Reform Time this week comes with a health warning. We are getting statistical and this week’s column is the nasty cough mixture – awful in the taking but ultimately good for you.

Here is the bombshell. Under plans set out by examinations regular Ofqual and using Ofsted’s main criterion for judging secondary schools – GCSE results – what determines whether or not a pupil gets a C grade will have nothing at all to do with any criteria about what constitutes a C grade. Sound bonkers? It is.

Here is how sensible pupils, parents and employers think the system works – let’s take the maths GCSE. Exam boards publish a mark scheme for the maths GCSE exam. It tells you that if you can do ‘x’ you get so many marks which gives you a D grade, ‘x and y’ and you get a C grade, ‘x,y and z’ and you get a B grade and so on. This is known in the jargon as ‘comparable performance’. If you meet the standard you get the grade – the 10m swimming badge, driving tests and teaching qualifications all use this method.

Here is how the system currently works. Part of the judgement is based on comparable performance but the other part is based on comparable outcomes. Ofqual look at how clever a particular year group were when they were 11 and set the grade boundaries based on their prior ability. If you’re in a really clever year group a C grade will be harder and vice versa if your year group weren’t so bright. This means that year on year the number of C grades that are awarded can be controlled along with the political circus that is accusations of grade inflation (insert [‘in my day it was much harder when’] statement from [insert name of tabloid newspaper]).

The current system will no doubt raise some eyebrows, but what is the future plan? Well, Ofqual is planning to just use one system – comparable outcomes only. That means that grading decisions will not, in any way, be based on criteria required to achieve a particular grade. There will be no connection whatsoever.

What does this mean for our qualification system?

First, using this method as the yardstick, it is impossible for the system as a whole to show that it is getting better. Put simply if teachers do a great job and as a result more kids know their Pythagoras inside out it makes no difference – the same number will still get a C grade. Think on that next time you hear that Michael Wilshaw, chief inspector of schools, saying that progress has stalled.

Second, it makes a total mockery of Ofsted judgements for secondary schools (which focus on this magic percentage GCSE number). The only way one school gets more C grade is by taking them from another. I am never quite sure if Ofsted is complicit with politicians in agreeing with this approach or it just does not understand how the system works – I have heard the amazing line ‘more schools performing above the average’ more than once.

Finally, pupils, parents, universities and employers have no idea what a C grade means in terms of ability. All they know is that you were about average for your year group – what was average? Well, who knows?

An outstanding headteacher who has recently taken on one of the toughest schools in the north-west put it like this:

We’ve got an unholy trinity – the DfE wanting to raise standards, Ofsted judging standards and Ofqual maintaining them. The result is more interest in using statistics to manage headlines about ‘grade inflation’ than there is about a fair system that rewards the achievements of pupils.

Remember this when the secondary school league tables are published later this month and the media circus about grade inflation starts all over again.

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Matthew Hood is a director of a national education charity and assistant head at a secondary school in Morecambe. He tweets @MatthewHood and writes in the Reform Time column on Progress

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Photo: Leo Reynolds