Has DS’s school disadvantaged the students by the way they tested GCSES?

Our school did "proper" full length exam hall exams without any idea of what was going to be on the papers. I think they were pretty rigorous tbh. The results for dd and her friends seem fair - most are happy with what they got but none of the grades seem over inflated.

Our school also sat mocks and actual exams under normal GCSE conditions - all crammed into two weeks with two or three exams a day.

Our local pvt school did one GCSE a week - so they crammed for it over the week and then sat it at the end of the week. I’m not sure if the content was known or not but certainly an easier format to revise for.

Both schools will be able to submit evidence for their students but the methodologies were completely different.

Our school also did proper exams under exam conditions.
Another school I know very very well did 2 "mini assessments" and told the students their predicted grades would stand unless they did better in their mini assessments - so they couldn't go down but they could go up.
Personally I think our school did the right thing (they cut the curriculum a little but dc spent weeks revising as they would have in any "normal" year) and I think the other school is the one that's disadvantaged its students as they've never done proper exams, never had to revise etc and may well struggle more at A level.
For what it's worth there have not been a lot of surprises amongst dc's friends so far today so hopefully the same will be true for your ds.

My kids' school did exactly the same - proper exams with unknown topics under exam conditions. I have twins and one did better than predicted and one did slightly worse.

It’s a mess. And it is unfair, if OP’s child is being marked on exams done under exam conditions and other schools have done more relaxed tests knowing the content. It’s completely unfair. But it’s been a difficult 2yrs and not sure what the right answer is. My DS is going into year 13 now and so had his GCSE’s last year and did very well but there are rumours of no formal exams next year, which would mean he will have sat no formal exams for either GCSE or A level. He wants to sit exams so I feel really sorry for him, as he genuinely would have come out with mainly 9’s but now it feels like his grades were inflated which isn’t the case. Argh I hate it

Our school did mini assessments. I thought the whole point of cancelling the exams was because they were felt to be unfair, given all the disruption students had faced? So I don't understand why some schools (apart from many private schools who expect their pupils to really pull their socks up right at the end of their courses and go up a grade or two) would do this and put their pupils under unecessary strain, unless they were doing it to protect the teachers?

good luck op

Totally agree with you. DDs school had tests every 2 weeks, content provided to each in terms of what was on test. Each test was small and contributed to overall grade. This 'modular' style approach is much easier to do well on than a single 'pretend gcse' test your ds had

Its grossly unfair

It's not really in school's interests to downgrade them 🤷‍♀️ I'm hoping this is the case anyway. Good luck for tomorrow! 🍀

It is incredibly unlikely students will be disadvantaged. The "bad day" effect can't be accounted for under TAGs. I know there are some of the students we awarded a grade 4 that may not have got a grade 4 in an exam series. However I can't predict which kids it would have been, so any borderlines were generally rounded up rather than down.

I understand why it feels confusing and unfair. The private school split is unfair, but so is private school!

Not this year @mimofboy2 - grades for this year and last are not part of performance measures.

Remember schools are assessed based on the grades too so they are not going to damage themselves by having students grades too low. Also in schools I know (teacher with lots of teacher friends) the way your school has done it is the normal.

I think the higher grade inflation in private schools this year (and last year) demonstrates it’s patently unfair. We shouldn’t have some schools giving pupils “the benefit of the doubt” while others stick diligently to previous years’ results. But Gavin Williamson was in charge… 😏

I know other schools did multiple mini assessments where students knew the topic they were going to be tested on. They also had more chances to prove themselves (I believe some schools were doing 40-50 assessments.)

I agree, OP, it is a worry.

It's all very difficult.

Grade inflation is inevitable under these circumstances. Imagine you have 10 kids who you think are on course to get an A. In a normal year, one of them might have a bad day and end up with a B. This year, even if that happens in the last assessment, the school still has the flexibility to say "they've got A on everything else they've done."

I think that happens far more often than someone you thought was heading for a B pulling off an A on the day, so taking out the "bad day phenomenon" pushes grades up.

Then you've got half a dozen kids who you're sure will get either an A or a B, but it might depend on what the questions, how much last minute revision they do, and which way the wind is blowing. In a normal year, the exam would be the final arbiter. This year, you might decide that you can't, in all fairness, give them all As. That's where the internal assessments give you some sort of objective measure - particularly important because you know the kids personally and you don't want anyone accusing you of bias. What assessments schools used for that was up to them.

Teachers know full well that different assessment methods will give different scores: I don't think anyone would equate scores on each topic examined separately with scores on the whole syllabus. What was practical to organise will have varied between schools. Where a lot of curriculum time has been missed, they may have wanted to give students less stressful assessment, whilst realising that they need to bear that in mind in interpreting the scores.

I don't think anyone can guarantee that there was no inequity between schools, but hopefully the exam board moderation will have picked up the worst of it.

That doesn't mean your child will be disadvantaged by having a slightly different assessent method compared to other schools - your child is only going to be assessed on what they did in the assessment they sat.

Anyway - if the general trend is for more higher grades, why do you feel this will negatively affect your child - surely they will benefit from generous grading also?

To reassure you, the method used by schools is almost irrelevant. The method allows you to mark abs then rank students. Most schools then applied their own grade boundaries to ensure a similar spread of grades to previous years.

A School may have chunked lots of mini assessments but that doesn’t mean the whole school can be given high marks. As another poster has said, the “grade boundaries” applied would just be higher.

Sounds much better than most schools in terms of actual representation of what the young person has achieved.

Inflated grades reduce the value of qualifications, making people’s efforts less meaningful. Students can end up on degree courses that are too hArd or not appropriate.

Really hoping not too many of the extra medical students starting struggle. Medicine is tough, I did it back in the era when an ‘A’ was a rarity, resits and modules didn’t exist etc. 1990s. Most of us found it a really challenging course academically and it is not to be undertaken lightly. I want the Uk to have more doctors, but not for students to start courses, fail/drop out/struggle etc etc as it wasn’t quite right for them in the first place.

This is how my school assessed . Totally fair and puts him into a much better position for further study because he needed the “normally expected “ depth of knowledge .

@Bigblueone school have had to give samples to exam boards for sampling too so the boards had to be satisfied they were doing things correctly. They also had to declare their policy on TAGs too so the exam boards will be satisfied the school have acted correctly.

If he can access his next step my advice would be grab it and move on. Then GCSEs won’t even matter.

It looks like the private schools have been extra generous this year, so the attainment gap between state and private is wider

If all the school used was 'final exams' then he won't have been disadvantaged compared with previous years but may not have the advantages that were built into the system.

By going for a final exam only approach the school has kept the 'one mark off a grade boundary' situation. Whereas if I understand it correctly, this year by using multiple assessments, schools could use a 'normally works at this grade' approach giving to some extent 'benefit of the doubt' grades. e.g. in any year 7 students might be working at grade 6, but in exams 1 might have a bad day and slip to a 5 and one might have an extra good day and get a 7. Your school has kept that, whereas others would give all of them 6s.

otoh I have read elsewhere on MN that boys do better with high stakes exams, so maybe the school thought this was still the best way to go as it didn't think pupils would sustain working at high levels for multiple assessments.

I think overblowing it before the results would be a mistake. Wait until the envelope is opened and see how it is.

I would say there is just as much worry that a University will not feel able to trust an 8 this year as really being a sign of a certain standard.