Calling teachers, head teachers, education people - do you think GCSEs and A-level exams will have to be adapted for 2021 because some students have effectively missed a term?

[wonderwhatnext]

Hi, I’ve heard this idea mooted by someone you could say is “in the know”, so wondering what others think?

To address the obvious inequalities caused by the fact that, this term, some students are receiving a full curriculum online whereas others are receiving next to nothing, next summer”s exams may need to reflect this by offering one less module (or topic) on the papers?

I realise this may be difficult as schools don’t teach the syllabus in the same order, but it could be something similar to when my DC sat history IGCSE, for instance. As IGCSE is international, not all students would have taken say, WW2 in Europe as a topic. So out of 20 options, they chose the ones they had studied. Papers could be set out like this and students would answer questions on the topics they had covered?

What do people think may happen and when do we think schools will go back?

@ZombieFan - I hadn't even thought of that!

Zombie, no schools won't be able to hike up grades.

Prior attainment of individual student cohorts and prior attainment of the school is considered to stop daft grades and ensure the country's grades and individual schools stay in line with usual.

Any school inflating grades will be down graded.

I worry about the 11+ exam in September. DS is due to sit it and his school hasn’t been doing online learning - just sent through a list of maths websites and suggestions like “write a book review”. None of it is marked and we haven’t had any interaction with teachers since school closed. DH and I also working full time at home.

However neighbouring primary schools are offering online lessons, virtual assemblies, teachers marking work via email.

I really wish the 11+ scores would be weighted to take into account which schools have done online learning and which children have still been attending school (yes they haven’t been following curriculum but if they are finding the maths website tricky, the teacher will be much better placed to explain the sums than I can). Sadly I can’t see that happening.

In fairness schools shouldn't be providing 11+ prep.

I wonder if schools will be considering lack of engagement when deciding if pupils can progress to Year 13

I think it would be very unfair unless they've not shown engagement through the whole of Y12. But some people just need face to face. If someone said "I really don't like working from home, I need to be in the office to concentrate and get into work mode" no adult would bat an eyelid. But if a teenager needs that too, they're "unengaged" and don't deserve to go into Y13.

I think it'll end up being predicted grades/ teacher assessments like it is this year I hope not as it will discriminate against those who are better at terminal exams.

I do expect more problems for the current Y12s (and younger), not least because of the looming crashing out of Brexit transition at the end of the year which everyone has forgotten about but could have serious implications for food supply among other things.

I am sure it must be infuriating not to receive feedback from the kids, I need to give my ds a kick up the bottom to make sure he does his work on time, but I would be very angry if I thought colleges/sixth forms were throwing kids out at the end of Y12 because they hadn't engaged properly during this period. Not everyone is perfect.

It won't be possible for 11+ scores of GCSE grades etc to be adjusted to reflect which schools provided more in this period. It just isn't possible. Plus, both of these are raw attainment, not something which can be adjusted for social factors, such as university offers.

It reminds the case that the more affluent usually are impacted less by crises than those are less affluent. The gap will widen in educational terms and efforts/resources might be put into this, but in terms of compensating for the widening during Covid, it will be very hard to do that.

The thing is that not all Independnet schools are doing a brilliant job and not all state schools or state schools I D E priced areas are doing a poor job. The provision is more nuanced and almost seemingly random. In general though, those paying are getting live lessons and regular marking - parents have not been happy to pay full fees for provision from home in many cases and schools are keen to keep parents happy, to provide something worth paying for and stop people giving notice for September. There is perhaps a stronger self-preservation instinct to step up, plus more freedom plus more resources to start with. That said, as always many state schools do just as well.

If you are pushing your children to do the work set, they are getting more than many, who probably are literally doing nothing and really are sliding further behind.

Keep pushing the quality literature - it's never wasted.

Some kids are unable to engage:
SN, SEN, difficult family situations, lack of a laptop, lack of broadband, lack of a printer/ink, paper, pens, being a carer, an unwell parent etc etc
There will be lots of deserving kids falling through the gap right now

Prior attainment of individual student cohorts and prior attainment of the school is considered to stop daft grades and ensure the country's grades and individual schools stay in line with usual
Then what is the point in teachers awarding grades? Why not just award grades on a schools prior attainment and ignore teachers input?

