GCSE summer 2020 thread 6 - Carry on Corona Cohort, Further adventures aboard the Corona Charabanc.

Well its all crap...

DD dyslexic so a spiky profile (to say the least), most likely as her school doesn't get a lot of 9's (or any) she will miss out on the two subjects she has been getting 9's in all year. It is going to be a blow to her confidence because it really mattered to her to get top marks in something, as others marks (like English) aren't going to be anything like the same level. I know it doesn't matter if she ends up with 7's - in two subject - that's a great mark. But she's worked so so so hard and now it feels like it won't be recognised and is out of her control. If she'd had a bad exam she'd be okay, but this just seems unfair.

@FoolsAssassin You’re lucky your DS is chilled - DD is climbing the walls and currently talking of taking the autumn exams to get her 9s. I am not convinced that is a good idea - I think we all need to move on if we possibly can and focus on A-levels, which are ultimately more important. I am exhausted from being the voice of calm reassurance when inside I am as anxious as she is!

I don’t really understand how the CAGs work - DD’s report (issued in February) showed a target grade, a mock grade and a working at grade - in some cases the target grade was 1-2 grades lower than the mock result and the working at grade, which makes no sense to me at all. And in light of the TES article a few days ago, and the fact that DD attends a large school, does it even matter?

@Oblomov20
My DS is just the same, he was just getting going on hard core revision having not worked especially hard for mocks, so he won't do as well as he would have. That's the unfairness from his point of view - he has a perfectly valid approach to exams, but now that they are being measured in a completely different way that nobody was expecting, he is at a disadvantage. But there you go. Hopefully he'll do well enough to do A levels and we can all move on. And I've told him every lesson and piece of work and assessment counts in Y12 and Y13 as this might well happen again
(He is also the requester of the Bakewell tart, which I had completely forgotten about until I saw your post so thanks for the reminder )

DS is away with his Dad for a week, so I’m having a week off worrying 😬
All I am really concerned with is Maths & English as he’s been accepted for his A-Levels regardless of results.
He was predicted 6 & 7’s for Maths & English.

Obviously I will be torturing myself by reading the A-level results thread on Thursday!

My friends daughter had to take Maths in year 10 and got a D (this was a few years ago, she’s 20 now) and then she ended up being made to retake it a further 4 times over the following 3 years and got a D every time!

Yes there is a school locally that puts their lower sets in for Maths and English language in early in y10 in the hope that they get their 4 and then can concentrate on other gcses and of not they have 2 more attempts before 6th Form.

I can never make up my mind if that is a good move or not.

Thank you @Monkey2001 - the uncertainty is getting to me now, as it must be to everyone else. I wish I could see results for the earlier years to see if there is any consistency, but only last year’s are on the website in any detail. The school’s overall performance on the Ofsted site looks pretty stable, but I don’t know if that really means anything or if I can read too much into it. I feel I’ve learnt far too much about secondary school data over recent weeks!

@Monkey2001 thank you for responding. Last year was the first year they did this and obviously it hasn’t happened this year. It’s reassuring that the school might be able to appeal should she not get a 5. I’m trying so hard to be blasé about it all to her and keeping my wobbles private. Roll on the 20th when at least we’ll all know one way or another!

@Janie74 welcome. It is worrying if your DD deserves 9s in three subjects which each only had 1x9 last year. She may well be fine, but try to persuade her that universities treat 8 and 9 equally, so if she does not get 999, it is only her pride which takes the knock, but that would not stop it being unfair at an age where fairness really matters.

Like the sound of a Bakewell tart as a present!

Thanks for the reminder re provisional driving licence. And the NI re child benefit.

Starting to get a bit worried.
Ds1 is bright, but lazy, so probably didn't do that well in mocks, and would have done better in the real exams.

He is the child that comes off worst in all of this.

Hello everyone!

I’ve been following this thread for a while but haven’t been brave enough to comment before! My DD is awaiting GCSE results too and like many of you we have been trying to work out likely rankings etc. She goes to a large state comprehensive with a Y11 cohort of ~350.

DD is in the top set for everything, so hopefully she will be ‘OK’ as regards getting passing grades - but has had her heart set on getting 9s in her three A-level subjects from the outset. She knows where she is likely to be within her own classes, but as it’s such a large cohort the other classes are a completely unknown quantity. I am trying to prepare her for the possibility of lower grades but I know she will be devastated if graded down after achieving 9s and almost full marks in her mocks in those three subjects. The school has slightly above average results but only one 9 in her three chosen subjects last year.

It’s all so frustrating and worrying - at least if they had sat exams we would have some sense of how things had gone. I am dreading the A-level results in case it is a rerun of the SQA and IB debacles.

