Two is Good, Four is Better: On Inter-Subject Comparability.

What’s in a number?

In the old days it was all As, Bs, Cs, Ds… Now we have the 1 to 9 but it really doesn’t matter what you call it the idea that an A is an A or a 9 is a 9 is sacrosanct. A** or 9 or turn it up to 11, this is the bestest, most excellentest, the brightest…

When you see a report card and it’s all nines except in one subject it’s a six you think, oh dear, not so good at Maths or Art or whatever… but what if that assumption was wrong? Maybe the grade given by the teacher in that subject is a sign that the child is equally brilliant in that subject as the subjects in which the child achieved a 9… or is even more brillianter!!! Ridiculous, you’d say, it is clearly that the child is putting in less effort or is ‘just not cut out for that sort of thing’ but what if your assumption was wrong? What if nobody knew whether a 9 in Art was equal to a 9 in Physics and equal to a 9 in History? And even at GCSE… What if pupils make choices about what A levels to take and they drop a subject because they only got a 7 in it? Two As and a C for Uni not good enough, maybe, maybe not… And what about dropping subjects to take for GCSEs at option time? Let’s say your key stage 3 marking is based on some solid foundation like GCSE grades and a child got a 6 in French so decided not to take it, sensible?

Performance related pay… She always gets great results in Geography, whereas his results in Latin are always a couple of grades lower…

You would have thought all this was based on firm ground. The data doesn’t lie…

But no-one knows whether a 9 in D&T is equal to a 9 in English Literature. This is the issue of Inter-Subject Comparability and if you have ever assumed that the same grade in one subject is equal to that in another you have been mistaken, I repeat, no-one knows.

There is presently no requirement in our regulations for the exam boards to align subjects…

Although thinking has advanced considerably over time, we still see huge disagreements concerning how best to define and conceptualise inter-subject comparability, let alone how best to monitor it, let alone how best to respond to monitoring outcomes…

Ofqual 2015…

If you have a great assessment model in your school do you assume that the same mark in one subject is equal to that in another? If you feel that it is, how do you know? What decisions do you make if you assume all are equal? Should you review how these decisions are made if they are made on the assumption that all is equal?

Some subjects are more equal than others.