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 A-Levels & GCSE results |
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 Aug 16 2020, 12:35 PM
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#1
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 WINTER IS COMING
Joined: 7 March 2006
Posts: 45,595 User: 88 
      
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Totally surprised there isn't already a topic on this.
While I can't argue that this is a super hard topic with students not being allowed to site exams and the reality is whatever method was given it was always going to cause controversy, we saw the Scottish Government backtrack on the original results process. Now England don't seem to know what they want to do. I can only see the storm continuing with GCSE results next week. Now the exam regulator is reviewing its own guidance hours after publishing it. |
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Aug 16 2020, 12:54 PM
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#2
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 Queen of Soon
Joined: 24 May 2007
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This all could have been avoided. Especially when you consider that while the chaos was unfolding in England and Wales, the tories and labour were queueing up to call for the head of the education secretary in Scotland for admitting liability and putting a fix in place.
The brass f***ing neck of the unionist parties knows no bounds |
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Aug 16 2020, 01:03 PM
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 A dead mouse (from my cat)
Joined: 2 March 2018
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If I was 3 days older I'd be in year 13 this year, I'm gutted for everyone impacted by it. Someone I know in the year above was predicted AAB and received ADE!
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Aug 16 2020, 01:07 PM
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#4
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 I'm a paragon so don't perceive me
Joined: 3 February 2011
Posts: 37,409 User: 12,929            
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Yeah I was thinking it was strange there wasn't a topic on this about an hour ago. Suppose much of the site is at the point in life where they are neither taking the exams or have children or even siblings who are so it hasn't resonated immediately on here.
But it's obviously a serious issue for those who are affected. Much of the examples I've seen (which are mostly some incredibly talented students missing out on good university places because of a machine) seem to highlight that the algorithm is focusing largely on previous school results rather than teacher predictions which is both incredibly individually unfair and massively advantages private schools. I saw a good twitter stats thread on private school year-on-year stats yesterday, I should try and find it. Continuing the good old income inequality. And then to not adjust it for GCSEs or make any attempt to follow Scotland's lead goes beyond incompetence. Williamson should resign and they need to fix it so this generation is not screwed over. |
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Aug 16 2020, 01:16 PM
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#5
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 Radical Pink Troll
Joined: 11 March 2006
Posts: 26,599 User: 177
 
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I had thought of starting a thread but it’s taken a few days for me to be able to articulate my feelings and I still probably can’t.
I do not teach A Level so none of my students have been affected thus far but I am heartbroken for ever single story I see of individuals who have been let down by this system. These are people’s lives and they’re being played with. These students were not even given the chance to prove themselves. They were assured that their teachers would make a judgement for them, this will have comforted many as their teachers know them and what they’re capable of. Will teachers have been generous? Absolutely with students who were borderline-of course you’d give them the benefit of the doubt. Will results have massive rises of pass and higher pass grades this year? Yes. But why does that matter? Why is the government so concerned with results looking too high? Everyone knows and will always know that this is a year of exceptional circumstances. It was not the students choice to not take the exams. They could have taken them if we had used this crisis as an opportunity to make changes to our education system but the fear of not being able to start a new school year at the same time of year we always do was too much. The government don’t trust teachers, most people don’t seem to. Teachers wanting the best for their students is seen by the government as a bad thing. So they put together a flawed algorithm to make sure everything stays ‘fair’. So to make sure all the private school kids get excellent results no matter how lazy and bone idle they’ve been all year and the brightest students in deprives areas get the rough end of the stick simply because the area they live in is poor. There is so much outrage about this and I’m here for it. As a teacher in a deprived area I’m dreading the GCSEs on Thursday. It’s being reported today that 97% of results in England will have ignored teacher predictions and just gone with the algorithm. I can’t see this being different in Wales unfortunately and unforgivably. At least Sturgeon realised there’s was an issue and uturned. Johnson and Drakeford seem to be sticking to their guns on this. There are so many stories of students missing out on university over this and that the appeal system will take to long for them to secure their place. I believe some universities have been flexible and rightly so. But a lot of students are now on a forced gap year that they haven’t saved for, can’t travel in and will struggle to find even part time work due to the economy tanking. Many will go on about how exams don’t matter and how you don’t need them to do well in life. For a number of people that may well be true but it isn’t true for everyone. No one who works hard should be denied to opportunity to go to university in 2020. University gives you a chance to move on to careers that would be impossible for people that don’t have a degree. And there is too much focus on education existing solely to get you a job. Some of these students will have no idea what they want to do in the future but they still want the satisfaction of doing well. The most heartbreaking thing I’ve seen this week is a girl crying about the D she received in one of her A Levels. She has never received a grade that low in her life and right now it’s stuck with her forever. I expect she’d be contented but disappointed with that grade if she’d actually taken the exam. But she never even got the chance. |
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Aug 16 2020, 01:20 PM
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#6
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 ❤️❤️➕🟦
Joined: 3 June 2012
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I would be absolutely fuming if this had affected me and so my heart really goes out to all those at state schools, screwed over for absolutely no reason. To not even be given that chance to prove you're capable and to have a university place or alternative prospects took away from you because you had to be marked down due to not there not being enough people getting the same grades the previous year is horrendous.
