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

... and I really hope there aren't any examples of 5s moving down to 3s. It would be very hard to explain how "teacher thinks pupil is comfortably passing" becomes "actually pupil has failed". Particularly if it's in maths or English where pass/fail is a huge deal. A 9 (say) moving down to a 7 would be much less important (I absolutely recognise it would be a big disappointment to the individual student but less likely to impact their future in such a tangible way).

You might end up with a situation where Ofqual's model thinks you have awarded too many 4+. In this case potentially every child with a 4 and the bottom ranking 5s will move down. What couldn't happen would be one of the 5s moving down to a 3, without every single one of the 4s also moving down.

Not necessarily Piggy. Let’s say you awarded 7 9s, 3 8s and 5 7s. They might agree with you that there should be 15 at grade 7+ but think that it should be 3 9s, 3 8s and 9 7s. Your top 3 9s would be unchanged and so would all of your 7s. The next 3 9s would all go down by one grade and so would all of the 8s. Your lowest ranked 9 would go down by 2 grades.

If a child's assessment changes by two grades, then my understanding is others will too, which is what is odd. They have always said they won't alter the rank order.

link : www.gov.uk/government/news/the-fairest-possible-way-to-recognise-students-achievements-this-year-by-roger-taylor-chair

Just read article by Ofqual Chair (link below) which says:

"We expect the vast majority of the grades awarded to be within one grade of the centre assessment grades submitted by teachers. "

Does anyone know if we are able to find out assessment grades submitted by teachers? Can schools day no?

Any if the grades are awarded more than one grade out, is that grounds to appeal if the school can prove this years of student was expect the outperform previous years?

Thank you all. I know I won't sleep a wink on 19th. I am really crossing my fingers for all !!

whoamItojudge - each school decides what info it will use to decide the grades. If your school doesn't mark homework they won't use it.

Agree @EwwSprouts, the teachers have no choice but to use the evidence available. It's just a shame that the last minute crammers will be disadvantaged when they haven't done anything wrong

@practicallyperfectwithprosecco sending your DD lots of good wishes, it sounds very like a very tough time for her. One of our neighbours’ girls got a D in maths GCSE every time she took it until year 13, but she did finally get it and is now at an arts university where she’s thriving. It’s frustrating but hundreds of pupils every year resit to get the 4/C grade, so it will be nothing to be ashamed of if she does miss the grades she wants - especially as this year is so crazy!

maybe they can assume everyone would do a bit better in the real thing, but I don't think they can decide who would have worked harder in April and May and inflate their grades relative to those of other students This is where the last minute crammers have been stuffed by the system. They didn't know that what they thought they were aiming for would be removed. Parents evening in Feb all his teachers said they expected DS to go up a grade if he got his head down with revision as they knew, and he admitted, he'd been coasting and didn't revise for mocks. School have been quite clear in communications over CAG & rankings the only objectively fair way was to totally go on mocks/tests/working at level. They have not factored in any 'gut feel' over whether a pupil would 'pull it out of the bag or not'. As a parent I accept that is transparent & fair.

@practicallyperfectwithprosecco
That is really tough on your DD..
I'm sure the teachers would have given her 4s and they have the evidence of her improvement so far to back it up. Just cling on to these thoughts for the next 10 days - overall this year's results will be slightly up on last year's. And most grades will not be adjusted down. Everything crossed now that she gets what she needs 🤞

@practicallyperfectwithprosecco It is such a worry - keeping everything crossed for all our DC to get what they need to move on. The mental health impact from all this has been horrendous

DD has said that in some lessons homework was handed in but it was never marked, it just stayed in their folders until the end of term. Now she's annoyed that if homework is to be taken into account then this might look as though they haven't done any.
Or is she ( and me) reading too much into this particular aspect of it?

Another parent of very stressed child here

DD has SEN and suffers from really bad anxiety she struggles with panicking in exams.

Bottom set Maths and Science and was on foundation papers for both.

She was scoring U / low 1s for both subjects in year 10 - she panicked in exams and forgot everything.

School were great she was moved into a class with about 5 other children in for maths and less than 10 for science. She was attending booster sessions before and after school and given personalised revision plans so she knew exactly what to revise and when.

They changed how she accessed exams from the large hall to a small group with rest break allowed if she started to panic.

She did her last set of mocks in February and went from 1c in maths to a 3c and 1aa in science to 3ab.

Both her teachers then changed her predicted grades from a 3 to a 4 as they believed with the progress she was now making she would get there.

The worry is now that the predicted grades will be ignored and she will be assessed on the previous results.

She only managed 4s in everything else so potentially she could fail everything when we know she would have done enough to get onto her course.

