Target grades: what’s the problem?

In two weeks’ time, I will sit my viva voce (defense, for any US readers) for my EdD. I’ve not written for a while, and as part of my preparation I’ve decided to write about my thesis a bit to help distill my thinking and research, and the way I explain it. This will be the first in a rapid-fire series of posts over the next couple of weeks.

In a post quite some time ago, I wrote about how the systematic literature review, written as part of the taught stage of the EdD, went. One of the pieces of feedback I received was that I needed to more clearly problematise the use of target grades in schools. What is actually the problem with them?

I aim to do that, briefly, in this post. (Also, again, it’ll be helpful viva prep.)

The goal of target grades, which have become a ubiquitous feature of secondary schools in England, is to encourage Key Stage 4 (i.e. GCSE) students to push themselves academically. But does it work? My anecdotal experience suggested not really, so I decided to research it more formally as the focus of my EdD. Following the literature review of my thesis, this appeared to be a consequence of the continued marketisation of education, as of the early 90s in particular.

Some history for you:

• 1986: GCSEs introduced (with first exams in 1988)

• 1992: Secondary school league tables first introduced in England

• 2002: Education Act 2002 introducing increased parent choice for their child’s schooling, and ‘floor targets’ for schools to meet (i.e. accountability measures)

• 2010 onward: continued accountability increases and marketisation, including…

  • Increased parent choice, through free school & academisation policies
  • Introduction of Progress 8, Attainment 8, and later EBacc
  • Less local government oversight of schooling
  • The removal of modular exams and a large portion of schoolwork

When I was completing my own GCSEs (2012), I had a ‘minimum expected grade’, which to my memory, I was supposed to meet or exceed. Between finishing my GCSEs and starting teaching, these evolved into target grades. I can only imagine that schools, increasingly so in a system where they are consistently judged against exam outcomes, were passing that expectation on to the individual students (i.e. through target grades). The points in the timeline above don’t necessarily look like problems, but some justification for why they are is a focus for another day.

For example: The Times publishes a list of the ‘best schools in the UK’ each year, and it’s based entirely on exam results. (To play devil’s advocate, they do say that parents should consider factors beyond just exam results, but what proportion of parents are really reading the contextual information beyond looking at the table?)

You’d be hard pressed to find someone that argues school shouldn’t be accountable for their students’ outcomes and prospects, but is this really the best way?

It’s not a secret that target grades are inherently ‘aspirational’, such that students are pushed to achieve their best. There are numerous potential issues with this:

1. Target grades being pushed upward increases the pressure on students
   • Where a school is aiming for a specific Progress 8 score, they may push target grades higher with a view to motivate students to work harder ahead of exams such that the school may reach their target
2. Students who miss their target grades will experience damage to their perceptions of their competence, and their confidence
   • If you’re told your academic performance isn’t good enough, how would you feel? Students may come out of this experience demoralised.
3. Students could be issued sanctions if they miss their target grades in an assessment
   • My findings highlighted students who were issued after-school detentions to re-sit assessments, in a few occasions without receiving feedback or sufficient time to work on improving their performance
4. They often don’t correlate with students’ own aspirations and what they want to achieve
   • If a student knows their skills and what they want to do later, why work so hard in something that is genuinely irrelevant? (I’m not entirely convinced by this argument, since I think a broad education is helpful regardless…)
5. There is the possibility that target grades cause teachers to artificially inflate predicted grades
   • If teachers can see their students’ target grades when generating predicted grades following an exam, and there’s a large disparity, there is the temptation to increase the prediction too so it’s a bit closer. Teachers’ performance management targets are often partially dependent on students’ grades in assessments.

Self-determination theory posits that students need autonomy, competence and relatedness to experience intrinsic motivation, i.e. to work at something for the enjoyment of it and interest in it. In the example of target grades, students don’t experience autonomy given that they are provided the grades to aim for. They may or may not hold positive views of their own competence, if the target grades are ‘too aspirational’*, and they may or may not experience relatedness with their peers if they are consistently missing or exceeding their target grades, while peers are not.

* ‘Too aspirational’ could be a lack of interest and therefore lack of work, or it could be factors affecting the potential for ‘success’ despite interest and work; one example of this could be bereavement. When ‘success’ is defined by an exam grade, but a student is happier working on longer-form projects, exam-based assessments could necessarily define students as ‘unsuccessful’ from the start.

A preview of my findings (which I will write about in another post): the students most motivated by their target grades were usually the most academically (autonomously) motivated anyway, and those at the other end of the spectrum were actively demoralised by their use.

More posts to follow about other key features of my thesis!

References

Bureau et al. (2022). Pathways to Student Motivation: A Meta-Analysis of Antecedents of Autonomous and Controlled Motivations. Review of Educational Research, 92(1), 46-72.

Chitty (2009). Education Policy in Britain (2nd ed.). Palgrave Macmillan.

Godfrey-Faussett & Baird (2025). What does success mean to you? Negotiating individual definitions of educational success within an examination-dominated regime of truth. Oxford Review of Education, 51(2), 178-201.

Howard et al. (2021). Student Motivation and Associated Outcomes: A Meta-Analysis From Self-Determination Theory. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 16(6), 1300-1323.

Leckie & Goldstein (2011). Understanding Uncertainty in School League Tables. Fiscal Studies, 32(2), 207-224.