There wasn't an easy answer but it just highlights how things become an afterthought until the problem arises. There was no planning and the privileged benefit once again. |
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Aug 16 2020, 01:35 PM
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#7
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Radical Pink Troll
Joined: 11 March 2006
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I think there was an easy answer and that was what they plumped for. Some people were downgraded by 3 grades, not checking on this is absolutely lazy and clearly the easy route. They had months to work out how to do this and actually check that it works.
Treating these kids as statistics instead of human beings will hopefully come back to bite them at the next GE when all these kids can vote. Despite Drakeford’s handling of the virus, I think his handling of results will be Labour’s undoing at the elections in Wales next year. |
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Aug 16 2020, 01:35 PM
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#8
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WINTER IS COMING
Joined: 7 March 2006
Posts: 45,595 User: 88
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QUOTE(T Boy @ Aug 16 2020, 02:16 PM)  I had thought of starting a thread but it’s taken a few days for me to be able to articulate my feelings and I still probably can’t. I do not teach A Level so none of my students have been affected thus far but I am heartbroken for ever single story I see of individuals who have been let down by this system. These are people’s lives and they’re being played with. These students were not even given the chance to prove themselves. They were assured that their teachers would make a judgement for them, this will have comforted many as their teachers know them and what they’re capable of. Will teachers have been generous? Absolutely with students who were borderline-of course you’d give them the benefit of the doubt. Will results have massive rises of pass and higher pass grades this year? Yes. But why does that matter? Why is the government so concerned with results looking too high? Everyone knows and will always know that this is a year of exceptional circumstances. It was not the students choice to not take the exams. They could have taken them if we had used this crisis as an opportunity to make changes to our education system but the fear of not being able to start a new school year at the same time of year we always do was too much. The government don’t trust teachers, most people don’t seem to. Teachers wanting the best for their students is seen by the government as a bad thing. So they put together a flawed algorithm to make sure everything stays ‘fair’. So to make sure all the private school kids get excellent results no matter how lazy and bone idle they’ve been all year and the brightest students in deprives areas get the rough end of the stick simply because the area they live in is poor. There is so much outrage about this and I’m here for it. As a teacher in a deprived area I’m dreading the GCSEs on Thursday. It’s being reported today that 97% of results in England will have ignored teacher predictions and just gone with the algorithm. I can’t see this being different in Wales unfortunately and unforgivably. At least Sturgeon realised there’s was an issue and uturned. Johnson and Drakeford seem to be sticking to their guns on this. There are so many stories of students missing out on university over this and that the appeal system will take to long for them to secure their place. I believe some universities have been flexible and rightly so. But a lot of students are now on a forced gap year that they haven’t saved for, can’t travel in and will struggle to find even part time work due to the economy tanking. Many will go on about how exams don’t matter and how you don’t need them to do well in life. For a number of people that may well be true but it isn’t true for everyone. No one who works hard should be denied to opportunity to go to university in 2020. University gives you a chance to move on to careers that would be impossible for people that don’t have a degree. And there is too much focus on education existing solely to get you a job. Some of these students will have no idea what they want to do in the future but they still want the satisfaction of doing well. The most heartbreaking thing I’ve seen this week is a girl crying about the D she received in one of her A Levels. She has never received a grade that low in her life and right now it’s stuck with her forever. I expect she’d be contented but disappointed with that grade if she’d actually taken the exam. But she never even got the chance. I think the idea that the grades this year is that then it puts people in the immediate years below at a disadvantage worse off, especially when we have to consider the job market for entry level jobs is going to be chaotic for thr forseeable future. The issue now is people can't go travelling for a year before University or find a job for a year. For me the algorithim they have used puts people at larger state schools at an uncessary disadvantage, or even those pupils at terrible schools who get great grades. There is no way someone who eas predicted ABB would ever come out with CDD for example. I'm fully against the idea of a postcode lottery. But I'm not sure using teacher predicted grades is the best way either like Scotland did. It seems the fairest but there is also no standard. I'd like to see examples of people who were predicted DDD and actually ended up with ABC showing up in the media, but somehow I suspect these people will be kept quiet! |
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Aug 16 2020, 01:47 PM
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#9
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BuzzJack Platinum Member
Joined: 21 November 2009
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It's honestly so heartbreaking for all those affected. It's incredibly unfair the way they've handled this. I've seen many stories of those getting top grades in BTECH courses, only to then get downgraded on their predicted A-level grades by 2-3 grades! It also unfairly advantages private schools. Not to mention there would be many students who end up getting results higher than their predicted scores. They then could get the option of adjustment to get into a better university or onto a better course. That happened with me - I ended up doing slightly better than expected and managed to get into a better course at my university.
