News

Wednesday 10 December 2008

Predictions for A-level pupils 'unreliable'

Boys do better than teachers' predictions

Teachers get their predictions for pupils' A-level grades right in only 45 percent of cases, reveals a new report.

Teachers predict grades for students months ahead of the A-level exams – these grades are used by universities to select applicants and they're also used by students to help to choose which subject they want to study at university. But researchers from Portsmouth University carried out a study of 250 pupils and found that students from a lower income household were more likely to be given overly-optimistic predictions. The study also found 17 percent of boys performed better in the actual exams than their teachers had predicted. Only seven percent of girls scored higher than predicted. And those students given low predictions did better than expected.

Dr Martin Snell, from Portsmouth Business School, warned the prediction of A-level grades was unreliable. 'The current admissions process continues to discriminate against certain groups and this has implications for government initiatives intended to widen participation in higher education,' he said. 'University admission procedures are weighted in favour of predicted grades and so grade predictions have the direct effect of determining where and what subjects many pupils end up studying. Our study was only small and further research is needed to confirm our findings because it's important to try and understand why teachers' predictions are often inaccurate. Our study revealed clearly that students who are predicted higher total grades generally did less well than expected, whereas students who were predicted lower grades did better than expected.'

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