Ofqual - you can’t appeal CAGS or use mocks

^LyraLilly

Thanks for this @noblegiraffe although it's not welcome news for us.

DD is largely happy with her results apart from one.. she got an 8 in her mock, 6's and 7's in class work and previous tests and has been awarded a 5 hmm. I've asked the school for an explanation but no response as yet. Her school is useless tbh and were found to be Inadequate across the board by OFSTED just before Christmas. I doubt they'll admit to any admin error ( if that's the case) so it looks like she's stuck.

In the grand scheme of things it won't matter as she's been accepted for an a level in the subject but it's her favourite and best subject and she's gutted^

We're in the same position. The subject in question is an option subject. DD has been a constant grade 6 work, all along her teacher said she's likely to get a 7 in her exams. Whenever they did tests or assessments she scored top 2nd or 3rd of the class. There are only 22 in her class, and only 2 girls. Slightly less kids overall in the other class, again only 2 girls, around 40 in total. Very boy heavy.

I would hope there hasn't been any gender bias but it does feel very odd to me. I also don't want to go throwing that around as I still have another child that has 3 more years there.

I have queried the grade but very breezy about it. However I have a strong feeling they will just gloss over it and say that's what she's working at.

I suppose another reason could be that previous data shows a generally low attainment and they've match the current cohort to that so if a child was likely to get an 8 or more (DD said there are definitely kids that were working at that level) then maybe they've also been moved down so to keep the data looking like a normal exam year. That would explain a kid that is working at a high 6 ends up with a 5 I assume.

DD was shocked by it, but equally it hasn't stopped her continuity this subject at A level, the course requirements was 4 and she currently isn't bothered enough to want to sit the exam in November.

www.tes.com/news/no-appeals-allowed-cag-gcse-teacher-assessed-grades

The second headline however states: But pupils will be able to appeal on the basis of bias or discrimination, says Ofqual

“Students will, however, be able to raise a complaint to their centre if they have evidence of bias or that they were discriminated against in the grading process.”

So in theory what is to stop a parent, who has positive mock results/reports/books and asks SLT for extra info under appeal/freedom of info (CATS, SATS, Yellis, Pastoral records etc whatever they now do these days) to claim there has been bias?
Given some teachers may have had SLT undermining their estimates and not all centres will necessarily have worked to the same standards...what stops the parents of a BAME pupil claiming racial bias and what stops the parents of a lazy pupil claiming personality clash?

Teachers didn’t want to be directly responsible for student results. I’ve got some kids in my class who failed their maths GCSE and will have to resit because of what I gave them. That’s not a nice feeling.

This.... my colleague had set 8 maths and had to give 22 students a 1 and 2 a 2. She got so much abuse today at results day from parents and students. If I were her I wouldn’t have gone in! Throughout lockdown she was chasing these kids to work at home knowing they’ll have to re-sit.

Yes it's a timetable thing. If it doesn't get sorted then I think he's going to end up doing a level 2 btec this year plus his resits then a level next year. I know it won't be the end of the world but it's going to be really boring for him just as he was going back into mainstream.

@SusanWalker

It may be a timetable clash that means no FM and resit English.

However if he did English resit as a private candidate/at his old school in November then college might be open to this idea? Or he takes a year out to get English and goes back next Sept. (bit of an extreme solution though!)

You're right that you can do nothing until you've spoken to the school tomorrow. I hope they can prove an admin error.

Yes I suspect they did not see his work passed on from his tutor because the head of English kept saying I don't know about that, but I know it was dropped off. I will have to see what they say when they call back I suppose.

@noblegiraffe Thank you. Hopefully I'll hear back soon

The trouble is the college are saying he can't do further maths and a resit which is not unreasonable. All he's ever wanted to do is maths and further maths. We have a meeting with the college next week so we'll have to see what they say.

I'm waiting on a reply from DD school @noblegiraffe How can you get them to prove it was an admin error?

I'm in this predicament at the moment.

DS was signed off sick from school a year and a half ago and had tutors paid for by the school. He was only allowed to do English, Maths and Science.

Today he got maths 7, science 4 and 5 and English 1 and 1.

His English tutor told me he was working at a level 5-6 in Feb. They provided all his work to the school as his exam centre.

I called the school today and the head of English said he didn't know what the 1s were based on but that the best thing to do was to contact the college and see about resits.

The college will not let DS do his a levels now.

I don't see why he should have to not do a levels and waste a year resitting if the school have fucked it up.

I'm waiting to hear back from the school but it looks like if they're standing by their grades we can't appeal.

I'm so angry. If I felt that he deserved 1s then fine, but he's spent the last week writing a 40 page story, he absolutely loves creative writing.

@Elumau it's set to be a disaster, I have a brilliant relationship with ds school, they are all amazing in their own way, but I still have to question what has happened.

To be honest as teachers we are in a no win situation here.