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Aug 16 2020, 01:55 PM
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#10
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 there's nothing straight about plump Elvis
Pronouns: they/any
Joined: 21 January 2016 Posts: 13,130 User: 22,895 
  
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I don't understand the (to me, false) argument that teachers would inflate their students' grades. Teachers are *ruled* by red tape, it's one of the hallmarks of the profession, and there'd be no possible advantage gained for them to.
If I'm honest it sounds like projection from politicians who absolutely WOULD game the system at any conceivable time they thought they could get away with it, being unable to recognise that that's a them thing, not human nature. |
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Aug 16 2020, 03:07 PM
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#11
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 BuzzJack Legend
Joined: 13 April 2007
Posts: 36,652 User: 3,272
  
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The government has had five months to come up with a reasonably fair solution and have failed miserably. There are so many reasons for people to be angry about this. The Royal Statistical Society offered to advise the government and Ofqual while the algorithm was being devised. The government insisted on a non-disclosure agreement which the RSS refused to accept. The refusal seems reasonable. After all, if the government had ignored the advice but told us that they had received it, the RSS would not have been able to say anything along the lines of "Yes, you received the advice but you took no notice of it".
The RSS - and, indeed, many other people - could have told anyone prepared to listen that the idea of effectively giving schools quotas of each grade based on past performance was asking for trouble. If a school has had no A or A* grades for a few years, why should that mean that no student at that school, no matter how brilliant, should be able to get a top grade this year? Why should students ranked at the bottom of a class automatically get a U grade even when that school hasn't had a single student get a U for a few years? That, though is the sort of nonsense we have ended up with. You could have two students who would have got exactly the same mark in an actual exam but one gets a B while the other gets an E thanks to a ridiculous algorithm. Of course, if Gove hadn't done away with coursework and AS Levels contributing to the final result, some of this could have been avoided. |
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Aug 16 2020, 04:07 PM
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#12
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I'm a paragon so don't perceive me
Joined: 3 February 2011
Posts: 37,409 User: 12,929
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QUOTE(Rooney @ Aug 16 2020, 01:35 PM) I think the idea that the grades this year is that then it puts people in the immediate years below at a disadvantage worse off, especially when we have to consider the job market for entry level jobs is going to be chaotic for thr forseeable future. The issue now is people can't go travelling for a year before University or find a job for a year. For me the algorithim they have used puts people at larger state schools at an uncessary disadvantage, or even those pupils at terrible schools who get great grades. There is no way someone who eas predicted ABB would ever come out with CDD for example. I'm fully against the idea of a postcode lottery. But I'm not sure using teacher predicted grades is the best way either like Scotland did. It seems the fairest but there is also no standard. I'd like to see examples of people who were predicted DDD and actually ended up with ABC showing up in the media, but somehow I suspect these people will be kept quiet! I did see an anecdotal case of some predicted U students (because the teachers considered it likely the student wouldn't have sat the exam) being given Ds as part of the normalising process though I can't find it again to verify it and it wouldn't be that useful. But yes, you won't get many of those speaking up, they won't get much sympathy. This is very fundamentally unfair given how much we make of education for teenagers, it is supposed to be their entire world and life, and these students were not given the chance to act on it in their final year. And most especially when private schools continue to benefit (to the tune of 4.7% more A+grades - compared to approx 2% for other schools) as the less well-off enter that horrible employment situation with their life plan cruelly derailed. I think it's going to have a very lasting effect what with protests starting now, at least as much as the tuition fee protests at the beginning of last decade. And fundamentally, I see no reason to doubt the teacher predictions. They'll work closely with the students, will be familiar with their work and would be very disincentivised (particularly at state schools!) to advantage their students. |
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Aug 16 2020, 04:18 PM
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#13
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Radical Pink Troll
Joined: 11 March 2006
Posts: 26,599 User: 177
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QUOTE(Rooney @ Aug 16 2020, 02:35 PM) I think the idea that the grades this year is that then it puts people in the immediate years below at a disadvantage worse off, especially when we have to consider the job market for entry level jobs is going to be chaotic for thr forseeable future. The issue now is people can't go travelling for a year before University or find a job for a year. For me the algorithim they have used puts people at larger state schools at an uncessary disadvantage, or even those pupils at terrible schools who get great grades. There is no way someone who eas predicted ABB would ever come out with CDD for example. I'm fully against the idea of a postcode lottery. But I'm not sure using teacher predicted grades is the best way either like Scotland did. It seems the fairest but there is also no standard. I'd like to see examples of people who were predicted DDD and actually ended up with ABC showing up in the media, but somehow I suspect these people will be kept quiet! I don’t see what’s wrong with going with teacher predictions for one year of extraordinary circumstances. Everyone will remember that this happened in 2020 and I can’t honestly see the next year groups being disadvantaged. We’re already discussing exam concessions for next year’s Year 11 who will likely not sit every assessment unit in any subject because they have been affected too. It certainly wouldn’t put them at a disadvantage going to university, well it wouldn’t if they actually all could have gone this year. |
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Aug 16 2020, 04:35 PM
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#14
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Buzzjack's Finest Alcoholic.
