What pressures will the new term bring?

So, it's back to school next week for many of you. But who will be the more nervous: pupils, parents or teachers?

Back in my day (bring on the orchestral music and black and white footage!) it was definitely we, the pupils, who had most to fear.

At my secondary school, the initiation ceremony for new boys involved being 'hedgicated'.

This was a process that involved being pulled through the hedges in the school gardens, or having your head pushed down the school toilets as the chain was pulled.

As for parents and teachers, it seemed that they had little to worry about back then.

In those pre-league table days, parents were far less obsessed with school rankings and choice - they were just glad to get the kids off their hands after the summer.

"There is no hiding place for anyone whose results are out of line with the rest of the school"

As for the teachers, they seemed to have nothing to worry about.

Parents never came into school to complain. The national curriculum had not been invented.

Ofsted was not even a gleam in a government minister's eye. And there was no close, public scrutiny of exam results.

I can recall teachers who were funny, inspirational, interesting but who, perhaps, were not very effective at getting us to the best grades.

In fact the ones I remember best, and who had the biggest impact on my learning, were usually those who appeared least concerned about exam results.

This week, though, how many teachers are going to be slinking back to school, fearful of the response to "their" exam results?

Will term open, as it does at Cutler's Grammar School in Alan Bennett's History Boys with the head master obsessively consulting the pinned-up exam results and wondering if he has the right staff to get the results he wants to boost the school's reputation?

Will there be brilliant and inspirational teachers, like Bennett's history teacher Hector, whose results are not easily quantifiable in terms of exam results?

Will they be called in to the head's office to explain why their results brought down the school's average score?

As Hector, quoting Housman, says defensively: "all knowledge is precious whether or not it serves the slightest human purpose".

But will that cut the mustard today when there is no hiding place for anyone whose results are out of line with the rest of the school?

Can head teachers afford to overlook the brilliant and well-liked teacher if they are not contributing to the effort to move up the league table?

I ask this now because we are on the verge of a new development in exam marking and analysis that could further increase the pressure on teachers whose achievements are, shall we say, less quantifiable than others.

"ResultsPlus" is a new service being offered by the Edexcel exam board.

'Exam hoops'

It is a technological breakthrough, made possible by the fact that most of the board's exam scripts are now scanned electronically and marked online.

Because all the data is stored in the computers, ResultsPlus can analyse and present this information back to the school almost instantly and in a multitude of ways.

Not only can the schools see immediately how each pupil fared, but they can also compare performance by gender, class, and subject teacher. It is so detailed that it can even identify performance, across a whole class or year group, in any individual exam question.

So, if your English results were brought down by the marks on the Shakespeare question, especially in Mr Malvolio's class, then ResultsPlus will lay this fact brutally bare.

'Nail in the coffin'

Mr Malvolio, who may be brilliant at teaching the 19th century novel, modern poetry, or creative writing, may have some explaining to do.

Of course, there are some potentially big benefits from this. It could be a useful tool for teachers, helping them to recognise where their strengths and weaknesses lie.

It may also be very useful for parents and students who are deciding whether to re-take a module, especially as the data will also be able to show them instantly just how close they were to a grade boundary.

But it is also likely to increase the pressure on teachers, especially those who do not see their prime purpose as getting students through exam hoops.

It may be another nail in the coffin of the Hectors of the teaching world. It is very likely to increase the pressure to teach to the test.

And, to take another fictional persona - Tom Crick, the history teacher in Graham Swift's novel Waterland - there may be a few more head teachers sidling up to their more individualistic, even eccentric, staff and hinting: "early retirement, Tom?".

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Mike Baker
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