@zombie. Teacher assessment is for individuals. We know them and are best placed to assess what they would get. Overall data helps to identify problems/anomalies/inconsistencies and prevent fraudulent grading which is rare but would happen. It doesn't help with individuals.

You either know all this really and are deliberately goading or should stop being so narky when questioning people who clearly know more than you about how it all works. That's the third time I've seen you be arsey when someone has made a perfectly reasonable point.

Then what is the point in teachers awarding grades? Why not just award grades on a schools prior attainment and ignore teachers input?

How? Stick the kids in alphabetical order? Height order?

Prior attainment gives us an idea of how the cohort will perform in a particular school (if it’s big enough to have reasonable prior data) It doesn’t tell us how an individual child will perform. For example, when I’m allocating grades at the moment, I know around 30% of my A-Level cohort would attain A*-A grade in a typical year. My job is to tell the exam board which 30% I would expect to get them this year.

Teacher assessment is for individuals. We know them and are best placed to assess what they would get

Sure, give private schools a years notice and you can be sure that they will have a ton of evidence that their students are all a very high achieving year group. Wont give then any advantage at all

Zombie - selective schools don’t need a year to provide evidence that they have high achieving students. They already have it - otherwise known as the GCSE / A-level results over the last five or ten years.

For selective schools, the grades achieved tend to be less variable because they select at 11 plus (or CE or sixth form).

So, take for instance, the school one of mine goes to. For the last three years, GCSE results were 92% 9/8/7 (or A*/A prior to numerical grades). So, if they suddenly award 98% 9/8/7 this summer, it will look very fishy.

The situation is further simplified by the fact that there are reasonably stable statistics per subject. So for maths GCSE, if 50% have generally achieved a grade 9 or high A* over the last 5 years, then teachers have to decide which students would fall into that 50% this year. Maybe they could push it a little and award 55% of 9 grades, yes. Nothing wrong with giving borderline candidates the benefit of the doubt and I expect the moderators won’t question this too much. But they definitely can’t suddenly come out and award 80% a 9 in maths. Same for any other subject.

The same would apply next year if grades were based on teacher assessment, though I do grant you, students would have the opportunity to put a lot more effort into general topic tests and coursework over the year. If anything, you may have situations where the whole school would have evidence if coursework worthy of a 9, but still only half of them would get it.

Teacher assessment for at least part of the marks is the only way forward. It looks like learning will not be able to go back to normal until the end of the year. Changing the grade boundaries would only increase the advantage for those at the top and increase the disadvantage for those at the bottom and would be completely unfair.

I feel really sad for the year 10 and 12s. They've already been guinea pigs for the new 1-9 system, they've had to adapt to a new curriculum with almost zero coursework and they are already doing period 6 every day to catch up on learning pre pandemic.

I think there will be a similar process to this year where teacher assessments will be used to assess grades next year.

Year 10 are the second year going through 1-9 (in some subjects the third year) - they aren’t the guinea pig year. Year 12 have a stable (!) a-level though there are other new qualifications.

I don’t know of any schools offering a period 6 to these students so that’s a generalisation based on limited experience.

How is offering a period 6 extending anything though? Most schools have 7 periods as standard as it is.

The private schools use dif (easier) exam boards so that might be a way to separate state/non state grades?

Our school has 5 periods, each of an hour.
A 'period 6' would in theory add 20% to taught hours.

Our school (comprehensive) certainly hasn't been extending the school day up to now for current y10s, and were happily getting through the curriculum.

How they need to adjust GCSEs will depend on what happens with y10/12 schools returning. Until they know at say Oct half term what has actually happened there is not point imo any decisions being made.

Newgirls - that’s simply not true about independents using easier exam boards? Which are the “easier” exam boards anyway? Edexcel, Cambridge, AQA?

