CAMBRIDGE Assessment International Education (CAIE) has assured that grades and certificates to be issued based on the alternative assessment which is replacing its May and June 2020 examination series will be no different to those in previous years’ and would enable students to progress to their next stage of learning.
CAIE, also known as Cambridge International, had earlier taken the decision to cancel all its exams due to health and safety concerns arising from the Covid-19 outbreak. These include the Cambridge IGCSE exams, Cambridge O Level, and Cambridge International AS and A Level.
In an exclusive interview with Higher ED, Cambridge International Southeast Asia & Pacific regional director Dr Ben Schmidt detailed out the evidence-based assessment which will be done collaboratively with schools.
“We are not leaving the current cohort of students without a grade or certificate from Cambridge. Every student who has been entered for the Cambridge exam in this coming series will be offered a grade and a certificate which will be based on an alternative grading process,” he said.
The evidence-based assessment process first involves asking schools (also known as exam centres) to look at any evidence that they have of the achievement of their students. These could be coursework, work set in class, mock exams, assignments - anything that the teacher has.
“We are asking the teachers to make a professional judgement on the basis of the evidence that they have and on how well they know their students. This is what we call a predicted grade,” he explained.
The school will then determine a rank order of its candidates within each grade. “The head of school is required to confirm the predicted grades and rank orders, and that the process was fair and the methodology they used is based on best available evidence, best possible teacher judgement and professionally done,” said Schmidt.
The school will then send the predicted grades and rank orders to Cambridge International which will carry out a statistical standardisation process, combining data from the school with other data, and award final grades.
“If a school decides to submit for some reason grades that are overall higher than they should be, then we have checks and balances and we can reduce that so that no one will be advantaged or disadvantaged. This also applies if the school’s (predicted grade) judgement is lower than it should be,” said Schmidt.
Elaborating further on the evidence, Schmidt said the more recent the evidence the better because students make progress.
“We can also accept evidence of work that has been done remotely by students following the implementation of online learning in some schools as long as the teachers can be confident that these are the students’ own work,” he said.
On what teachers should look for during assessment and how the grades should be awarded, Schmidt said this would be based on the learning objectives that would translate into assessment objectives of each respective subject.
“For example, in any language subject, the learning objectives fall into the four areas of the four essential language skills. And normally in the exams, we need to assess students on the four skills. In the same way, we are asking teachers to look at evidence in the language subjects that they have, on how well the students have performed in each of the relevant learning and assessment objectives - in this case reading, writing, speaking and listening,” Schmidt illustrated.
Asked about how private candidates are to be assessed in this evidence-based method, Schmidt said they would be treated the same way as the school candidates.
“We realise however that in some cases the school (centre) may not be able to find enough evidence for some of the private candidates that originally want to sit the exams with them in the May/June series. In that case, the option for them is to take the exam in the October/November 2020 series. We will of course not charge any fees for them in this coming May/June series,” he said.
Schools are to submit the predicted grades and rank order to Cambridge International no earlier than May 29. Schmidt said the deadline for submission has yet to be finalised.
“For the May/June exam series, the results will typically be released in mid-August if exams were held, and Cambridge International intends to stick by the same timeline as it would have been if the exams had taken place under normal conditions,” he said.
This is especially important for A Level students who would use their grades and certificate to apply for place in university.
“Cambridge International have been in close contact with universities in developing this whole process and we have coordinated closely with universities as well as the governments - whether the UK government or others, and other international exam bodies and the UK regulator Ofqual (The Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation).
“We have received feedback that universities are very confident with what we are doing. The two keywords that describe the attitude of universities with regards to this current cohort are fairness and flexibility. The universities absolutely don’t want the current students in this current pandemic to be disadvantaged compared to previous students.
“The universities, of course, want an intake of students that are suitable for their university this year as much as they do in previous years. and so they will rely on the Cambridge AS and A Level certificates in the same way they have in previous years and they have all said to us that they will take these unprecedented circumstances into consideration in the way they make their judgement about student intake,” said Schmidt.
On other issues, Schmidt said there will be continuous communications between Cambridge International and schools to keep them constantly updated on any development or decisions.
“There is one concern among those who don’t want to get a grade or a certificate in this May/June series and would rather wait till November and sit exams in the normal way - which is we traditionally offer fewer subjects in the November series compared to the June series,” Schmidt shared.
“We are working hard to make sure that we can offer as many subjects as possible in the November series but we have not finalised any decisions on that yet. But we are very much aware that people want to know and I hope that I can give an update on that soon,” he said.
Cambridge International is due to send general update to schools on 16 April.