Time to take the guesswork out of grade estimates
- The anxiety-ridden practice of predicting future grades could be avoided if tertiary institutes could assess students’ applications after final results are in
If I was invited to make a list of the things I did not miss from my years in an international school here in Hong Kong, predicted grades would be at the very top of it.
Why? Predicted grades are those that teachers estimate a student is likely to achieve in an external examination – such as IB or A-levels – the actual results of which arrive in the mail nearly a year later. These grades are used by many universities to determine the eligibility or competitiveness of the applicant for their course or institution.
The United Kingdom is the most prescriptive country when it comes to predicted grades and each department of each university publishes its entrance requirements on ucas.com. If the course demands 7,6,6 at IB Higher level and the student is predicted 6,6,6, it is likely the student will not receive a conditional offer. In other words, they will be rejected. Not all countries are the same, though. Australia, for instance, can use the final results because of its different academic year.
It should be obvious how crucial these predictions can be and why this subject is so sensitive – to the extent that some well-known schools in Hong Kong will not release these divinations to students or parents, I suspect for fear of litigation.
Irrespective of disclosure, schools use different methods for generating these grades and do so at different times. Subject teachers are often required to make these predictions early in the first term of the senior year based on the student’s performance over the previous academic year, and the first few weeks of the senior year, if that is possible.
This is why I always advise students not to coast during their penultimate year of high school – their performance in that year is heavily reflected in their university applications, although some US colleges ask for a midyear update in the senior year.
Any prediction, almost by definition, involves an element of opinion and subjectivity in terms of the teacher’s perception of how the student will cope with an examination and level of study that is often more demanding in the senior year. Some schools hold internal tests or exams, the results of which will directly inform the predicted grades, to establish objectivity.
Others will ask teachers to take such tests into account but base their prediction on overall performance over the previous year or so.
Consistency in approach in schools, and within individual subject departments, becomes a key issue. Imagine being the person responsible for advising teachers, telling students and dealing with parent reactions to predicted grades, and you will understand my relief at leaving that annual experience behind.
A few years back, I had what I thought was a brainwave. There was always so much hysteria among the senior students in school on the day in September when I gave them their predicted grades that I decided to email them all individually on a Sunday – all 180 of them – to defuse the excitement. Brilliant! Or so I thought.
If there ever was a lesson about the instant connectivity of smartphones and social media this was it. Straightaway, in the middle of the afternoon, I received an email from a student asking why he had not received his grades yet as I was “obviously distributing these alphabetically”. I had merely transferred the panic to cyberspace!
More importantly, though, there is the issue of reliability and the extent to which universities can trust these predictions. Are they over-optimistic and if so, is this to a degree that makes them unusable? Can universities trust certain schools over others, according to historical data? It is no surprise that standardised tests and an increasing number of other assessment tests are now considered a supplementary requirement for many student applicants to both the US and the UK.
Is there a solution that would address all these issues and establish a level playing field to bring a sigh of relief to students, parents and teachers alike?
Remarkably, yes. A post-qualification university application system is achievable with a degree of cooperation from university systems and examination boards willing to shift their calendars just a little. Do not hold your breath, but that would ensure the timely death of the dreaded predicted grades.
