Government U-turn - A-levels are now based just on teacher assessment

[SorrelBlackbeak]

www.bbc.co.uk/news

Just announced on the Beeb. All A levels and GCSEs based on teacher assessment.

FrippEnos

We are coming to that conclusion. Its hard when you feel so cross about it, but she has a place where she likes and we've just had some accommodation confirmed (albeit not official halls) today too. She is feeling settled and starting to get excited about going away. So we need to let it go too now I guess, and take her lead.

Small subjects below a certain cohort size weren't downgraded - that's not anecdote, it's fact. As for commenting based on anecdote and opinion - well, MN would be a pretty quiet place if that never happened. However, from my pov, I was never trying to make this a private/state divide about who has been more unfairly treated - simply suggesting that it is unlikely that all schools in whatever sector were equally rigorous. Yes, this is an opinion not a fact - but it is based on reports from teachers irl who have openly said that they were overly generous with grades, plus comments from Ofqual that they are confident this has happened in some cases. So I don't think it's wildly outrageous speculation.

@apricotblossom

Small subjects below a certain cohort size weren't downgraded - that's not anecdote, it's fact. As for commenting based on anecdote and opinion - well, MN would be a pretty quiet place if that never happened. However, from my pov, I was never trying to make this a private/state divide about who has been more unfairly treated - simply suggesting that it is unlikely that all schools in whatever sector were equally rigorous. Yes, this is an opinion not a fact - but it is based on reports from teachers irl who have openly said that they were overly generous with grades, plus comments from Ofqual that they are confident this has happened in some cases. So I don't think it's wildly outrageous speculation.

I agree with some of what you say here but your original blanket statement from your DH, of teachers over inflating grades causing the problem was unfair and should have been taken to task, rightly so. There are lots of reasons why grades can increase year on year. Hopefully, we can leave it at that and I do genuinely hope that your DH’s students go on to do what they want to do.

Thanks, and very happy to leave it there. It wasn't meant to be a blanket statement, and I think most teachers and schools are entirely blameless - it was just a reflection of how DH is feeling this evening when there's a lots of un-nuanced celebration on the news/internet along the lines of 'justice has been done'.

I work in uni admissions. This is utter chaos, and we're hearing about the U turns at the same time as everyone else!

So, god knows how this is going to pan out. Will successful clearing applicants drop out and go to their firm/insurance places? Will all insurances go up to their firms? We don't know if it's as simple as looking at the pred grades on the UCAS app, or whether there will be other hoops to jump through.

But it's great news for applicants that have clearly been misjudged - it's all been a bloody nightmare for them.

Sally - it won't be predicated grades from ucas, but the CAGs that schools submitted to the government. These are, in many cases, quite different from predicted grades.

I really feel for you, Sally - you must all be tearing your hair out.

Indeed. The UCAS guidance is that predicted grades should be 'aspirational' (although this is doubtless sometimes taken too far). CAGs on the other hand were meant to be realistic.

I'm now wondering if that should change too, or even two sets of predictions given out to students, as we move foreword. Most students seem their ucas predictions as just that - a prediction of their final grade.

What we need to be telling these kids are their realistic grades - and then maybe also an aspirational grade. That might help save many from disappointment to start with.

@apricotblossom

I really feel for you, Sally - you must all be tearing your hair out.

Thanks. I've never known anything like it. And it's broken my heart having to speak to applicants that are clearly upset and in tears. Bloody awful. And that's before I factor in the hours that have been utterly wasted (but that's the least of the problems, obvs)

Ofqual found 2 schools have given every single student an A* or A grade in every subject so clearly a management strategy. Every other year they had normally distributed grades. This is disgraceful and would have had an impact on the algorithm. I hope these students are not keeping their CAGs and school fined.

@caringcarer

Ofqual found 2 schools have given every single student an A* or A grade in every subject so clearly a management strategy. Every other year they had normally distributed grades. This is disgraceful and would have had an impact on the algorithm. I hope these students are not keeping their CAGs and school fined.

