OFQUAL have spoken.

It is a scandal that norm referencing has been let in by the back door. The main reason as far as I can see is that DFEE/OFQUAL whoever with control has bowed to popular pressure that GCSE grades are too high. They can't control the grades if using criterion based marking (which was the whole point of GCSEs when they were introduced) so hence the use of comparable outcomes.

CouthyMow, agree with you totally - my dd is also a late bloomer and in yr 10.

Spot on CouthyMow and noblegiraffe .

I'm glad I'm not a teacher .

If GCSE results were based on KS2 results, my DD would still be predicted a 'U' in Maths. Instead she is on the boundary of gaining a 'D', which is her current estimated grade, 1/2 a term into Y10. If she continues at the rate age is going, her teacher thinks she should be aiming for a 'C '. But he can't put that as her predicted grade, because her KS2 results mean it is unachievable. Apparently.

Which is poo, quite frankly. Because there is such a thing as a late bloomer.

DD left Y6 not knowing her number bonds to 10, still working on p-scales. Just over 3 years later, and she is working her socks off trying to drag her grade up to a 'C' for college entry.

Anything is possible. Yet they want to base GCSE predictions on KS2 results.

My DD has also, after just 2 weeks in Y10, been switched to the lower tier of triple science, rather than double science, as the school now think that she can easily get a 'C' in triple, and maybe even a 'B'.

It just frustrates me that the education system wishes to write off children at 11, based on SATS tests. Rather than do what DD's school does, and give these DC's extra help, pulling them up to meet their full potential.

Can't get my head around WHY KS2 results need to figure into GCSE predictions, when GCSE's are exams that are taken 4-5 years later, and some DC's can mature and change immensely during that time.

I don't pretend to understand everything about this but have heard a HT in Leeds talking on Friday ( 2 Nov ) Today show BBC 4 .

He says that the exam boards and OFQAL are at fault .
He gives an example ( which he says not addressed in recent OFQAL report ) of AQA English Foundation where in Jan2012 37% ( I presume of total sitting that exam at that time ) achieved C grade while in June it fell to 10.2%.

He says OFQAL had decided on a finite number to achieve C grades and that they simply didn't monitor the Jan ( or the previous summer ) exam .

I would be interested to hear what people think about this .

There were 2 slots on the programme dealing with this
one at 1.09.15 ( from OFQAL ) tho this seemed to deal with teachers "optimistically" marking
and the second at 2.38.15 .
www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01nl9wl/Today_02_11_2012/

My friend had all her marking adjusted by her head of department. The excuse was that she had adhered too closely to the marking criteria of the examination board. As a result every pupil went up at least 1 grade!! External, independent moderation is a must. The schools cannot moderate themselves in order to fudge their standings in the league tables. It seems crazy that a teacher should be allowed to mark their own students work. How can that ever be unbiased?

Hopefully out of all this someone has the sense to set one examination per GCSE subject, for the whole country, with a fixed, rigid marking scheme - and a reduction in the amount of coursework

But given the new floor targets and the pressure to achieve them surely the expectation should be that grades will rise overall? If not, you are dooming teachers and schools to fail before they've even started teaching!

I understand the comparable outcomes thing but I didn't think criterion referencing had been completely abolished. How has this major change which essentially changes how GCSE works not been more widely publicised? In maths certainly no one has told us that the grade descriptors (e.g. Quadratic formula is an A* skill) no longer apply.

I can't say I'm a big fan of using KS2 results to set the GCSE levels either - there's nothing to say they were set at exactly the same level year on year either after all. But it only applies at a cohort level - individuals can still do better (or worse) than predicted, so a low KS2 result for an individual shouldn't be limiting expectations although I suspect it always has done to some extent.

GCSEs aren't criterion referenced any more nobel - they use comparable outcomes instead which is more akin to the old system.

The problem would also seem to be that reasonable grade boundaries were set that were believed to be fair, then Ofqual leaned on exam boards to change them to artificially lower the pass rate.

Restricting people's success at GCSE based on their achievement at KS2 (which Ofqual demanded) goes completely against what Ofsted says which is that expectations should not be lower simply because KS2 results are lower. Hence the floor targets they've implemented.

GCSEs are supposed to be criterion referenced so if a student produces a better piece of work because his teacher has more experience at teaching it it is bonkers that he should get the same grade as a student who wasn't taught as well so was marked more leniently.

Teachers change syllabuses and pick up new courses all the time, there's no leeway given on their grades just because the course is new to them.

nobel, in science ISAs the grade boundaries for the same work go up as the teachers get better at teaching them. The same would probably be true for English.

For example, in science a student does a practical & answers questions on it. The teacher sees the common errors that come up in the answers and next time focusses teaching prior to the test on those areas of difficulty to ensure students are better prepared and so the next cohort achieves higher and the grade boundaries rise for the same test. As teachers get used to delivering the controlled assessments they will probably get better results (nothing to do with the students abilities), so there is a commonly accepted feeling that grade boundaries at the beginning of a specification/CA probably should be a bit lower. I agree some of the English rises do seem overly dramatic this time, but it's not wrong for some rise to occur.

I do think a return to linear assessments is a good idea in the light of all the issues this has raised - it would make levelling exams far more likely to be equitable. I'd also like to see far fewer controlled assessments (and a correspondingly smaller exam weighting attached to them) as they are open to abuse imo.

I agree with warwick unless the June papers were in fact marked over harshly to compensate for the Jan ones as some people (not Ofqual) believe. If that is the case, they should be marked up to the level that would have been right if all papers had been marked to the same toughness.

The Welsh board situation is bizzare. Clearly if the Welsh want to regulate their own grades they must have their own board - ie: all Welsh schools and no English ones should use their own board.

