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

Word on the street is there is a particular 'type' of school that over inflated results. Ofqual won't say what that is but I think it will come out in some sort of enquiry somewhere down the line.

Yes, AHs are final year of school but are 'optional'. They would be year 13 age (actually a little younger because of when Scottish kids start school).

That's why the girl who failed her French isn't as devastated as you would expect because she already had an unconditional uni offer based on her Highers. She was clearly a very able girl though! As she got an A for AH maths this year and an A for Higher Spanish,

She herself picked up on the issue of rank ordering students for MFL subjects when native speakers take all the top spots. This is something that was meant to be being adjusted this year in French and German in England, so made CAGs for those subjects really complicated.

@BlueMarigold it certainly feels safer to be at a school with consistently high results, but it is likely that those students would have got good grades anyway. There is a high confidence level in the accuracy of a statistical approach in schools with consistent results, but much harder to get it right in schools with a wider spread and variable results.

Scottish students should be happy with the AH results, which is the only one I have looked at. As well as the 20% comparative increase in A grades, there was an 11% increase in Bs and the "fail" rate went from 12.2% last year to 5.5%, so less than half as many. They are able to appeal if their grades were downgraded and their school can prove they should have got a higher grade.

Piggy are AH students the age of our Y13s? I hear that a lot of Scottish university students are 17, but is that because they left after Highers?

If high achievers at a low performing school might be penalised, there will be low performing children in high achieving schools that do better than expected. We have some grammar schools nearby and they have 99% of children achieving 5-9 grades every year. If you happen to be at one of these schools, you know you will probably pass everything now even though you might not have done if you had sat the exam.

The problem with the CAG/standardisation model is that it sounds reasonable at a national level, but clearly will throw up anomalies at an individual level. I think that's the main flaw with it really. Teachers had no way to distinguish between "barring absolute disaster this child will get a 5 every time" and "on a good day, if they'd revised thoroughly, this child might get a 5" - other than by using the ranking system, which instantly makes an individual dependent on the school cohort they are in and a statistical model. For my first example it would be unfair for the child not to get a 5, but in the second we might say it was ok to give the child a 4 if the standardisation ruled thus. But the model used might well throw up the opposite result.

I really don't envy the teachers having to do this process one bit. One would know that in for example a low set maths class a number would fail but to have to be the person who has to say, yes, those are the bottom four must be awful

I suppose I should have phrased that 'some students failed who had not been on track to fail'.

Of course , some will fail every year : we actually put some Us for GCSE and one for A Level in our CAGs. You would expect that person to be on the alert though : non submission of NEAs, dreadful attendance, previous failed exams...

Paddington the dates are somewhere in an Ofqual press release : there are quite a few weeks for GCSE : I think end Sept. I'll see if I can find it.

They aren't like for like comparisons ,a s a caveat because not all students do advanced highers. You can leave school and enter university with highers (the year before) or you can stay on and gather more highers, so AHs are hard and also done by the 'elite' as it were. That obviously doesn't remove your point about there being more here, just about the England to Scotland equivalent.

@piggywaspushed "What shocked me is that some students were failed"

But on that basis this year everyone would pass. I totally see the anguish at an individual level, and the great fears of our performers at weak schools but taking the cohort as a whole, surely one can't have 100% rates?

As it is the Scottish grade inflation has already been vast compared to the 2% proposed in England and that is before appeals - I suspect the overage could easily double. So where does that leave children from other years or countries competing against Scottish students?

I don't think the reporting helps - tones of shock and outrage that CAGs have been reduced when the Astar CAG rate is not far off double the recent average - surely they have to be adjusted ?

Having said which I don't know what the answer is to make it fair on an individual basis. The whole thing is such a mess

The Scottish results are odd. In general they are up massively on last year. I was shocked to see that for Advanced Highers 38.4% of candidates got an A, which gets the same UCAS points as an A* at A level, compared to 31.8% in 2019. That is a relative increase of almost 21% in the top grades. Grades were up significantly across the board. Of course that does not mean that everybody got grades at least as good as those they would have got in exams.

I am sorry if it sounds unsympathetic to Scottish students, but 66% got A/B at Advanced Higher (2019 = 57%, so increased by 16%) - I don't see OFQUAL allowing 66% of students to get A/A* at A level!

Data from www.sqa.org.uk/sqa/64717.html

Had a quick look at Scottish thread and wish I hadn’t.
Does anyone know if they do decide to take the autumn exams what date the school need to enter them by? Hopefully not needed but just in case.

Piggy That poor girl. Nothing can prepare you for a fail when you got a C in the mock and haven't sat a final exam.

Wow I haven’t seen any of that regarding the Scottish results. It’s quite scary.

DS has decided this week that he wants to change all of his A level choices
I said at the application stage that I wasn’t sure two of subject choices were the right choice for him but he insisted and I felt it had to be his decision and his teachers were supportive of his choices so I didn’t say any more.
Now he’s changing his mind. I don’t know if it’s cold feet now results day is looming but we’ve sent the email to the 6th form to ask if he can change. They did say courses can be changed at enrolment so should be ok, I just hope he’s making the right decision

And breathe! There's just too much information out there - we need a distraction!

@sandybayley - That makes sense. I'll try to control my breathing now..

But I'm not familiar with the Scottish system so don't know if Scottish schools have a formalised prelim system compared to English schools DIY approach.

@Wheresthebeach - schools have different approaches to mocks. Some like DD's approach them in a way that gives 'reall' results - so I'm expecting her actual grades to be almost the same. DS1's school marks really hard and boys typically go up 1 or 2 grades. If a school ran mocks that were easy (maybe to encourage?) then final grades could certainly go down.

Every school I've come across has a different approach even down to timing. DD sat hers in October and DS sat his in January.

What shocked me is that some students were failed. There was a girl on the news who had got a C for a prelim (mock) . This will be Highers or Advanced Highers and her 'result' was a 'no result' (the lowest grade available is D). How can a system statistically build in failure like that for an exam the girl didn't even sit? That seems very harsh. Hopefully that will be rare in our English system.

I’ve been ‘watching’ the Scottish results thread & my heart goes out to some on there.

It makes me very nervous & while DS has a confirmed place at 6th form to do his a-levels regardless of his results, he has worked consistently hard over the last 2 years & I’d be disappointed for him if his results didn’t reflect that!

I don't understand how kids can be given grades that are lower than their mocks? Can anyone explain?

@FoolsAssassin I know how you feel. I guess the advice they are giving is they can sit again if they want to but I am personally not happy with that either! DD has not done any GCSE work since lockdown started and has been focused on her transition work. When school starts, she will be busy learning A-Level stuff and won’t want to be trying again for GCSES on the side.

If she wanted to sit again then it would have a detrimental effect on her A-Level learning.

We have said to DD only resit Maths and English if necessary and not worry about the other subjects unless it’s one of her A-levels in which case we would have bigger problems as she’d not be allowed to go to 6th form anyway.

@FoolsAssassin sorry to hear you're worried. Did anyone achieve 8s and 9s in Science at your son's school last year?

I don't think they could win really, as no one is going to accept that a result lower than their mock is right - whereas if it happened with an exam, there would be no arguing. And presumably it does happen every year.

I suppose teachers have put the highest grade they'd hope their pupils would attain on a good day - but that's bound to result in a skewed range of grades overall, as in an exam situation, loads of pupils don't achieve the highest grade they're capable of, for a whole host of reasons. The difficulty is that its an algorithm deciding that, rather than the performance of the pupil on the day.