Local schools getting easier GCSE exams / inflated grades

@Pastanred I agree - it’s a total cock up of a situation and is fair on no one. We sat a number of kids for foundation last year and a few of them that were predicted 5s (the max grade on a foundation paper for those that don’t know) were bumped up to a 6 by the algorithm.

We also had some kids who were all set to get 1s bumped up to a grade 3. In other schools with historically worse grades than ours pupils were marked down and cheated out of higher grades that they deserved.

This year no matter how your local school is assessing there will be untold levels of unfairness. This is because how can you use one set of grades but thousands of different assessment criteria/protocols and expect fair outcomes?

I and many teachers see no reason why exams couldn’t have gone ahead. We’re all back in school and even if there had been an outbreak around this time they could easily have socially distanced y11 and 13 in exam conditions whilst other year groups stayed at home. What we’re seeing is the work of a government who is terrified by the enormity of last years fuck up, and has come up with an ingenious way of avoiding a second public fuck up this year - passing the buck to schools.

It’s unfair to kids and teachers. Teachers are marking thousands of papers that exam boards usually PAY people to mark and TRAIN them to mark. We’re just expected to do it in our free time around our ordinary teaching load.

When schools are this stretched and guidance is so thin on the ground, unfairness will abound. I wish the population at large could see the chaos that exists in schools right now - but I fear the government will get away with this one too.

If they can get on to the 'right' course, then how they do in that course will be the main thing.
Universities / employers at 18 will remember that this is the cohort with the massively disrupted learning and inconsistent grades.

Well they will, but will they give an offer to a child who has say a set of 6s and 7s, as opposed to a child who got all 9s? Which one will they go for assuming A-level predictions are similar?

It will effect children for the future.

And schools who give honest results the children are doubly penalised as they will be up against others that are their standard, but given higher grades, but people will assume that their grades are inflated too.

And last year there were overpredictions. This year, I suspect will be worse, as they know it's on teacher assessments, so those that overpredicted last year to look better than the rest, may well doubly overpredict to try and beat the others.

DD1's got a friend in year 11 and the teachers are sending them home with the questions and answers the night before they do the tests for example. So assessments can be "assisted".

But, Op, if it's any comfort. We know one school that predicted far too high. The children themselves are not happy about it from what I've been hearing from dd2 who has friends who were there. Firstly they're not proud of the results. They know that they didn't earn or deserve them, even the ones they probably did deserve, because others are clearly inflated, they then question the ones they do deserve and wonder if they are inflated too.
Some of them have dropped out of A-level courses, or even dropped a year because they started A-levels in subjects they'd been told they wouldn't get the grades needed, and they apparently did-but don't have the knowledge so found it too difficult.
They're also struggling with the idea that they will have to do exams at the end of the course, because they feel that they are going to do worse and it's going to be obvious. It's actually decreased their confidence in themselves not helped.

I didn’t make sweeping accusations🙄

I actually said ‘many kids near me’

I made an accusation about my dn who was set 3 and had no predicted grades for any subject above a 4! Suddenly getting a 7 having handed in nothing and only sitting his mock couple weeks prior to lockdown

I only have to look at my current year 12 cohort (I teach sixth form) - they needed a 6 to do my course and there’s a defo difference in standard. Some of these kids wouldn’t have got a 6 any other year!

That’s not to say some kids who are bright who have a bad day on a mock later do well but that wasn’t the case of what I saw last year

I’m talking about kids who were never more than a 3/4 getting 6+ dispite having no provision in lockdown 1.

They wouldn’t have even been entered into higher paper to even have option of those grades normally. Schools near us didn’t even send out work in most cases until June when year 11 had left

If your dd went from 3-7 then she was entered for higher paper suggesting she clearly had bad day and wasn’t a 3 at all. No one who’s a steady 3 would be entered into the higher paper and as such wouldn’t be able to get that score

Pastanred in your area that may have been so. Provision has been very variable. My local comprehensive and sixth form have provided excellent online teaching, including assessed work. As I said, don't make sweeping generalisations.

Pointy things

Perhaps under normal circumstances

But kids were not in school and remote teaching was crap in most of the local comps near me this time last year

There were no expectations kids even completed work during lockdown 1.