I had yr 11 and 13 groups for whom I had to supply CAGs for - I had to use all available evidence, therefore a good result on one mock was assessed against all other evidence i.e. class tests, homework, classwork etc as we had to provide the evidence for each CAG. If one of my students were displaying work at a grade 5 in classwork, homework, tests but pulled out a 7 in the mock because the weight of evidence was towards the lower grade then that's what I had to go with.

Our CAGs were then dept moderated so if 1 teacher had provided a lower grade than the evidence suggested this was discussed, opinions given and possible changes made (both up and down)

This was then passed to SLT who looked at all the grades, all the evidence, all the data and questioned any 'odd grades' (at this point the class teacher was out of the loop)

At this time schools were told that they could be asked to immediately provide evidence for the grades therefore any schools trying to play the system were taking a huge risk.

I know of 1 student in my school immediately wanting to appeal a CAG, trouble is for 18 months he had hardly done any work, homeworks missing, low test scores - all evidence pointed to this low grade with nothing to support his claims.

The one shinning light out of this is that as teachers we have the perfect sentence to say whenever a student thinks a piece of work doesn't matter "remember the class of 2020"!

I have a boy.

I hate all this "boys generally leave it to the last minute"

We have spent years not gender stereotyping and should be changing this so boys don't do it thinking it's normal.

It's the boys who thought this normal who made my ds life hell because he decided to knuckle down from year 10 (he always worked hard but didn't want to be a last minute crammer)

He had teasing for module tests for being a swot, nerd, brown noser etc. Back in year 10 when he was predicted 4-6's.

Even more so when he repeated it for years 11 mocks and got 3-9's.

Well he had the last laugh this morning with very accurate results for his performance whilst these boys were cross because "they could have done better if they'd done the exam"

Legs teach our boys that study is something both genders can do equally and the benefits of continuous effort. Perhaps some societal change in thinking will go some way to helping the gap between boys and girls close and support teachers?!

Rant over.

Yes we were told results today were final. We think language was algorithm as he was expected to scrape a 4 - he got a 5

We've also been hearing firm local schools about the extortionate costs per exam of retakes.

And articles like this

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-53850146

don't exactly help as there are young people where they have not made the grades due to the teacher grade given. Which then causes more anger when parents know what the students predictions and trajectory were! At the end of the day, If a student messes up the exams, its definitely their fault. This system leaves them only with the results which are too late to make any difference.

If there are concerns about bias or discrimination, they should be raised with the school in the first instance.

I'm sure that's going to go well...

@handbackwriter that's exactly the problem for us, along with the fact that had the triple lock stood then ds would have a mark 2 grades higher than that given by the teacher. I wouldn't allow my ds to act like that towards any member of staff at his school because teachers simply didn't know that it would be like this, but it does make me very angry that Mr X did indeed give a grade massively lower than his UCAS prediction and his mock, so he is currently stuck with a D when he was predicted an A in January and got a B in a mock in January and then all of a sudden without my knowledge or any communication there is 'insufficient evidence'

Yes, same here - at both the school which DH and I work in, and the school my DCs attend, the teachers are feeling pretty exposed right now, given that they were assured that students would not see the CAG.

It's not been a good week for students or teachers.

Ah ok, thank you, I knew that they were told not to share them before results day but I had some vague memory that they were supposed to never be disclosed, which I guess is wrong if they were subject to subject access requests (though obviously most students wouldn't have made one).

I agree that it's a horrible position to put teachers in.

I was wondering - and it sounds like you have the answer @noblegiraffe - were schools told explicitly that pupils wouldn't see 'raw' CAGs? I feel like I remember that they were but I couldn't find anything either way when I googled. It feels like teachers are now very individually exposed in a way that makes me feel uncomfortable. There's been a real kerfuffle at DH's school (fortunately not involving anyone he teaches) where a couple of students have now realised that teachers knowingly gave them CAGs that meant they've missed university places and which were a long way below their UCAS predictions. This was clearly the right thing to do if the teacher felt the CAG they gave was accurate, but it's become very upsetting and emotive ('Mr X deliberately ruined my life').

@noblegiraffe Sorry, I didn't explain very well (I know the schools were told that students wouldn't see the CAGs originally). What I meant was, I think the school deliberately erred on the side of caution / graded some of its students pessimistically, knowing perfectly well that they would be able to fill their sixth form with higher-achieving pupils from the selective grammar school, whilst blaming their own students' lower grades on the algorithm / moderation system.

School has been trying to cast itself as an alternative grammar school for years.

I actually think the school did the "right" thing at the time, based on the information we were all given about moderation etc, IF we take the grammar school out of the equation.

Bizarrely my DD was predicted a 7 in one of her English exams but she ended up with an 8 - which to be honest she didn't deserve (she admits that!)
All very odd!
Feel very sorry for the boys as generally they leave it to the last minute.