GCSE and A-level guidance has been issued

AFAIK there is some way to check how many students got 9s across the board as these numbers were released last year. I don't know if exam boards will do this to moderate for bad days etc. This feels unfair.

Your child should have a reasonable idea of what they were excepting to get. The DfE have been explicit in that grades teachers input should NOT be shared.

Yes auto, keep studying. Most schools will send you something if you ask. Are you expecting your child to continue with all subjects or just a few? If argue all subjects is futile. Focus on the core that may be barriers to entry later on. So make sure they will have 4+ in English and Maths. The rest are largely irrelevant post A Level. (If they are barely passing GCSEs they shouldn't be doing A levels).

in reality most of these won't get straight 9's because there is a high chance that they will have at least oe bad day - they might misinterpret a question, accidently miss a question out, or just have a brain-freeze.
Teachers can’t work out who amongst their high achieving hard workers would have had a random bad day for that exam. But I wonder if they will try to normalise a bit with discussion between subjects - EG if ten pupils get grade-9’s in their subject usually and they have fourteen top contenders, the bottom seven of whom are hard to rank, similar subjects with the same issues might ensure those seven 9/8 boundary pupils are listed in a different order so that all of them get one or two 9’s?

more students with straight 9's

You’re assuming that data will be made available.

Not really fair some kids are getting an indication re results

Your kid should have some idea of what result they are going to get.

Teachers don’t know what results a kid will get. What they send off and what the kids get are not the same thing.

A teacher should obviously not be letting kids see the spreadsheet.

Students should not be getting an indication, and the (single) example of a hearsay indication is poor professionalism on the part of the teacher.

@noblegiraffe that's what I thought. But it will inevitably lead to more students with straight 9's, and that will cause some people to (unfairly) cry foul.

Not really fair some kids are getting an indication re results, shouldn’t we all be getting that so we can plan accordingly.

Everything seems so variable.

Maybe. But then again, PRUs are pretty heterogeneous, depending in local commissioning arrangements.

will they randomly demote a few 9s to 8s to factor in the "bad day" effect?

No.

Anything based on a small sample will be dodgy. Maybe they’ll group PRU data as a check?

I teach in a PRU and also have limited data, because most of our year 11s have joined us since September. Also our cohorts are small (17 last year, 14 this year) and highly variable, so any moderation based on previous results is going to be iffy.

I agree with previous posters that this guidance is a good balance, but am I right in thinking they won't be normalising results for individual students? So, for example, take very bright students who are more than capable of getting a 9 in any one of their subjects ... in reality most of these won't get straight 9's because there is a high chance that they will have at least oe bad day - they might misinterpret a question, accidently miss a question out, or just have a brain-freeze. It's relatively rare to get 9's across the board, so if the exam boards have more students than last year who all have straight-9s, all of which are justified at subject level, will they randomly demote a few 9s to 8s to factor in the "bad day" effect? I assume not!

And of course the same applies to other grades too ... it's just that the straight-9 example is the starkest.

DS’s friend’s mum teaches them maths. He told DS he saw her predicted grades and he’s got a 9S (secure). That’s what he’s expecting so do hope it’s true. He shouldn’t be really looking. I guess they are marking them grade plus secure, emerging or developing which will help rank

Oh come on parents haven’t got a clue what goes on when assessing, what will be used or how and rightly so.

And re keep studying- what everything and A level subjects on top ? It’s not a small task. We’re now getting nothing from school, we’re literally on our own.As I said the data we have tells us very little. We’ve had nothing other than mock results. We’re not privy to all their assessments, homework grades, other measures and how they’re used, which are given more weighting etc.

A bit of empathy wouldn’t go amiss.

Wonder how on earth appeals will pan out. Will parents be appealing to schools who gave the grade or exam boards?

I teach GCSE resits in a FE college. 163 students a week. The course is a condensed 1 year programme so we have a lot less data than schools. It's a real struggle and I've lost so much sleep. I promise to be as fair as I possibly can but it is a very difficult situation. Lots of my students didn't complete all 3 mocks in Feb.

@aut0replenish Not many teachers teach swathes of year 11. Even teachers with 2 classes in our school are on about 60. Plenty of time to get to know most of them pretty well.

What do you think is going on behind the scenes?!
No one can make a sensible plan right now. If your child is borderline then encourage them to keep working. Therefore resits will not be such a shock. If you aren't bothered about the result then stop working.

Of course teacher assessment has subconscious bias. Everything with human "choice" does. Exam marking isn't the most accurate thing in the world either unless in Maths or sciences.

What alternative solution do you suggest?

Isn’t your pp data scrutinised more thoroughly for progress.?Doesn’t that protect against bias?

It is certainly something that teachers should bear in mind when doing their predictions and rankings. It’s unfortunate that the DfE didn’t make explicit reference to this in their guidance and I had hoped that their statistical calculations would have some protective effect but they have stated that they will not change teacher rankings.

I’m guessing pp kids will also be more likely to be struggling with external and thus MH issues too. I just hope the system properly allows for that.

When it comes to deciding how to deal with mock data, contrary to people banging on about how the mocks were ages ago and how kids don’t treat them like the real exam (as if parents know that and teachers don’t).

But it would be wrong to say that there are no issues with teacher assessment.

Unfortunately there are no perfect solutions to this problem.

Isn’t your pp data scrutinised more thoroughly for progress.?Doesn’t that protect against bias?

But you said teacher professional judgement should be trusted.

Teacher assessment (like everything involving humans) is subjective and prone to unconscious bias.

Why ethnic minorities? I can see why PP kids could potentially be but if you’re saying everything will be considered then surely it will work in this area too.

So will kids in selective schools be disadvantaged in this process

The kids most likely to be disadvantaged in this process are PP and FSM kids and kids from ethnic minorities.