To think that the Scottish government should not have caved over exam results?

[Notthemessiah]

So the Scottish government have caved in and have given their students the grades that their teachers have said they should get, despite the fact that overall they are massively inflated compared to previous years actual real results.

AIBU to think that this will massively penalise those pupils at schools where teachers were actually honest and realistic about their students likely results and instead benefit those who chose fantasy figures either through actual deceit, sheer wishful thinking or believing that the grades would be downgraded by some kind of system anyway.

Everyone was bleating about how it was unfair that pupils going to worse-performing schools got their results downgraded, but the stats don't lie - theirs were much more inflated compared to previous years that those from better-performing schools and it's ridiculous to think that all of them were suddenly going to improve this year.

It was always going to be an unfair system whatever happened but this just turns this year's results into a total joke - how universities, employers etc are expected to interpret them and compare them to other years is anyone's guess.

I hope that this doesn't happen in England and Wales too but it's hard to see how it can't - otherwise it puts Scottish students at a big advantage over their English and Welsh compatriots.

Fairest thing to do would be to sit exams next year and hold them back 12 months

Fair to who?
The children who need to move on with the next stage of their lives?
The parents who need to fund an additional year of education - difficult enough if low income?
The schools who'd need to find a whole year group's extra classrooms and staff, and exam halls and invigilators next summer?

Why didn't they just go on mock grades, nothing to do with teachers predictions?

I'd initially thought is seemed unfair that deprived areas had bigger reductions than affluent areas but apparently the stats do back that up.

Sturgeon seems to cave far too easily has she no backbone? If I was a nat I'd be worried about her wibbling.

*So we either go with a previous cohorts results and apply it to this cohort. Not ideal because people are individuals and anyone who teaches knows every class is different.

Or, we go with cags, predicted by the teachers who know the kids, who have a vested interest in them doing well as will naturally lean towards the better grade to support them.

Rock vs hard place. No winning option unfortunately. *

Except, if we look at damage to the mis-graded students in the two cases, the latter is unlikely to lead to someone getting grades below where they would be, so no chance of being graded low and missing out on a university (or military entry, or professional entry etc.) whereas the first does lead to that risk. In that case kids graded low suffer significantly.

Balanced against kids graded too high - the costs will be born by employers, universities etc. who will have students weaker than they believed, still a cost, still a big negative of course, but much less likely to have individual damage - here the harm is spread between institutions more able to absorb it.

So I don't believe it really was a rock and a hard place.

They should have let the kids sit their exams, it wouldn't have been to difficult.

But they'd have not completed the courses. A lot of actual teaching still goes on from March to May these days. The content for many A level and GCSEs are now so big they teach right up to the very end.
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And a lot of the coursework wasn't completed either - all three of DD's A levels had outstanding coursework which contributed to a decent amount of the grade.

@KilljoysDutch

Totally agree.

I was very surprised when they announced that the results were going to be awarded by teachers, right at the start because:

1. If you work across many schools (like I do) you see a wide wide range of teaching and learning. The system needs standardization because that range is glaring obvious what some people think is acceptable teaching.
2. I was a really good (as in morally upstanding teacher) and I know that I would have done everything in my power to give my students as many marks as possible - and if me, one of the good ones would do that, then I draw the conclusion- it cannot come down to the teachers predictions and assessment alone.

I am very very surprised that the whole of the school year was not delayed and that Year 13 and Year 11 sat the real exams in November. Delay the first year of Uni to January.

Give the rest of the school two weeks off and sit the exams, socially distanced in classrooms, with teachers overseeing them/put the exams online somehow..From March to November they could have come up with a system.

@KilljoysDutch

Funny how much of an uproar there is now it's advantaging poorer students then there was when the more wealthy students had the advantage. Almost like the poor need to remember their place and not get ideas above their station.

I don't think this is true at all. The divide is still there.

I think if they are saying results were inflated it was across the board. I just think those at the top probably also had inflated grades but being downgraded affected them less due to postcode and benefits them more due to teacher assessment.

killjoysdutch
You've nailed it !

The way that the algorithm calculated it meant that many children did not get appropriate marks based on their actual ability: they got downgraded marks based on their schools past performance: and that was much more likely to happen to a child from a deprived area

Ok Dylan can you explain why the pass rate for kids in the most deprived areas went up by 20% between last year and this year according to teacher predictions but only up by 10% in the least deprived areas?

They got downgraded marks because their school’s past performance suggested that the teachers were predicting more optimistically than was justified.

If you have a traditionally poorly performing school with a prior pass rate of 40% and the teacher assessed grades put this year’s pass rate at 60%, and you have a better performing school with a prior pass rate of 55% whose teacher assessed grades put this year’s pass rate at 60%, what you’re saying is that it is entirely reasonable to say that both schools should get a pass rate of 60% this year.

What you should be thinking is ‘hmmm, the 40% school seems to have taken the piss a bit’.

