Grade inflation and leading independent schools in London and beyond

Some of them have been so blatant. Eltham College feature graph showing how much their exam results have improved and seem proud of the huge jumps made during the pandemic years - some heads are after one thing only....

"Headmaster Guy Sanderson said his school’s A-level success last year was ‘a reflection of the hard work of our bright students who prepared well for exams and assessments in difficult, regularly changing circumstances, and our highly capable and committed staff body who adapted seamlessly to a robust online teaching programme through the pandemic"

The same holds for the grammars who you criticise too for the same reasons. These are higher achieving kids who can produce A*/A on topic tests when they only need to revise a fraction of the syllabus so even those who get Bs at the end of the year over a 2 year syllabus in an exam can achieve higher under topic test conditions.

If you actually read it you will see that it is fairly obvious in a school where the majority or marks for a normal exam year are in the A-B range in a year where 6 in effect topic tests are used to assess the grade it is not that difficult for a child capable of a B across a 2 year syllabus under exam conditions at the end of 2 years to get an A or A in a test on a topic alone. Hence it follows on that there would be more A*/A grades under cags.

Laughing at the thought that we should take the HMC article at face value, as fact. No bias whatsoever.

[quote SeasonFinale]I would suggest that people read this and they will have a better understanding of the situation:

www.hmc.org.uk/blog/hmc-statement-following-record-breaking-assessment-results-and-sunday-times-coverage/[/quote]
that is literally a quote from an advocacy body whose every last insert Latin word for coin of small value of funding comes from the private schools. it's self-serving claptrap.

I would suggest that people read this and they will have a better understanding of the situation:

www.hmc.org.uk/blog/hmc-statement-following-record-breaking-assessment-results-and-sunday-times-coverage/

I don't want to comment on individual schools, my dd got her GCSE results last summer and it was a truly awful time for all young people and it's so much better that they all got good grades compared to the previous year when dc missed uni places and ended up with grades that weren't reflective of their ability.

@sunshineclouds24 - so let me get this right, NCLS went from having about two thirds the proportion of A* candidates as, say, St Paul's in 2019 to being slightly better than St Paul's (itself one of the very fastest improvers amongst all of the c10k secondary schools in the entire country) in 2021, and you don't think there's even the faintest whiff of, how can I put it, funny business about any of this ?

Also as others have pointed out if the school selects a student to be given a B although her exams papers are an A then the parents can sue the school. This happened at Guildford High in 2020 when the sixth form leadership misunderstood the Govt guidelines and dds got marked down in their A levels and missed uni places, the school hushed it up but lawyers were involved.

• not entirely incomprehensible.

[quote pkim123]@puffyisgood I agree. Although, NLCS is supposedly a top school in the nation. After this, I would be embarrassed to be associated with the place.[/quote]
well - they are a charitable foundation private business who use grades to advertise, so it's not entirely understandable that they'd push as hard as they could. what I don't quite understand is why nobody stopped them doing it.

anyway, a not-quite tripling of the number of A's is arguably more plausible than Derby's near ninefold increase. though I do tend to think that an 80-something rather than 90-something % of A's might have been a little more plausible.

How can these schools do this?! North London Collegiate School, shame on you!

@puffyisgood I agree. Although, NLCS is supposedly a top school in the nation. After this, I would be embarrassed to be associated with the place.

all the biggest risers in the state sector were grammars, ie the places with the places who make the biggest song and dance about their grades.

www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10482061/amp/Private-schools-gamed-Covid-double-grades-investigation-finds.html

NLCS was disgraceful with their grade inflation. Yes, it happened at many schools, but what they did was so bad that it's now difficult to take them seriously as an academic organisation of excellence.

@FoggySpecs is absolutely right that at least some of the jump in grades in private schools was a result of the teaching in these schools being a lot less disrupted by Covid: they got sorted online quickly, had students who all had access to good IT and Wi-Fi, and were generally well motivated to keep working remotely.

The exam boards significantly lowered grade boundaries to recognise the disruption most pupils had due to Covid. But for those schools who continued to teach well, that meant a lot more pupils getting the higher grades than they would normally.

My DD has just written mocks. In a number of subjects she is one grade higher using the 2020 grade boundaries than those used in 2019.

From last August

www.tes.com/magazine/news/secondary/levels-2021-rise-3x-more-private-schools

[quote CJFJ1]@Clymene

No - that's not my argument, but the HMC link I've posted above suggests that they have been disingenuous with their reporting to at least some extent.

I can't speak for the independent schools mentioned in the article, but I teach in a high-ranking independent school and the measures put in place by Senior Leadership to ensure our CAGs / TAGs over the last two years were in line with previous, pre-Covid examination results - were nothing short of painstakingly meticulous.

Even if our Senior Leadership Team had wanted to "inflate" the grades, the rigmarole that the examination boards have required each centre to go through over the last two years, to ensure that results were in line with pre-Covid years, have meant that it would have been near impossible.[/quote]
Their argument is not that all private schools have inflated results but that some of them have.

They have named specific very prestigious schools which have seen vastly inflated grades.

Are you saying that's untrue?

The defence seems to be 'well we didn't all do it so it's unfair to tar us all with the same brush.'

Not much of a defence really.

@Clymene

No - that's not my argument, but the HMC link I've posted above suggests that they have been disingenuous with their reporting to at least some extent.

I can't speak for the independent schools mentioned in the article, but I teach in a high-ranking independent school and the measures put in place by Senior Leadership to ensure our CAGs / TAGs over the last two years were in line with previous, pre-Covid examination results - were nothing short of painstakingly meticulous.

Even if our Senior Leadership Team had wanted to "inflate" the grades, the rigmarole that the examination boards have required each centre to go through over the last two years, to ensure that results were in line with pre-Covid years, have meant that it would have been near impossible.

Also the attached from the paper on Sunday.

I'd imagine a large part of the Times readership has privately educated children.

Or is your argument that this should be hushed up because it's what parents pay for?

The Sunday Times continuing their anti-independent schools campaign: what a surprise.

www.hmc.org.uk/blog/hmc-statement-following-record-breaking-assessment-results-and-sunday-times-coverage/