She has worked so hard to pass this year. She was never going to be top set / 9s across the board - not every child is like that. No matter how many times we tell her we are proud of her whatever, no matter how many emails her tutors are sending her over summer saying the same it still doesn't stop all the tears at the moment and her saying she is stupid and a failure.

Do we know whether the unused 2020 papers will be used for the Autumn exams? DD’s English teacher ran a prediction competition on the poems that would came up, and she wants to know if she won!

@singingstones our DD didn't apply herself properly to mocks and then got stressed. I told her not to worry as mocks are just a practice for the real event(!) and it would give her a kick up the bum for the 'real' exams. Little did I know this would come back and haunt me! I really believe if she knew the mock exams would count in any way towards final grades then she would have applied herself at the time as she is very conscientious and would have wanted to do well. Her mocks were sat in early November and her school didn't do any further mocks. When schools closed due to
lockdown she hadn't finished the syllabus for quite a few subjects so when she took the mocks it would have also been the case. In her maths mock she didn't do that well but some children got 100% and it came to light that they sat last years GCSE and a lot of her year had the paper and answers. Following the chat today of how different schools did mocks at different times, I know of children in other schools and other friends started their GCSEs in year 9, completed in year 10 & were bored in year 11 as they were just completing past papers. It will be interesting to see how all their GCSE results compare.

No because it every school works in the same way. Some don't even mark homework. Some don't do end of topics tests. So those who have more marked pieces of work will definitely find it easier to assess their students than those that don't. Some set past papers as mocks, some set their own harder exams, some set past papers but put the grade boundaries higher. Some schools already had NEAs in and if they did could use these as part of thw material to calculate the grade but some didn't. There was not set criteria because each school works differently.

@SeasonFinale
I think the point is that someone who didn't work hard for mocks but was turning up the heat later would be disadvantaged, even though that is a perfectly acceptable approach in a normal year. Some students decide that as mock results don't affect anything, why not chill this term and go for it nearer the time. It doesn't necessarily have any bearing on whether they would have done better or worse than their more consistent classmates in the exams. But this year those students have not provided their teachers with that crucial evidence and teachers have to use the data available - maybe they can assume everyone would do a bit better in the real thing, but I don't think they can decide who would have worked harder in April and May and inflate their grades relative to those of other students. (But ready to be corrected by the teachers on here! Actually did every school use the same data in the same way?)

@SeasonFinale I saw that Ofqual had put out a statement in response, but I don’t know that it specifically refuted the general disregard for CAGs - but then I have read so much stuff over the past couple of weeks that I may be getting muddled. I would be happy to know that it had been fully refuted!

You do realise that false TES "news" article has been refuted?

Also to all those saying kids were about to settle down to revision and hard core work that is quite usual for all of them. Mist don't start revising until Easter hols so after Lockdown. Teachers know that and will factor it in.

@Wheresthebeach It has been so poorly handled. I am not convinced that teachers have over-estimated grades at all - the ‘grade inflation’ could just as easily have arisen because teachers have had to assess on the basis that each student would revise and turn up for the exam, that they would be in full health, that no unexpected family emergency would affect them, that they wouldn’t choose to answer the wrong questions or run out of time etc. That alone would surely account for the apparent increase in scores. It is so offensive to teachers to ignore their professional standards and integrity.

And don’t get me started on the lack of individual appeals! Surely someone somewhere with enough money to do so will mount a legal challenge to that.

@Janie74 - I can't imagine why they've left it so long since they decided to ignore teacher predictions. It's a huge slap in the face to teachers - I get that the there would be downgrades esp around the 4 mark. Teachers are human and if they thought there was a chance on a good day for the pupil to pass then of course they'd give them the benefit of the doubt. But this means the kids work is dismissed, so the whole year has grades based not on their work, but the school. It's bonkers, and wrong.

Also the lack of warning, waiting til the last minute to announce what they are doing is just so awful and cruel. DD was quite relaxed, now not so much. Do they not care one jot about the impact of their decisions?

@Wheresthebeach - I agree! At least if they’d had a bad exam paper they would have some sense of how it had gone, and time to accept that it just hadn’t been their day. Plus they’ve had so much time since school closed to dwell on things (as have we...!) - I wish they’d had their results earlier as originally suggested.

@FoolsAssassin I hope you’re right re: the autumn exams - it could well be that she needs something concrete to hold on to just now. She is a bit of a control freak with studying so that would make sense.

As for the target grades, I suppose they could be a throwback to KS2 - I confess I can’t remember how she did with her SATS as it seems such a long time ago! Hopefully the stress over GCSEs will be an equally distant memory one day!