The predicted grade given at the end of Yr12 for UCAS is very different to the expected grade that teachers will have to issue in May.
Teachers won't be able to give anywhere near most students their UCAS predicted grades...or if they do, they will be downgraded. This is because rightly, school's prior attainment will be looked at over several years, along with the cohort's ability level and grades will be issued on the basis of that. Those UCAS grades would give a far more optimistic set of results. They never accurately reflect what students actually achieve and cannot this year either, as otherwise this year's cohort would have grades far in excess of earlier years, and parity needs to be maintained to keep confidence in the system.
The poster upthread who spoke about her firm not planning to trust grades issued this year, shows the fact that some people don't realise that the pattern of grades will be relfelctive of previous years and for individuals very similar to the grades they would have achieved if they had sat exams. Given the inaccuracies in exam setting, marking, moderation and boundary setting it may well be that the grass issued this year actually are more reflective of students' ability than under the usual system!
As I said before, the problem will be that many students and parents will feel a stronger sense of disappointment this year. Every year, most students perform less well than their UCAS predictions. When they get their results, many have already had a sense that their exam didn't go as well as it might have and at least when the results come they are a disappointment traced back to the exam they sat. Parents and students this year won't have that sense and perhaps be hoping even more for the UCAS predictions, not fully realising just how optimistic these are - and so more disappointed,mespeciallybearlespecially they will feel these grades are foisted on them by what might feel like an arbitrary and unfair system. It's certainly a good excuse for any parents or students to use to explain why the grades weren't what had been hoped for.
Fortunately, for most the disappointment will be short lived. Many will did their first choice Uni takes them anyway (probably Unis will be enabled to take more this year) or they find a place at their 2nd choice or in Clearing, as always happens, so that by October (or when Unis can actually start this year) most students have a place and happily go off to the next stage of life, leaving A Levels behind. And later when they apply for jobs, they will have a degree as well as A Levels which hold full value with firms. Within a year or 2, no firm will distinguish students who sat A Levels in this year to any other and the grades really will have full parity with any ever sat (or not sat). The students from this year really won't be disadvantaged.
For example, which employers now could look at a CV and say which applicants over 30 sat exams in different phases of exam reform - they really couldn't.
It's funny isn't it, that no-one comes on these threads to say they think they child might be advantaged by this system....that somehow their SATs results were better than deserved, or they out-performed themselves in their mocks and so the school will give them better than they really deserve. It's all people whose children have SAts or mocks results which don't reflect their true ability - and are exactly the students who come the exams,Mir they had sat them, would have found they most likely achieved less than their overly generous UCAS prediction. But they too get uni places and head off into the future and move beyond A Levels.
The gov will work very hard to ensure this cohort are able to move forward and not get bogged down by what has happened.
The thing that I think will be a genuine learning issue for both the Yr 11 and Yr13 students, is the revision, consolidation and big progress achieved during March, April and May revision, which will be missing this year. They will start their A Levels or degrees from a weaker point than those who have gone through the preparation and exam process of previous years. It will be a bigger leap to the next stage of education, especially for weaker ones. And probably more weaker ones will be let through to the next phase this year. I guess the teachers and lecturers will just have to deal with that in the next phase of education.