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After weeks of idling around in the air conditioning, today is a serious day. The first item on the BBC news this morning was a headline story about how many students in the UK and worldwide will receive their A level and AS results today. Is there any student or parent waiting for those all-important results today, who needs a reminder? While my 17-year-old son will probably sleep soundly until at least lunchtime, I have been a nervous wreck since about 6am this morning…

I have settled in for the long haul wait for his school in the UK to email me the results at a time of their choosing. Coffee, a nicotine inhaler and the worldwide web are my trusty companions during this difficult time. I have no control over the results or when I get them but at least I can choose to give up smoking today. It may however, not have been the best day to make this decision if the results prove to be less than impressive. Why might they be? Err, 17-year-old boys are what they are and unfortunately, at the worst possible time in their adolescence they come face to face with an exam system that is not an exact science.

A number of years ago in an effort to level the playing field and make the exam system fairer, it was changed. It moved from a norm-referenced system in which only the top few percent were allowed to achieve an A grade, to a criterion-referenced system in which it is, at least in theory, possible for anyone to get an A grade (or the new A* grade) if they meet the criteria. Many more pupils now get the top grades, which is a good thing. Ironically though, the fact that the assessment criteria are now more clearly prescribed still does not really tell us anything about who the brightest pupils are and still does ensure predictability.

A seminar on exam standards in the UK this week concluded, among other things, that exam grades are not very accurate. Well there’s a surprise! Any parent who takes a keen interest in their children’s education and has ever been confused by a result in a public examination, knows that. Exams do not test the whole syllabus, so sometimes it is a matter of luck on what comes up or a question of how the child performs on the day. Or perhaps more importantly, whether the school did a good job of teaching ‘the rules of the game’: the criteria. And then of course examiners themselves are not infallible, especially if they stick too rigidly to the marking rubric or interpret it in too narrow a way and fail to recognise individual flair or originality.

This may explain why students can get very different results if they take the same exam on different days. A friend of my son’s has taken one particular AS exam module three times. He once received a C grade, once a U grade and hopefully this time the A grade he needs and is capable of. At least my son has one more year before these results will determine his university future. That won’t stop me getting stressed for the next few hours about how the world will end up judging him and what the point of the education system might be anyway if the results fail to meet expectations!