Having read all the arguments I still find it amazing that given that the January boundaries have been accepted by all as generous (and wrong) that 'in the name of fairness', the correct June grades should be re-graded upwards. If OFQUAL sucumbs to the bullying and political pressure what will we be teaching our children - certainly not a lesson in 'fairness' or 'honesty'. Fairness would be to regrade the January grades down, although I understand that because of the smaller student numbers involved and the time period it would be rather cruel. Leaving things as they are means most students have been been treated the same. Hopefully next year when the exam system is further stiffened and grade inflation reduced still further schools/academies will have taken this into account and raised their own performance rather than teach to the C/D borderline and rely on grade inflation for their league table performance.

But the difficulties of producing an exam of the same difficulty each year which means that grade boundaries change slightly simply don't apply to controlled assessment where exactly the same piece of work was graded differently depending on when it was submitted.

In one major final maths module we also had the ridiculous situation where you needed 56% to get a C despite only 50% of the paper being C grade or below. You can't justify having to do B grade work to get a C however you dress up a 'lower ability' cohort. I suspect Ofqual pressure to reduce the pass rate there too.

Teachers know what skills will be assessed in each exam and how they will be marked. In the past, we've had a fairly accurate idea of roughly what skills are needed for each grade. Now, apparently it's a lottery.

And of course we encourage all children to reach their potential, but for children who are predicted Ds and Es, pushing them to get a C or above is doing that.

In an ideal world Aviewfromthefridge, C's will have the same boundaries (standard levels) each year. However because of the number of exam boards and the complications involved in each exam board producing an exam with the same standard of difficulty for each boundary, this complicated procedure is undertaken each year to make sure each exam is allocated boundaries (e.g C/D) to reflect the difficulty level of the exam in question.

One exam board per subject would help to solve this problem.

I always assumed that teachers taught according to the requirements of the English curriculum. Teachers don't know the exam questions in advance do they? I assume they would be pushing ALL students to their full potential, not gearing their teaching to a particular level/grade. I presume that is why exam boards say they don't like to give out boundaries in advance.

Noblegiraffe, that's exactly it.

If a C is supposed to be the "gold standard" then OFQUAL, or the exam boards, or Gove, or whoever (please, don't let it be Gove), should specify exactly what they expect those children to be able to do.

Then we can teach them to do those things. The ones that can will get a C or above, the ones that can't won't, but at least we will be able to predict results with some accuracy.

Doesn't make any sense to me that grade boundaries should change for the exact same piece of work just because more people have done it.

Either there's a pre- defined standard for a C grade (as there is supposed to be) or not.

Teachers used the marks in January and their own judgement to decide whether students had obtained a suitable grade or whether they should study further to obtain higher grades. If happy the units were banked. The boards as is usual every year, warned schools that the grade boundaries could change once additional data was obtained. Educationalists are also aware that with a new course specification, boundaries are likely to change.

In some of the schools I am aware of, teachers used the January marks/boundaries for their grade predictions for June, and these were 15 - 20 % higher than the actual grades obtained in 2011. Isn't that massive grade inflation. Some of those schools are now crying foul, but surely they should have suspected something was amiss given that boards always tell them that boundaries change. Where is the common sense when they know that the vast majority of their students submit in June.

riddlesgalore It has indeed become political. If you read back down the thread you will see that this debate has highlighted that this years debacle has not just affected English GCSE results at the C/D boundary though as Headteachers have highlighted this will have a long running and profound effect on the futures of a lot of young people. Heads at private schools are also highlighting anomolous results at the very top of the ability range. The Head of Wycombe Abbey has come out publicly to highlight that their results for English Literature are down from 70% A* last year to 30% this year, though in all other subject except English they remain at that high level of achievement. Other Heads are not so brave but I know that there are similar anomolies at a lot of other top schools, and these include IGCSE results. Is anyone seriously arguing this cohort at some of the countrys most selective schools were less able? The Head of Ofqual can wriggle and turn on the hook, the general press evaluation of her performance at the Select Committee was that she obfuscated with gobbledegook in a way that would do credit to Sir Humphrey in Yes Prime Minister, but it is very clear overall that these young people have been treated very unfairly because, whether Gove made it explicit or or Ofqual ambushed themselves out of fear arising from his rhetoric, it was made sure this year's results went down, however the pupils performed in the exams.

I also know from my own uni that the admissions process has been a nightmare this year because there have been some very strange shifts in A level results as well, on top of the increase in fees and the incentive to go fishing for those who do better than AAB. Some very highly respected universities such as SOAS and Southampton are highlighting the deep threats to their institutions as a result. We really don't know where the admissions process is going over the next few years except that we are going to be thrown back on to school references and other contextual data because exam results are suddenly a less reliable means of identifying the best candidates.

Few argue change isn't necessary but political meddling does not make for effective change, that needs a careful process of consultation, planning and implementation with all the professionals involved, teachers, examiners, universities and employers.

My understanding was that the inflated grades in Jan would be nothing to do with the teachers' marking as teachers don't give out the grades, just a numerical mark. If the grade boundary was too low in Jan then that is entirely an exam board balls-up and nothing to do with teachers marking coursework at all.

It has become a nightmare - I can see why Gove will be able to introduce 'O' levels without too many grumbles, the way things are being manipulated!

Dare I question that given the Labour party's stance in England, would the Welsh Labour government stance be politically motivated.

Was political pressure put on the Welsh regulator!!

Depending on the motive behind the decision (fairness or improving year on year results) the English GCSE grades could go up or down.

I won't hold my breath for an honest answer.

The whole thing has now become political I fear.