GCSE’s summer 2020 thread 5 - And then there were none..

Well. I. Never.

Can't believe Head has written to all the children to tell them to stop working.

Very wierd.

I think it'll be a combination. I think data guys might indicate how many of each grade we should typically award as a guideline and intervene if our distribution looks wildly wrong.

Is there a risk at all that teachers' predictions/knowledge of individual students will be secondary to data management?
In other words, that students grades will be decided ultimately by desktop "computer says" number crunching?

We have had a similar email @PaddingtonPaddington. Our school have stipulated that they will not be asking for any further evidence to support grade judgements, so we can breathe easy on that one at least.

I do think that the advice that has come out today seems about as fair and sensible as it can be under the circumstances.

Goodness this thread moves fast. Just catching up and also had an email from the school this afternoon confirming things I was worrying about:

1. There is no need for students to complete coursework and they will take into consideration the quality of what was done so far even if incomplete.
2. After Easter break bridging work will be provided eg for those continuing to A levels some prep work.
3. If they want to take the exam in the Autumn they should continue regular revision.

Need to digest it all...

On the plus side, many students will be very well prepped for A Level with all this bridging work being thrown their way to keep them busy!!

It looks to me like once the guidance has been provided to schools, the exam boards are taking a purely statistical approach. The means they will decide based on prior attainment of the cohorts and schools what grade distribution the school should get and then the school is responsible for ranking their students so that the expected results get distributed amongst the actual students.

It does not appear that the exam boards are actually going to look at any work at all. This means that however the schools choose to do their rankings, the schools are not competing with each other, it is just the students within the school competing for the grades nominally allocated to that school. Presumably the schools will have to justify why a particular subject cannot be approached in that way - for example DS's school did not have a proper computer science teacher until the beginning of last year, so last years cohort were significantly better than the previous year and they will hopefully accept that the current cohort would have continued that trajectory.

For GCSEs it is not a massive deal, apart from at the 4/5/6 level for Maths and English, this years results will be so odd that I don't think we can expect universities to differentiate between adjacent grades - so 8/9 will be similar, 7/8 will be similar. If GCSE students have to sit in the Autumn it is really not such a big deal and very good for them if they best grade is the one which counts.

More of a big deal for A levels. What will teachers do when they have people with offers which they will miss if they don't get the right grades and they don't think they deserve those grades?

Am wondering whether DS's school will send us an email on this today. I imagine if not then we'll probably get one next week.

@Wheresthebeach this would have been our schools first GCSE cohort as it’s a new school that only opened in 2015 with year 7.
we have no previous results to look at so there must be another way of doing this, like you say, previous testing etc

Last year was a disaster in parts for Dd she has been so much better since November though. Oh well onto College and make the best of that.

School have said to keep revising subjects that will be needed for A levels and Core incase of resit...seems like sound sensible advice.

The school did a live assembly for Y11 leavers ...I cried. They were so encouraging 'you will always be our students' lots of pride in them etc. No sixth form so next opportunity to get together is results day ....whenever that is.

The students have been reminded they can take this opportunity to really discover themselves and how their learning journey will progress. Sensibility all round it seems!

The bit that still worries me is when a year was expected to do better than any previous year group...presume a combo of KS2 and Mydis testing would be used to support increased performance?

DS says he is glad that he put in more effort in year 11 rather than leaving it all until Easter. He's got his own idea of how he thinks he will do. There's only one subject where I think he would do an exam if he didn't get the grade he's hoping for - he would really like a 9 in Music and I think he would have got one.

I've explained it to DS. I think he will be disadvantaged by the rankings as he's one of those who only stepped it up a gear after mocks. So best hope is school as a whole produce fair and realistic grades so gradings do not come into play. On the upside he should get reasonable passes in everything. Bottom line told him it's nothing he can influence now so just forget it as best as can and use it as a life lesson for 6th form.

Shimy School have been told not to disadvantage students who haven’t handed in work after schools closed. Schools have also been told to be very suspicious of work handed in after schools closed that is of a different quality to that done before.

Therefore schools will be making their judgements based on work completed before schools closed. No one will be raising grades based on work done at home to a higher standard because we have been told not to. And the evidence needs to be retained so any school would be mindful of this.

It’s not worth it.

@noblegiraffe @FlyingPandasI don’t think the exam boards will disadvantage them. My thoughts are, giving out more assessments after 20/3 allows schools a wider range of evidence to choose from. That’s where the unfairness comes into it.

I hope school move to pre A level content, and starting research on EPQ's after Easter break. They have lots of info and dragging it out isn't going to help. I know some kids were hoping to improve their marks, but I presume coursework just before shut down would reflect an increase in grades, although there was a another 6 weeks work to do.

I had a conversation with DD about the system - took her a while to grasp the idea behind the ranking but I think she got it. She's in a massive school so not at all sure how they'll manage the rankings in the core subjects but hopefully the school will submit realistic grades and it won't actually matter.

She says will definitely sit English Lang exam if she gets a 5 since it seems like it's going to be a "free hit".

But they can ask for work up till May 29th minimum? That's a long time! I really hope there is no point submitting work, but as with some of your schools posters here have said, ours have not diverted from the work is expected, will count, tasks could be set line.
I expect an email reiterating that regardless of the guidance. It's how they roll.

There are a raft of reasons for children not being able to complete work / assessments after schools have closed, including socio-economic ones & some kids just not having access to online learning. It would disadvantage too many.

I know DS school (State high school) have tested / assessed them continually for months - i am very confident they have all the info they will need.

But @Shimy - haven’t Ofqual also specifically said that students will not be disadvantaged if they cannot complete any work set after the schools closure date?

So in theory a teacher could set an assessment and a student could just send a message to them, along the lines of ‘I’m really sorry, I can’t complete that online assessment because I feel really ill. I have a high temperature and am currently self isolating in case it is COVID19” and bingo. Get out clause for the student and the teacher would have no option but to accept it.

No they won’t.

The guidelines specifically state that no student should be disadvantaged by having not completed work since the school closed.

Therefore there is no point in taking into account work set since school closed. Schools should already have enough evidence to form their judgements and setting new work would just be a waste of everyone’s time.

The schools who had stopped all work since the 20/3, with the new guidelines, will now want to take advantage of this and start sending out work to maximise the chances of their students and schools like ds’s who’ve been sending out work daily already will continue to do so. So it will just drag on until they are asked to submit their student grades. Anything less will be unfair🤷🏾‍♀️.