Surely that should have been picked up and dealt with months ago

@caringcarer

Ofqual found 2 schools have given every single student an A* or A grade in every subject so clearly a management strategy. Every other year they had normally distributed grades. This is disgraceful and would have had an impact on the algorithm. I hope these students are not keeping their CAGs and school fined.

Do you have a link for that?

www.tes.com/news/a-level-results-ofqual-brands-teacher-assessed-grades-implausible

Link above. Relevant quote is under the second bold heading. It only references one straight A school, but also says that there was no common standard applied, and therefore too much variability between schools for CAGs to be fair without some kind of moderation.

In total, 96.4 per cent of A-level results in England were the same as – or within one grade of – teacher-assessed grades.

This quote from the article just cannot be correct due to the sheer number downgraded by 2 grades or more. It infers barely any were downgraded more than 1
And that just isn’t true when whole subjects suffered from this. The sheer amount of appeals that exam boards were facing (and the gov agreeing to pay for them) may well have played a large part in today’s decision.

Doesn’t say where the figure came from. I also note that the article also states that the JCQ itself praises teacher accuracy.

The political stance of Ofqual might be showing its true colours here or at least batting away the blame Gavin has passed their way today.

Even if I am wrong, the fact the algorithm at all, downgraded students from a C to a U, or from an A to a D amongst many many other examples, is shocking and should never have been allowed to slip through in the 5 months Ofqual had to review/check with schools. Justice certainly was not served with the algorithm grades.

No system was ever going to be perfect, but the kids need grades so we’ve got to go with something. I’m a head of department and I can honestly say we genuinely tried our best to be as accurate as possible with our GCSE predictions and I feel they’re really fair. We do a variety of tests/assessed questions regularly and we did a full paper 3 for the mock exam. My departments predictions and the way we arrived at them were checked rigorously by SLT. No system is perfect and of course no predictions will be 100% accurate, but I do think that teacher assessment is the best option here. As for parents not being happy, I’m afraid there’s not much I can do about that. All of our predictions are based on data and I can’t change that. I can justify every grade we have predicted as I have the evidence to back it up. I can’t predict a grade 7 if a child has never achieved higher than a 5 no matter how much a parent wants it.

It would be interesting to know what the JCQ is basing that statement on. How do they know whether the grades were accurate? Completely agree though, the algorithm was clearly unjust.

apricotblossom

thanks, but hat doesn't say what caregiver posted

It was one school in two subjects

Not two schools for all subjects.

@ChloeDecker

In total, 96.4 per cent of A-level results in England were the same as – or within one grade of – teacher-assessed grades.

This quote from the article just cannot be correct due to the sheer number downgraded by 2 grades or more. It infers barely any were downgraded more than 1
And that just isn’t true when whole subjects suffered from this. The sheer amount of appeals that exam boards were facing (and the gov agreeing to pay for them) may well have played a large part in today’s decision.

Doesn’t say where the figure came from. I also note that the article also states that the JCQ itself praises teacher accuracy.

The political stance of Ofqual might be showing its true colours here or at least batting away the blame Gavin has passed their way today.

Even if I am wrong, the fact the algorithm at all, downgraded students from a C to a U, or from an A to a D amongst many many other examples, is shocking and should never have been allowed to slip through in the 5 months Ofqual had to review/check with schools. Justice certainly was not served with the algorithm grades.

Do you realise how many a-levels are taken?

There are about 650 000 a-level grades if you just count 18yos.

96.4% were within 1 grade, which means 3.6% weren't, which sounds small, but with 650k that's 23 400. It's not barely any, but it still is only a small percentage.

Apricot "For this year's cohort - yes, probably. For last year's cohort, up against this year's leavers for jobs, or next year's cohort, potentially still up against them for university places - not so much. I just don't see any fair outcome from this situation, unfortunately."

Yes. especially coming from a school who have been incorrect in their UCAS predictions in the past with disastrous results