Teachers - do you know your students results?

Good shocks I hope?

Were everyone’s roughly what was expected?

We’ve had some shocks!

Thank you, @itsgettingweird.
I hope he gets what he's capable of and that it lets him do the next thing he wants to do. In the end, GCSEs are really just there to facilitate next steps.

It works the other way round too. One of the kindest, most hard working students I have ever taught was given a 3. I desperately wanted to push it to 4 but couldn’t.

You could be my ds English teacher 🤣 I feel sorry for that guy! He was desperate for my ds to pass and had the specialist asd teacher involved and liasing with his 1:1 and everything.

He still never achieved more than a 3 in an assessment by the March of lockdown.

[quote MrsHamlet]@itsgettingweird your job as a parent is to fight his corner. Mine is to find his potential and nurture it.
The handwriting thing is bollocks.[/quote]
Well yeah!

Ds has an ehcp, is autistic and has a generic condition that causes muscular weakness similar to MND.

His brain still works! He has a scribe for exams!

Sadly you just get the odd teacher who doesn't get it .

But luckily for that odd one there's hundreds more who care so so much and nurture what they know they have.

Ds went through hell at local academy and the move was a fight. But it was made it worth it by the teachers who believed in him, saw the potential within and helped him learn to manage the environment and be able to learn.

They saw past the kid who tried to put his head through a glass window, threw tables and chairs and his backpack, told teachers to F off and he wasn't staying in their lessons.

They saw the kid behind the (quite appealing I admit! Behaviour)

Ds hadn't been like this before but had had a knife pulled on him in previous school and went from passive withdrawn almost mute anxious autistic to petrified fight mode autistic.

He couldn't learn because he could barely relax in a classroom.

I think teachers are facing the most unnecessary and most disrespectful bashing right now and I think you all need to know that most parents recognise what you do, are grateful for what you do and know you do it because you genuinely do care.

And that whatever happens with results we know that you wouldn't have chosen this way either and will have done your absolute best for every student.

But it isn't like you train for pandemic situations and how to work through them!

I’m just so curious to know - but have you yourself given any students a higher grade than what you think they’d actually deserve because you get on well with them and then have you given any students a Lower grade because you don’t get on well with them?

No.
It would serve absolutely no purpose at all to do this.

One of my most difficult student’s submitted grade was an 8. Despite the fact that he was more often than not very rude & disrespectful towards other members of the class.
Despite this, he was a smart lad. The grade he was given reflects that.

It works the other way round too. One of the kindest, most hard working students I have ever taught was given a 3. I desperately wanted to push it to 4 but couldn’t.

You give the grade based on evidence alone.

Life isn’t fair.

I am wondering if there are any differences between boys and girls.
From what I understand, girls typically (not all) consistently work hard throughout the year, whereas boys are more likely to put all into the final exam.
I wonder whether this would be more likely to disadvantage boys.
Obviously, without the exam, no system is going to be fair.
Ultimately, as long as A level students get the results required to study their chosen subject at hopefully,the right university, then this is what really matters.
A lot of students may defer until the following year, on the basis that due to the pandemic, the universities are providing more on line content, and are imposing rules about socialising, so there are likely to be places available for those that want to go

Until next week when the government have decided what a ‘valid’ mock is, nobody can say.

They could decide that a mock that’s a past paper which was widely available to students online isn’t valid, they could deem that it wasn’t done in exam conditions or the marking grade boundaries weren’t standardised.

Some schools didn’t do mocks at all-it’s not a level playing field.

@Madhairday they don't know. No one knows.
He will get a grade. That grade will be the moderated CAG.
If he doesn't like it, his school can appeal on his behalf for his verified mock grade. We don't know what a "verified mock" is so don't ask. Don't ask the school or the board or Ofqual either because Gav invented it and didn't tell anyone. Your guess is as good as ours.
I know that's unhelpful, but it's where we are. Let's see what tomorrow brings

I'm a bit confused by this government turnaround. Are they saying they are now more likely to use mock grades only? Because if so my DS is shafted. He did his mocks right back in September and none of them did very well due to not enough work over the summer. Since then he'd started to pull it out of the bag and get the 8s and 9s he was due to get.

Worried.

@itsgettingweird your job as a parent is to fight his corner. Mine is to find his potential and nurture it.
The handwriting thing is bollocks.