Anyway, I’ve rambled on long enough - just wanted to say hello and thank you for your collective wisdom which has made me feel less alone with GCSE worries.

@cariadambyth - it is very strange if your DD's school entered Y10s for maths if they were marginal for passing the foundation paper, there are not many DC who benefit from doing maths a year early, and if you might not pass, it seems a strange thing to do.

As people were discussing above, do you know whether the grades of the Y10s are reported the following year, when the people getting those grades are Y11, or whether the Y10 results are included with the Y11 results? If she was only 1 mark off a 5, the teacher will have predicted at least a 5 after another year of study. If she was downgraded the school would have good evidence for an appeal as she has objective evidence of a past result.

neutralintelligence nationally it is indeed a cleverer cohort which is precisely why prior cohort attainment is an added level to the standardisation to allow adjustment for this.

Just checking in.
Will go back and read.

@cariadambyth This is my concern too with my DD in the same subject. She needs a 4 to get onto her college course but when we had a chat about the ranking system she seemed quite confident that although she’s in the bottom set she said she’s one of the middle achieving students ( if that makes sense!)
Roll on the 20th

My child is a 4/5/6 student due to SEN. They work very hard and have really pulled their grades up from the 2/3 grades that FFT predicts. I am worried but have spent hours looking at the school results and hope they will get sufficient to leave current school and start at the new school on their chosen courses. The schools progress 8 is 0.46 and have a history of 73% at 5 or above and 93% 4 and above in Maths and English. I am really hoping these results will benefit her as them as they have worked their arse off and predicted grades do not reflect performance throughout year 10 and in her mocks. They seem quite blase whilst I’m not sleeping since these stories have been published!

Hello, I have been avidly reading this thread for months but have never been brave enough to comment. My dd is probably going to be fine in all subjects except maths! I know how knowledgable so many of you are and am wondering if you might be able to help, albeit without the aid of a crystal ball. She is in bottom set maths and last year the whole class (10) sat the foundation paper. Some of those who achieved a 5 dropped it, she got a 4 and was one mark off a 5 so has carried on in a class of 6 for year 11. Obviously she’ll rightly be one of the bottom in the ranking list but I was wondering if any account will have been taken of her last year’s mark? I have visions now of her getting a 3 as she’ll be so far down and historically there have been a few 3s each year. I’m so sorry for such a rambling and confusing message. Thanks if you’ve got this far!

@Monkey2001 Thanks for the tips. I was looking with a friend whose DD goes to a different school to mine. We were trying to find info about her school’s previous grades but couldn’t find anything new. The letters to parents section had a letter about drugs and knife crime but nothing about results other than a sentence to say they were the best results ever. The local paper did print that some people got 9s last year but the school comparison site says only 20% people got 9-5 grades in Maths and English. My friends DD was hoping to get all 6-8 grades and a couple of 9s. She needs it to change to a better school.

Ah, ok, I understand now, thanks, MadameMinimes.
That explains why DD’s subject results didn’t appear correct - they weren’t actually for her cohort.

Off topic a bit but anyone got recommendations for a starter car? Not on finance Dh would dissaprove

If the subject is only sat in year 10 then the published results will normally be one year behind. So the results published for 2019 would actually have been sat in 2018 and the results from 2019 won’t show up in the stats until 2020. The published results for each year are for the year 11 cohort, whether they sat the exams in that year or earlier. It’s the same for year 12s. We count any home language A Levels or EPQ results in our stats in year 13, even if they sat them in year 12.

@SeasonFinale Thanks for the info.
I am trying to remember how positive DS and I felt waiting for his mock results and hoping that all will turn out OK.
I hate the politics going on in the background. Since the pupils didn't actually sit the exams and, in some cases, didn't even have a chance to finish the course, exam boards and maybe Ofqual won't let this be a record-beating year out of fear of a backlash. But at my DS school, this current year 11 were known to be better than the current year 12 overall and the school were expecting very good results. So the pupils and school might have that taken away from them, which is sad all round. As I understand it, statistically, it will hard for this year 11 to beat last year's results because of the moderation will downgrade based on last year's results to some extent (even if y6 SATs are taken into account). I suspect that other schools also identified this current year 11 as a particularly good year.

Fools, I agree.
Monkey, it’s a subject that’s only sat in year 10, so the results they put out had to be incorrect.

We have a friend who is governor at the school and when she was boasting about the results last year, I did actually question her about the accuracy; she couldn’t explain it and tried to dismiss my concerns with a wave of her hand.

I later asked DD’s science teachers how combined science grades are calculated, but no one could say. I wonder how on Earth tank order works across 3 sciences combined??