Joined: 19 November 2011
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Do kids not do mock exams anymore? I would have thought results from those could have been used if so?
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Aug 16 2020, 04:46 PM
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#15
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BuzzJack Platinum Member
Joined: 21 November 2009
Posts: 8,541 User: 10,030
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QUOTE(Oliver @ Aug 16 2020, 05:35 PM) Do kids not do mock exams anymore? I would have thought results from those could have been used if so? I don't think that would be a good idea as a lot don't do as well in mock exams. Mock exams are used to see what areas students need to do more work on in preparation for the real exams. |
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Aug 16 2020, 04:48 PM
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#16
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Radical Pink Troll
Joined: 11 March 2006
Posts: 26,599 User: 177
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QUOTE(Oliver @ Aug 16 2020, 05:35 PM) Do kids not do mock exams anymore? I would have thought results from those could have been used if so? They do, and I used Christmas mock results to influence my predictions. The issue is with just using mock results is that many students openly admit to not trying because they’re not the real thing. That’s why with predictions with some students you have to factor in a revision element and also that they would have grown stronger in the months following the mocks anyway. Not for every student, but you always know which ones care and which ones don’t. Perhaps mock exams will get a renewed respect from this point on now that something like this has happened. |
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Aug 16 2020, 04:55 PM
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#17
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BuzzJack Legend
Joined: 13 April 2007
Posts: 36,652 User: 3,272
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Another issue with mocks is that they are not always taken under strict exam conditions. Also, some teachers say that they are deliberately very strict in marking them to avoid complacency.
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Aug 16 2020, 05:38 PM
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#18
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The owls are not what they seem
Pronouns: He/him
Joined: 11 July 2009 Posts: 37,104 User: 9,232
  
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A lot of my supported learners do vocational courses so most would've got results on the Thursday too, I haven't heard anything big happening with our results, but then I'm only a support worker so never actually hear back until I return to work, but this news hasn't been promising (and I'll be gutted for my learners if they did affect them, they worked so hard despite the circumstances :'() and I expect things won't have gone too well here either. I suppose I'll bookmark this thread to report back x
From what I understood from how teachers at my college were calculating results, it was based on a number of factors, primarily coursework and predicted grades, our courses didn't have exams so that didn't come into it, but I'd imagine mock exam results coming into the appropriate subjects. It's pretty reasonable to expect the teacher would know the student well so if the predicted grades are so much lower than the actual results when they didn't happen then something is clearly very, very wrong here, I simply cannot believe someone being predicted ABC and getting ADE, it makes me think there was something other than education at play which is disgusting to think, there's clearly something wrong with the system if that is happening. Scotland has the right idea. The worst thing is that those snivelling tory twats will just look at how results are generally up on last year (idk how) and undoubtedly pass the blame to the teachers for the bad results. What a world we live in :/ |
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Aug 16 2020, 05:49 PM
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#19
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Radical Pink Troll
Joined: 11 March 2006
Posts: 26,599 User: 177
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Yeah they’ve tried to scapegoat teachers for being ‘over generous’ but no one’s really having any of it. It’s one of the few times in modern times where people are actually saying ‘listen to the teachers’!
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Aug 16 2020, 09:24 PM
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#20
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BuzzJack Enthusiast
Joined: 11 July 2017
Posts: 768 User: 35,239
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Obviously the government of England and Wales have both made huge mistakes, but I was thinking earlier, if they did end up following Scotland and using teacher predictions, whilst it would have been far more fair for the kids in Year 13 and 11 this year, will employers for those year groups not see that those grades and not look at them as closely as they have just been ‘inflated’ as such by teachers? Or do employers not look as closely as that at the grades? A genuine question because I don’t know what employers do
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