GCSE results

[Redder Lurtz]

Lurtz Junior received all A's and B's and a C in maths. A* in English Lit and Merits in IT. Apologies for those who've already read this on Twitter and Facebook but I'm shouting this from the rooftops. Well proud of the big hairy sod.

[KMD7]

Lurtz Junior received all A's and B's and a C in maths. A* in English Lit and Merits in IT. Apologies for those who've already read this on Twitter and Facebook but I'm shouting this from the rooftops. Well proud of the big hairy sod.

 

Congrats to Lurtz junior!!! No wonder you're proud!!

[Lee909]

Great news for you all.

[Champ]

Good on him!

 

This was the first year in what feels like a lifetime that I wasnt waiting for results to arrive..and it felt good....way too involved for my own good.

[Ne Moe Imya]

Apologies for reviving a dead thread but this is the only one I could find on the topic (maybe I'm searching the wrong things?).

 

Can someone explain the A-level downgrade thing to me? I lived in England for a year but I never went through any of it and I have to say as an outsider it's a complete mystery. I thought the system in the US was dumb but this whole scandal with kids being downgraded due to their school has made me feel like maybe yours is even worse?

 

How does it work? Can someone give me a one-paragraph explanation for how a child is scored (A*, A, B, whatever) and how they can reduce that due to their school's previous results? It doesn't make any sense to me.

[Bruce Spanner]

59 minutes ago, Ne Moe Imya said:

Apologies for reviving a dead thread but this is the only one I could find on the topic (maybe I'm searching the wrong things?).

 

Can someone explain the A-level downgrade thing to me? I lived in England for a year but I never went through any of it and I have to say as an outsider it's a complete mystery. I thought the system in the US was dumb but this whole scandal with kids being downgraded due to their school has made me feel like maybe yours is even worse?

 

How does it work? Can someone give me a one-paragraph explanation for how a child is scored (A*, A, B, whatever) and how they can reduce that due to their school's previous results? It doesn't make any sense to me.

Schools have arbitrary targets based on KS2 data (small kids school) which is subject to fiddling and mismanagement, which is endemic, targets, however ridiculous, need to be met though...

 

These chumps turn up at the secondary school gates with grades that’d make scholars wince through no fault of their own. The education system is then told it’s useless if these these kids don’t get those grades which are ‘projected’ and every fucker, student and teacher, is told they they’re failures for failing arbitrary, pointless, targets. The private sector, and Grammar Schools, are exempt from these targets, surprisingly.
 

Through sheer hard work, effort, determination and any other pithy, patronising, shite you can throw at them, some of these kids rise above their station and do alright in the exams and this produces a + in the algorithm. The + however is what’s being disregarded.

 

Essentially, if you go to a good school you would, probably, have done well. However, if you are a smart kid in a shit school, fuck you, because the kids previously at your school didn’t do as well do why should you.

 

Typical Tory thinking.

 

They have fucked this up so badly, but schools also have to shoulder the responsibilities as they’ve ‘massaged’ data and ‘projected’ data which is not representative, the gov are more to blame, but schools also need to accept culpability for some of this.  

 

If you want a full breakdown ask me when I’ve not been on the piss.

[Bruce Spanner]

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[Evelyn Tentions]

5 hours ago, Bruce Spanner said:

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Courtesy of a Johnathan Pie retweet

ABBA are now BDDC

[Paul]

Kids sit tests at 11 in primary school called SATS in the core subjects. These are used to predict how they’ll do at GCSE when they’re 16. GCSEs are exams in roughly 8-12 subjects, depending on school and ability. Most kids must study English Language, English Literature, Science, a modern foreign language, a humanity subject and then 3 or four other subjects of their choice. GCSE results are then used to predict A Level results at 18. 
 

At A Level, kids specialise in 3 subjects of their choice usually as an entry method to university but also to qualify for apprenticeships or careers at 18. 
 

Covid meant school and exams were cancelled and so schools were asked to use all the evidence they had (internal assessments, mock exams, etc) to give a Centre Assessed Grade (each school is called a centre for the purposes of administering public examinations) for each kid in each subject. 
 

The government made clear this would be subject to potential scrutiny, should be robust and would be checked against each centre’s three year track record on exam results. 
 

However, what has transpired is that the government have given almost no weighting to these CAGs and have simply used an algorithm to give each kid their grade. This therefore does not account for a whole litany of unmeasurable factors which influence individual grades and pretty much penalises kids who’ve been in a school that’s struggled recently. 
 

So, a kid who was sick when sitting SATS at 11 or suffered a bereavement during GCSEs at 16 which led to lower results than their ability will be held down by that past issue despite possibly having turned things around by 18. Also some lazy kids respond to failure earlier and step it up, which can’t be recognised.
 

Also, some schools deal with difficult organisational issues which affect previous cohorts but not current ones. So a kid in a school that merged with another three years ago will be penalised by the previous poor exam results the school achieved when dealing with organisational challenges. Other challenges include changes in school leadership or financial problems leading to redundancy. These affect teaching and learning. 
 

