Exam results and statistics

Statistics worry me when it comes to exam results. Somehow, they take away the individual acheivement. On A level results day someone tweeted a link "everything you need to know about this year's A level results." I clicked on it and saw stats that compared subjects, schools and gender but it didn't tell me how incredibly hard my son had worked or how disappointed he was with a mark on one of the papers. 

Today, the GCSE results came out and the director of Teach First posted this tweet.

I was confused.

Why does it matter that when you group the GCSE population by gender, girls do slightly better than boys?

I asked and he seems to think it's a huge problem and that something needs to be done about it. He might be right 

but again, I find I'm worried by statistics.

I'm always worried about any statistics that divide the population by their sexual organs. Men and women are the same species and the spread of good exam results crosses the sexual divide. If all girls got the top grades and all boys the bottom grades I would agree that there is a problem. I asked if he would be so concerned if the statistics were grouped by eye colour. I mean if they analysed the results again and discovered that blue eyed children did 10% better than brown eyed children would that be a concern? I also suggested that in this year's group the girls might have been 8% smarter than the boys.  He asked me if I thought that girls were genetically smarter than boys, which was a bit tricksy. Of course that is not what I was saying, quite the opposite, in fact. I think there is no genetic difference between boys and girls intelligence and that we need to stop pitting one gender against the other as if life is some huge male/female war. 

 Was he suggesting that blue eyed children will be 10% better because of genetics? If so, that is dangerously close to the idea of an Ayrian super race but that's a different argument. We could group children by a preference for red or green or whether they like tomatoes or if they have a tree in their back garden and one group will statistically outperform the other group because that's what happens. Not one person would suggest seperate schools for tomato eaters, as they have done to solve this 'boys underperforming' problem.

I understand the rhetoric. I've been around long enough to have heard the theory that schools are letting boys down and I agree there are boys who would learn better in an outdoor environment or benefit from starting school a year later or be removed from the temptations of the female form to a single sex establishment, where they could just bully each other to be better.

I wonder if the outrage would be as huge if the difference was the other way round?

And does it matter anyway? Girls do better in school: men get all the top jobs. Maybe girls work harder to get better exam results because they have to. If exams were weighted in favour of boys I suspect the girls would just work even harder because their opportunities are more limited without the top grades.

There is so much division of men and women in society and this happens from birth. Schooling isn't going to change much if we refuse to believe that both sexes are equal and keep using statistics to compare them.

Sick Conflicted Parents Day

Today, is the second in a month, where parents will be waking up feeling slightly sick, helpless and conflicted.

"Results day? Nah, I'm not worried. It's up to him/her. I'm not one of those parents," you announce, wondering why sleep wandered around your bedroom like a pushed ball of mercury and your Coco Pops strangely taste like you captured that ball in your dreams and shoved it in your mouth. 

People will be full of advice. Older, wiser parents, people who got good results, people who got bad results, people who are too old or young to have ever taken any exams will all say that it doesn't matter. Jeremy Clarkson will appear on Twitter telling you that he failed everything but still managed to drive fast cars. 

I have no advice. 

It's going to be a roller coaster of a day. You will feel sick. You will feel helpless. You will feel conflicted. You will feel excited or sad or even both.  You will feel proud, ashamed or both.

Parents, they are not your results but you feel like they are. You were there through the pen-throwing tantrums and the tearful meltdowns. You nagged. Oh, boy, did you nag. You made sure that they did the best they could. 

I know that you are scared that if they don't do as well as they should it will have somehow been your fault. I'm not going to tell you it wasn't. Of course it was. They have your genetic make up, after all. Somewhere down the line you must ultimately take responsibility, so just suck it up. Guilt is in the parent's contract and nothing I say about a child leading their own life is going to make any difference. 

I also know that you are scared they might do much better than expected. You won't tell anyone this because it is a childish and selfish thought but what if they really are much cleverer than you? What if they do really well and all your friend's children bomb? 

I just want to say 'good luck' to all parents who are waiting today and leave you with Maureen Lipman who, even though she's just a grandma seems to capture the conflict perfectly.