The second result I got yesterday was an A. Now this was an interesting one. The exam was the easy exam in a three part modular GCSE. So it matters but is only worth 30% of the whole. The pupil was originally forecast a D, so again a real result. But has left us all with a problem. She is now out performing her class (she is bottom to mid range in her setting), so much so that the school (partly because the poker-game now being imposed by an interventionist central government...) wants to change the exam she is in. She is doing well in the modular exam, but the rest of her class need to go on the linear,(end of year)version of the exam. She is therefore at risk of losing her A and having to sit the exam again, because the paper has changed!
 This is of course where it all gets hard. The pupil herself is about the fourth most able natural mathematician I have ever taught - who in spite of 'doing a dizzy blond act' sees the structure of numbers, and can tell you the right answer very quickly and without really knowing how she does it, and does it for sums I have to right down ( her mum I discovered is the same, but never was encouraged at school)! So within reason we can do our worst to her- she can cope! And yet, she is very prone to being disheartened and assuming she is daffy after all.
 The problem is therefore whether she gets promoted out of the set she she in to a set where they are going to stay in the modular exam - but are likely to go quickly be algebraic, and where it will be assumed, that she, prompted as she is form 'down below'  is daft when she does not understand stuff in the same way. Moreover the move would mean she would loose the teacher who she is rather fond of, and works  well with, and be seperated from all her mates. So this is clearly a no brainer, I told her mum, keep her where she is happy, where she is a star, and do so even though it means that she will be being taught for a different exam from the one she wants to take. The difference between the two papers is actually rather small. Indeed I think with my teacher head on she will probably do better as a result of this move, and the fact that now the school is going (apparently) to enter her in to two exams at once - both versions! It will give her two chances.
   But it will do so only if we can keep her motivated, and wanting to do well, and keep her sprits us in the face now of two exams in the summer. This might be difficult, and yet it is better than the alternative, of a promotion to a class where the Dizzy Blond will take over in the face of algebra, or simply pulling her out of an exam she is on target to get an A in and into an exam where she has all to prove all over again. It all should be possible, and yet it does mean I will have my work cut out, and - will keep you posted.
 But more than that it explains the problem of  any exam system (and all reforms) - they only work sometimes - and easily do not pick the most able students if those students are not typical, and do not know that they are any good (and why should they)! They are the ones thatall too easily get lost, and left to  assume they are daffy.... it is only I think when this happens in the second generation, that they picked up because their parent is desperate that the same does not happen to their kids as did happen twenty years ago or so to themselves....