Interesting point. My ds did get some stick for being a swot for pulling great grades out at mocks.

Sad really.

When DS1 did GCSEs I had constant phone calls from teachers telling me he would fail English, maths and many other subjects right up to Easter break. He ended up with 8 and 9s across the board. We knew he was bright and able as did he, but no teachers believed in him. I think some especially very bright boys coast along and just pull it out of the bag on the day. They won’t do well tomorrow.

That’s good to know, thanks HipTightOnions.

[quote MrsHamlet]@itsgettingweird I teach students like your son. When I did the CAGs I cared not a jot for y7-9; it was all about what I knew of him and I would have fought for him to get what I believed he would get if he sat the exam.[/quote]
Thanks that's reassuring. And thankyou for realising I wasn't judging or having a dig but genuinely wondered.

His year 9 teacher for the subject told him he would never pass it due to his poor social skills and illegible handwriting so to get the third highest mock result in the year group (highest in his half) was a massive thing. He did work for it though!

And thankyou for realising I wasn't trying to have a dig but genuinely wondered what a teacher would do if faced with this decision.
So the fact that by the end ds was faring better than 'susan' consistently may mean his ranking was higher than I'd they judged over 4 years (4 because ds started yr 8)

I can see that a teacher might reasonably feel they didn’t have enough long-term evidence to rate her alongside/higher than someone who had had a steadier profile.

If it helps, we very consciously used only recent evidence - children don’t develop in straight lines!

itsgettingweird, I can relate to what you’re asking and why.
DD also has ALN and only really started to excel over the last 12/18 months at school.
Her year 10 results were good, her mocks in some subjects were amazing and her teachers were thrilled; everything had started coming together at just the right time and she would have carried on improving right until June.
I can see that a teacher might reasonably feel they didn’t have enough long-term evidence to rate her alongside/higher than someone who had had a steadier profile.

@itsgettingweird I teach students like your son. When I did the CAGs I cared not a jot for y7-9; it was all about what I knew of him and I would have fought for him to get what I believed he would get if he sat the exam.

Sorry completely random and irrelevant quote in my post above!

[quote OverTheRainbow88]@mummabear1967

🤞🏽🤞🏽 For your son. Hopefully the teacher would take into account the 8 units he completed before lockdown.[/quote]
I just can imagine a situation where teacher thinks "well Susan has been predicted an 8 since year 8 and mininweird was lredicted a 5, then a 6 and amazed us Bh getting a 9 in the mock. So he's be happier with an 8 than Susan"

No, really not. We predicted what we genuinely believed they would be most likely to have got had they taken the exam. It was hard sometimes but that’s what we had to do.

@mummabear1967

🤞🏽🤞🏽 For your son. Hopefully the teacher would take into account the 8 units he completed before lockdown.

So what I mean by unconscious bias is that there may be judgements based on knowledge of student that extend beyond what they were actually doing at the time you had to submit grades.

I thought the original system was fair but then I have full confidence that ds school would have done right by all students and been realistic.

But do you think there was possibly any unconscious bias involved? I don't mean that as a dog because being a teacher in 2020 would be my idea of hell! Not just lockdown but now having to go back with no protection.

But I'll explain using my ds what I mean.

Ds has send. He got an ehcp end of year 8. Before this his predicted grades were 4/5's and he could barely tolerate being in a classroom all day.

By end of year 9 this had risen slightly and Bh mocks at beginning of year 11 he was well over his predicted grades.

The school can take full credit for this as they were amazing with him.

But my guess if is you have 10 students say (who like my ds) for a 9 in their mock for a subject and you had to grade them and is usually you get 8 students getting a 9 the 2 you rank lowest are the the ones who you know may get an 8 instead.

I just can imagine a situation where teacher thinks "well Susan has been predicted an 8 since year 8 and mininweird was lredicted a 5, then a 6 and amazed us Bh getting a 9 in the mock. So he's be happier with an 8 than Susan"

(I will add ds also for all 7/8's during year 10 module tests)

As I say that isn't a dig and I actually think that on balance of probability is more likely if only 1 for the 9 it's the way it goes.

I'm asking because ds is now obviously expecting that whatever he gets he can challenge it and get his 9. Yet I'm not actually sure if he gets an 8 that he should iyswim?