School refusing to give GCSE predictions

@HelloDulling
'We get them about 24 hrs before. And often, if there are obvious anomalies, we ask for them to be remarked, which happens so quickly the students are none the wiser when they get their marks the next day.'

OK, that's changed a bit since my day - it was always the day before, but no one was re-marking in those 24hrs (pretty incredible turnaround!) But still not really an 'embargo' as the PP was call calling it!

Especially with all the surprise tests this week.

Was this just your school? This isn't a national thing.

Same here OP. No mocks & no end of year exams. No predicted grades. I felt like you but I do understand the reasoning now and think it’s crucial for our children to ask for feedback. They need to be asking ‘how can I improve this’? And ‘what else do I need to do to get the best grade possible’? Then take heed. I don’t see what else they can do really. It’s such an unusual situation. I’m really not liking the idea of them being graded as ‘where they are now’. Especially with all the surprise tests this week. I think testing without warning is harsh at the best of times. But at the moment? Really?

How a student performed in a particular mock exam is not a prediction, it's a historical fact!

But the grade given from a mock only really applies to the students who sat that exam in that year. Mocks aren't always past papers either, so grade boundaries are 'invented'.

Dd is at a Private school and we had predicted grades a couple of weeks ago, they needed them for their 6th form applications.
They are continually assessed though and we get sort of predicted grades at the end of every term, plus they had mocks in January.

How a student performed in a particular mock exam is not a prediction, it's a historical fact!

Schools just need to make it very clear to students and parents that the result of one exam is not their predicted grade - it's just one part of a whole set of evidence.

They may not be sitting a normal external exam but we don't know how grades are going to be assessed this year. There may be some kind of external exam or schools may be required to get their students to sit some kind of mock between now and summer so it would make sense for the student to understand which areas of the specification they need to work on most.

The school bangs on and on about value added. I've never quite worked it out.

They base future target grades on SATS results. So a computer generated target grade. So if they do well in SATS the target grades are high & it's hard to add any value. I think it's probably hard for Independent Schools to add value.

My Y11 ds (state school) had exams in September and his mocks in December. We got results for both sets of exams and a mock exam report too.

We were told what was put on sixth form applications. In fact, could see predicted grades on applications. Also, letters from school reminding everyone to be mindful of situation/ covid etc, despite this.

Value added is about how much the child improves. So schools that are highly selective and only have very academically able kids don’t add much value, even if they all get all A*/Grade 9s (because they were already high achievers when they arrived).

A school with a more varied intake, that really improves the grades achieved by a student has more ‘value added’.

Good feedback will tell you how many marks you got for each question so it doesn't take a genius to work out what grade you are working at.

Good feedback tells you exactly what you did well, and exactly how to get better. None of this requires you to be given a number of marks for a question.

Not every school sits standardised mocks, therefore it would take quite some working out to take a random exam and extrapolate a grade. It's nigh on impossible, hence the difficulties with assessing students this year.

I can't see what use "predicted grades" are at the moment as no school has a clue what criteria will be used to grade students in the summer but DS1 has just done his mocks online. He's got his results and been told what likely grades the marks relate to. He has also been consantly assessed all through Years 10 and 11 and knows what grade level he is working at.

[quote BirthdayBadger]@HelloDulling So an entire paper gets queried, remarked, verified and regraded in just 24 hours? If so that's impressive.[/quote]
Sometimes it’s not back until maybe the lunchtime of the results day, but at least we are able to tell the student that it’s already in hand.

You don't think exam boards genuinely re-mark do you? [hollow laugh]

In the past, yes, but now a 'review' of marks is essentially the lead marker saying "oh yes, I have confidence my markers marked correctly"

OP what do you mean by value added? It's not really a measure applied to an individual.

[quote BirthdayBadger]@HelloDulling So an entire paper gets queried, remarked, verified and regraded in just 24 hours? If so that's impressive.[/quote]
Yes. I think it’s amazing. We have at least a couple every year.

Good feedback will tell you how many marks you got for each question so it doesn't take a genius to work out what grade you are working at.

How can schools demonstrate Value Added when pupils aren't being assessed in a standardised way?

My school has also just decided not to issue Y11 with updated predicted grades until we have some idea of what assessment will look like for this cohort.