The teacher assessed grades (TAG) experience initiated deep curriculum dialogue and work scrutiny in our school, which turned into a valuable learning experience for all. Unsurprisingly perhaps, it highlighted staff and students’ long-standing overreliance on specifications and mark schemes – often limiting the development of wider knowledge and understanding, and its confident flexible use in a range of situations, not just in specification-driven assessment tasks and examinations. The impact of such focused professional dialogue clearly showed that school leaders should seek to hold more explicit curriculum and pedagogical conversations with subject leaders, particularly focused on true cognitive challenge within a transformative curriculum, as a vehicle to ongoing teacher development.

 

• Greater empowerment and training of teachers to be confident owners and enactors of their curriculum, rather than implementors of a specification, is required. Left underdeveloped, this is so limiting for all, particularly the most able at KS5, before embarking on more expert undergraduate study. Brave decisions should be encouraged around what is considered ‘important knowledge and understanding’ in a subject curriculum, with teachers improving their clarity on what should then be assessed and why.
• More able students benefit greatly from frequent learning checks beyond that of surface, recall knowledge, including application and depth of understanding, often well beyond an examination mark scheme. 
• Flexible thinking and cognitive resilience should be deliberately developed, through the skilful selection of deeper learning opportunities for the most able students. This must move beyond ‘more of the same’ and additional ‘surface knowledge’, to deeper understanding of and diverse application of knowledge through wider lenses and study beyond set content; and should subsequently be assessed as such, not narrowed in its assessment by adhering to examination board mark schemes. Best practice involved assessment opportunities with a truly enriched focus on ‘doing so much more with less’. This was particularly evidenced with the most able at KS5.
• Increased levels of home/school contact, particularly focused on subject-specific information, wider opportunities and support, should be maintained and further considered. This will continue to improve parental awareness of their children’s ability and the unique challenges encountered by the most able students, as well as the opportunities available to them.

The perfectionist attribute that we see in many of our more able students did lead to additional worry during this period. Common concerns included:

• Periods of uncertainty about the nature of the exam season and evidence-gathering opportunities, fuelled noticeably by over-analysis of online speculation and over-scrutiny of exam board materials when released, revealing a real fear if teachers appeared to veer away from this.  
• Course content that was perceived as ‘missed’ or not taught live in school, and the impact that would have not just on final grades but on student ability to be successful in further study. 
• Grade inflation and the potential impact on university offers and the perceived validity of grades this year, and in the future.

This does highlight the need for us to focus on explicitly developing more able students’ self-awareness, regulation and confidence, and workload and wellbeing management, through our more able programmes.