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