GCSE: Girls Celebrate School Exams

Posted at 9:52 pm on 25th August, 2020

Students at Flixton Girls School gained outstanding GCSE grades in line with their previous years of performance but making some well-deserved increases too. Retiring Headteacher Julie Hazeldine said: ‘Thursday was a day of celebrating 5 special years with our girls, saying farewell to some and welcoming record numbers back to Sixth Form enrolment. Our young people were faced with such high levels of uncertainty as they were asked to sacrifice their exams to save lives so I am delighted to see that the vast majority of the girls have gained the results they justly deserved, recognising 5 years of high school education regardless of the last few months!’

She added ‘It has been so difficult for the girls that we wanted to celebrate in style to do all we could under the COVID-19 restrictions, so we ordered a fabulous rainbow of balloons from local company Exquisite Rooms & Balloons and arranged social distance markers to enable every form group to receive their results and have a memorable photograph with their friends after so long apart. It was really emotional as my last official act as the Headteacher of Flixton for the last 13 years but I am so glad we made the effort to see everyone as 171 out of 178 students attended!’

Professor Ged Byrne, Chair of the Healthy Learning Trust said ‘I am exceptionally proud of the achievements of the girls at both GCSE and A Level during such a difficult year.’ As a Consultant Surgeon, working on the frontline in hospital during the height of the pandemic, Ged added, ‘What the school has achieved during the lockdown not just for the students but for the whole community has been tremendous and as always, the staff and the students at Flixton and the Healthy Learning Trust have gone above and beyond. I have no doubt that the girls will make the most of the wonderful opportunities the school has provided.’

The system for awarding grades this year has left everyone feeling rather bewildered. However, the school has explained to students and their parents that they can rest assured that the process used at the girls school was both rigorous and in line with the Government instructions which were to ensure that grades were an accurate reflection of student achievement, informed by evidence of student assessments and teacher professional judgement but moderated to bring them in line with the schools track record of performance. There is still a serious debate continuing nationally due to the sudden change in deciding to use Centre Assessed Grades at the eleventh hour: these CAGs were NOT typical teacher estimated grades and there has been widespread variability across the country into their application. The withdrawal of the ‘algorithm’ has removed any chance of ensuring that there is consistency across the awarding of grades nationally.

Julie, who is also the Chair of the Trafford Secondary Headteachers Forum said ‘I know from my colleagues across all the high schools and grammar schools in Trafford that we have all applied the rules consistently and rigorously, and that the process took all schools 3 months of intensive scrutiny to arrive at the Centre Assessed Grades. Ofqual have been in possession of school CAGs since the end of May and it is inexcusable that the Government left it until the last minute to work out the impact of their faulty algorithm.’