Thanks Green She is much better than she was. For most of the year she was managing 1hr work per week with a tutor. Now it is 30-60mins per day.

@TeenMinusTests I’m sorry your daughter is going through such a hard time.

I did O Levels in 1983.

The last 6 months of school in most subjects was spent doing 'past papers'.

By the time it came to the exam it was like taking just another paper.

Apart from 3/4 borderline, and requirements for 6th form choices, it doesn't matter in the long run.
It doesn't matter if Charlotte gets 8 and Sally gets 7s and Abbie gets 6s.
If they can get on to the 'right' course, then how they do in that course will be the main thing.
Universities / employers at 18 will remember that this is the cohort with the massively disrupted learning and inconsistent grades.
All our young people can do is their best, but looking across to other schools and what they are doing won't help. They can control their own work, but not anything else.

(And yes, I do have a y11. One who should have been getting a raft at 4/5 grade, maybe the odd 6, and is now scrabbling around to get any passes at all due to major MH issues over the last year.)

Don’t the rules say the same evidence has to be used by the teachers for all children though. So you can’t use Fred’s grade 9 essay on 12th Night and Julies on 1984.

Also at GCSE level as long as they get grades to go on to A levels surely that is the main thing?

Schools have been told they can use a range of work to give grades this year as well, not just the exams / assessments.

Why don't you complain to your school that they are doing the exams and not assessments? As an aside my DS is half way through his 5 week block of assessments and don't think it seems an easier option. he's got 5 assessments on average for one single subject.

Our local fee paying was dreadful last summer, and proudly boasted on social media that they had their 'best ever results'! The thing is these children will suffer long term as they will end up on degree courses beyond their actual ability and come a cropper with horrible mental health consequences. The thing is these schools live or die on their results and they are always going to do whatever it takes to keep their customers happy.

There is no 'fair' in education.

It only seems to be a problem when children who benefit from this status quo look like they may not.

The rules are quite strict though aren’t they? We have been told that our school is using a combination of the mock exams they sat in November (full past paper), Mini exams which have just happened (but these can’t carry the same weighting) and now full exams. Ds1 literally has 5-6 gcse papers sat in full exam conditions every week for the next three weeks. It’s horrendous, he’s exhausted and the school is taking very seriously its responsibility to give grades that are an accurate reflection of likely results in a normal gcse year.

It isn’t fair, but personally I think the kids in our school are at a disadvantage as a result of the massive number of exams, not advantaged.

If they had opted for continuous exam conditions assessments, they would have been inundated with equally angry parents furious that their children were being put under inhumane levels of pressure when they hadn't even completed the course and that not enough time was being dedicated to mental wellbeing.

If they stick with a single batch of exam condition assessments, they would have complaints about how it's inhumane to put so much pressure on them by assessing purely on the basis of a single day.

If they hold assessments in classrooms, they would have complaints about how it's inhumane to assess them when there is no room/somebody with a cough or a sniff/there is noise in the corridor or above them.

Somebody will complain the tests were too hard and it's not fair or humane.

Somebody will complain the tests were too easy and it's not fair or humane.

Somebody will complain that there weren't any tests and it's not fair or humane.

Somebody will complain that there is any form of assessment taking into account work completed in lockdown.

Somebody will complain that the assessments aren't taking into account work completed in lockdown.

Somebody will complain that there was an expectation to do any work in lockdown.

Somebody will complain that there weren't punishments for failing to complete work in lockdown and there wasn't enough work being given.

Somebody will always say at [other school] they aren't doing anything at all and are giving the kids vastly inflated grades for free.

In short, whatever way you look at it or do assessments, there will be people furious that the way that is chosen as to be the best for the kids to maximise their results fairly. Because they don't think their child will be the one benefitting from that particular approach, whatever it is.

It's an absolute mess - could've been avoided if they never cancelled GCSEs

I'm very surprised that any schools are giving their Y11s any sort of grades right now. Grading individual assessments would be bonkers, it's going to be hard enough grading the lot.

That school is setting itself up for a raft of appeals if that's what they're actually doing.