If you mean IGCSE, I have DC in 3 different schools who have done all sorts and I can most definitely confirm that the IGCSE is not easier! For a start, they are being measured against students in China and elsewhere where standards are on another level, frankly. Even within IGCSE there is IGCSE Edexcel and IGCSE Cambridge. I would say the IGCSE has more content for History and languages and definitely the IGCSE Edexcel maths was ridiculous last year. I think 40% was a 9 on the second higher paper and a lot of pupils could barely get beyond the first page which was very off-putting. They all came out in shock. I generally can’t do the IGCSE maths past about Year 9, to be honest. I have another one in an independent where they do all AQA and I wouldn’t say it’s easier, but there does seem to be noticeably less content.

Yes igces - unis base offers on them being less rigorous.

One obvious way (as mentioned by a previous poster but I think only one) to make up a month of missed time is to push the exams back a month, so they run mid June to mid July. It will mean they have to be marked in a shorter time period but the exam boards would have several months to train up whomever does marking.
My daughter, Y10, is at a private school and for some reason they have shortened the day to five one hour periods, but have extended the summer term by two weeks, making up for the extended Easter break. So now her school day runs 8.40-3pm, rather than to 4.30 (they've shortened lunch as clubs used to meet then but now are after school). But even with all the advantages she has with full online learning, she is worried that they will be behind on the syllabus. Plus more hands on courses - art, DT, drama, science, are not easy to replicate remotely.
She has commented that the grade bands will possibly be lower, and is taking some comfort in that. And she is aware that a few of her friends in other schools are getting much less 'class time'.
So I do think the students own stresses around exams will be amplified.
No easy answers, the schools and exam boards must be tearing their hair out trying to resolve this dilemma as fairly as possible.

Newgirls - where is the evidence for that?

Unis make contextual offers, yes. But it’s not based on this or that GCSE exam board. How would they even know what GCSE board/s your school did anyway. They don’t ask for GCSE certificates. Many schools use a combination of exam boards. It’s not the case that all independents do IGCSE anyway. Far from it. In fact, unis are not even that bothered about GCSEs at all. They just want the specified A-level or IB results. Some schools do PreU instead of A-levels.

They can’t possibly treat IGCSEs differently to other boards. They have students applying from all over the world with all kinds of school-leaver qualifications. The differences between IGCSE and AQA, or Cambridge and EdExcel are neither here nor there in the scheme of things.

I think what you must mean is “contextual offers”. There is basically a national list of schools that are seen as deserving of contextual offers and, if you attended one of these schools, you may be eligible for an offer at say, ABB rather than AAA which is absolutely fair enough. Contextual offers are also made to students who live in certain postcodes and there are other factors such as whether they have been in care etc. But they most definitely don’t make contextual offered based on what GCSE exam board you happened to sit when you were 16.

but the exam boards would have several months to train up whomever does marking.

Usually teachers and ex teachers. Depending on qualifications there aren't always enough markers anyway so recruiting more could be tricky.

selective schools don’t need a year to provide evidence that they have high achieving students. They already have it
wonderwhatnext So your saying private school students are all so high achieving that their teachers would never spend a year 'collecting' proof that they were actually even better?

Even if teachers were asked for predicted grades. This year they have been asked "what grade would they have achieved if they had actually sat the exam?". So doing that next year, assuming teachers were honest, they would have to mark disadvantaged children down. Because had they actually done the exam, according to you, they would have done worst.

So whats the point? The only solution which could never be used would be to just give all disadvantaged students a grade higher than they would have achieved if they had sat the exam. And what kind of incentive is that to help them learn?

Zombie - I’m not following your liiic to be honest. I’m not really sure what else to say here.

I’m not saying private school students are all so high-achieving I’m saying selective schools, state or independent, will have, on average, higher grades than those schools, state or private, not selective at all. But this is obvious, surely.

Of course teachers would collect evidence of performance. But take a state grammar school which year on year achieves 50% grade 9s in maths, for instance. If the school suddenly award 100% 9 grades for maths via teacher assessment, then the moderators will notice and grades will likely be moderated down for that school.