It’s only because the 40% school is in a deprived area that people are kicking off.

The problem now is that is the rest of the Uk don't make amendments then it could place the Scottish students at an unfair disadvantage to the rest - which can affect university acceptances, etc. Or conversely put them at a disadvantage because universities don't trust the results

Mock grades aren't fair either - not unless children know beforehand that they could be used in this way. Many schools do mocks at different points in the year, some do them as open book, some do them immediately after a holiday, some do hem at the start of Year 13, others later on. The mocks are often not full exams, and can be based on previous exams which can give an unfair disadvantage. Most children go up a grade, if not more, in mocks. My own A level - one subject I went up 4 grades between mocks and the real thing.
And mocks often dont take into account the coursework elements either.

Is it your child who didn’t get the grade they deserve, OP?

It would appear this OP is not actually IN Scotland.

@caringcarer

Fairest thing to do would be to sit exams next year and hold them back 12 months.

My DS 1 and 2, currently in years 11 and 13, would most definitely not agree. Are you suggesting all uni places be deferred?!

Ds gets his gcse results next week.

We also have his printed mock results grades as his school do this.

I've told him to keep both sets together for future if his are downgraded as any discrepancies will be glaringly obvious and it should be obvious what his true ability is.

But truth be told if by magic he relieves higher ill be telling him to burn the evidence

Totally agree with ITSGETTINGWEIRD

derxa - I doubt it will happen that way though, as it will be difficult to reject a student who has met the entry requirements, regardless of where they come from in the country. No way are universities going to suddenly change their entry requirement to say "we will take a BBB from England and Wales, but if you are from Scotland we will up that requirement to an AAB.

@caringcarer

Fairest thing to do would be to sit exams next year and hold them back 12 months.

Who would pay for this? Would we need to hold back every year group because the S4/5 didn't move up? Would S6 repeat instead of going to uni/college/work?

But it's not about the young people, or their results- it's about Sturgeon fearing bad publicity and loss of votes.

Also, students could have sat the exams even if they hadn't finished the course because there is something called 'scaling' that happens where the raw results are scaled so that the same percentages of students get awarded grades each year. If as a whole the raw results were lower no one would have been disadvantaged as it gets translated into a percentage. It's hard to explain but it does work.

www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/heartache-straight-students-rejected-top-13674608

@noblegiraffe

The way that the algorithm calculated it meant that many children did not get appropriate marks based on their actual ability: they got downgraded marks based on their schools past performance: and that was much more likely to happen to a child from a deprived area

Ok Dylan can you explain why the pass rate for kids in the most deprived areas went up by 20% between last year and this year according to teacher predictions but only up by 10% in the least deprived areas?

They got downgraded marks because their school’s past performance suggested that the teachers were predicting more optimistically than was justified.

If you have a traditionally poorly performing school with a prior pass rate of 40% and the teacher assessed grades put this year’s pass rate at 60%, and you have a better performing school with a prior pass rate of 55% whose teacher assessed grades put this year’s pass rate at 60%, what you’re saying is that it is entirely reasonable to say that both schools should get a pass rate of 60% this year.

What you should be thinking is ‘hmmm, the 40% school seems to have taken the piss a bit’.

It’s only because the 40% school is in a deprived area that people are kicking off.

Yes! What I was very badly trying to say!

Ds school have a 87% grade 4 and above maths and English pass rate. Above NA.

Other schools in area get 55%, 57% and 61%.

It would be very obvious if this year they all suddenly submitted 85% pass rate!

But my other concern for those other schools is if the submit 58, 61 and 64 as an example they may get downgraded by an algorithm but ds school submitting - say 88% - wouldn't.

And that's where my lesson always concern would be for the lower achieving schools. Ds school may stand and the others downgraded enough that pupils who really would have passed don't.

Then they want to charge £50 per re sit.

I agree with the OP. What I would have done is for key subjects given pupils the opportunity to sit the exam once it is safe to do so, and required universities not to discriminate on the basis that an exam was technically re-sat. If you were only to say have re-sits for English Language and Maths, I am sure a way to host them and maintain social distancing could have been found. Use village halls, community centres for example if a school hall could not fit everyone in.

YANBU

Many schools reigned in their predictions because we all knew in advance that results were expected to be more-or-less in line with prior performance. Moving the goal posts after the event will benefit children in schools that were -unrealistic- optimistic, and disadvantage children whose schools played it by the book.

Do you honestly believe kids in affluent areas get their results as a result of true ability?

Of course they don't. But that's what the exam system measures - results of exams. A grade A is a grade A is a grade A.

Exam grades are not there to address social inequality - there are other mechanisms for that.

Imagine it was a driving theory test. The pass mark is 65%. But as those from deprived areas find it more difficult their pass mark is set at 50%. Is that fair? Are they as safe despite not knowing what half the road signs mean?