Another factor is that the algorithm has been applied less rigorously to small sixth forms as they are less statistically secure in this context. These are usually private schools full of posh kids and the 5% leap in their grades suggests their teachers over-inflated their CAGs and these have been accepted.
 

Disadvantaged students who succeed generally follow a less predictable or linear path to success, often making improvements year on year from a modest starting point throughout their education. These kids have therefore been overly penalised by the algorithm- especially when in big centres (where it’s been applied more rigorously) that have had previous organisational volatility. 
 

In short it’s a shit show and the current expectation is that the GCSE results on Thursday will be even worse. The idea that mock exams can be used for appeal (individuals may not appeal; only centres can) is risible. There is no consistency even within centres on how mocks are used never mind locally or nationally. Individual heads of subject in a centre will set the paper based on what they want it to achieve (shock, encourage, measure understanding, measure knowledge retention, etc).
 

Also mocks can be sat whenever a school wants, but clearly those sat later in the course will be a generally better measure than those sat earlier. Also boys tend to perform very badly in mocks and generally don’t revise at all as they don’t see the point. 

 

The only solution is to do what Sturgeon did and say Fuck the algorithm and all CAGs will be applied. Even this is not great as some schools revised their CAGs down in anticipation of a possible moderation process by the government that they wanted to avoid falling foul of. 
 

In short, it’s a shit show. 

[Champ]

And as night follows day...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53810655

[YorkshireRed]

It’s a fucking shambles. Even this backtrack just confirms it. They will know by now just how bad the algorithm would have made the results so this is just a pathetic attempt at saving some kind of face and deflecting responsibility. 
 

I’ve skin in the game here. My eldest gets his GCSE results on Thursday. It’s fair to say that High School has not been a great experience for him and this has impacted his academic performance and, far more importantly, his overall wellbeing.

 

He was never going to do A Levels but he had got a place at the local college to do a course in creative media, something he has a genuine interest in. The slightly less strict regime of the college, including not having to wear a ridiculous uniform is much more up his street. I can tell he’s actually quite excited which is the first time the prospect of education has given him this in years. 
 

The issue might be that his place is based on Predicted Grades. Any downgrade at all on this and he might be struggling. 
 

Hopefully he should now be ok but it wouldn’t surprise me if he ends up having to resit which will be a downer all round.

 

Fingers crossed. 

[Strontium]

It's funny as I don't remember predicted grades being a big thing when I was a kid. I have no idea how my actual grades compared to what was predicted. I couldn't even tell you what I got in my mock exams, except for Latin, because I did really badly in that and I needed to pull my finger out for the real exam.

[Bjornebye]

Strontz in Latin remedial class

 

 

 

[Frank Dacey]

This is an Ofqual fuck up. The algorithm was used in Scotland and was going to be used in Wales, neither of which have Tory governments. Of course, Williamson should be sacked, not least for ignoring the experience in Scotland but heads have to roll at Ofqual as well.

All of this nonsense stems from the fact that Education Secretaries for the last 40 years (of both major parties) have taken the view that teachers are part of the problem, not part of the solution. The result is that teachers are the most marginalised profession in the country. These people were simply never going to accept Teacher assessed grades and instead came up with this algorithm which was a predictable disaster. Any teacher will know that children don't progress in neat straight lines; some can't step up to a higher level, some flourish when they drop subjects and can focus on those they enjoy, some sail through puberty, others don't. The list is endless and the idea that an algorithm could detect that is ridiculous.

[mars]

Using teacher predicted grades is the best decision though it is far from perfect - I did my best to give realistic predictions, used data from all assessments, mock exams, etc only to find that a teacher from another subject had just used grades from a "Walking Talking mock" (this is where you guide students through the exam paper to teach them how to time the exam, what key phrases in questions mean, using marks available to gauge level of detail needed - basically good exam technique). The predicted grades from this other subject look fantastic and now I am expecting complaints as my grades aren't as good (in 20 odd years this subject has only bettered my grades twice). 

 

I suspect headteachers in under-performing schools will have put pressure on staff to up predictions.

 

As Paul said, a shit show.

[Bruce Spanner]

There’s a secondary problem as the UCAS ‘predictions’ are different from the actual monitored predictions.

 

UCAS are always overinflated as they are aspirational and open the doors to interviews, with a second and third choice university just in case.

 

If they go on the predictions that UCAS are using we’re raising a generation of genii and it’ll get a lot messier.

 

If they’re working on ‘pathway projections’ then a lot of disadvantaged and minority ethnic groups are going to suffer as teachers know they have to answer awkward questions, especially as pay progression relies on these most of the time, when these arbitrary targets are not met.

 

Fucked either way. 

[Frank Dacey]

I'm out of the loop now but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be UCAS predictions that were used. Exam boards often complain that predicted grades are inaccurate, but which would you rather trust; an examiner who may spend 20 minutes marking a candidates work, and may not know much about the topic being examined, or the teacher, who has known the candidate for two years? Doesn't seem to me a difficult choice.