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.

And I don’t think many people are understanding why there is a disparity...
If you have 4 students who you think all have about a 75% chance of getting an A grade you would predict them all that grade. In normal exams one of them probably would get the grade below.

No, this is not the case. We had to rank them.

@Witchend. The thing is, popularity does matter in politics. Otherwise your party wouldn’t get voted in.

Laughing at the idea that it was only reversed in order to sway the younger voters; the political parties usually spend all their time targeting the older voters and what they want.

Remember hearing a couple of students complaining about the way the exam grades were going to be awarded - they were brother and sister, one doing O levels and one doing A levels (this was in England). The brother, as I remember, had received an E and an ungraded in is mock exams, but told the interviewer he would have turned it round by the actual exams hmm, his sister said similar, with mock results of c grade and below, she reckoned she had been expecting A grades in her actual exams, because she'd been working hard but it was totally unfair because her grades would now be based on her mock results and her coursework......

I read an article where a boy achieved dreadful grades in his mocks and his mother (the writer) said the plan was that from those grades, they knew how much work he needed to put into the real exams - so if his actual grades were given from the mocks that would be really unfair.

I didn't have much sympathy!

I just can't wrap my head around getting wound up about some kids getting good news today

Unfortunately the good news for some kids means bad news for others. It is absolutely not fair to abandon the moderation after the event.

The whole thing is one massive fuck-up from start to finish. Second fuck-up in two months after the "blended learning" thing.

But the SNP were not going to sit back and accept that children from families in lower income areas, who will be allowed to vote in next summer's Scottish elections, felt hard done by. It's ALL about the votes. Nothing else.

And don't get me started on the "SQA is independent" shite - they must think our heads zip up the back.

What an absolute shitshow.

I’m sorry for the children and pleased that the decision has been reversed. BUT I would really like to hear from the teachers in the most deprived schools why they thought their students would achieve a twenty per cent improvement when compared with each of the previous school years. If this was in any way realistic then the reason for the expected improvement should be widely publicised.
If there’s no valid reason for that expectation it is those teachers, not John Swinney, who should be the target of criticism.

Most our kids move up atleast 2 grades from their mocks to real exams... some even 3-4.

I guess from now on kids may realise they should put in more effort throughout the years than Piss around for years, cram revise, get a tutor and do well!

@noblegiraffe

They bottled it and have destroyed the integrity of the qualifications.

I don’t see England doing the same thing.

I think England will, the Education Secretary will say the grades are fair then by the of August he'll have changed his mind. On the news today one dad is already planning to sue if his darling little cherub grades are lower than he thinks they should be.

From what I can see the system they used was flawed.

They had plenty of time to anticipate this and change. Untried process, which turned people into widgets without a wsy of properly appealing. Has a parent of an A level student who got three As in her mo its quitepossible one will be a B and prevent her going where she needs.

I think their decision was absolutely right. This year's team candidates have had a really shitty deal anyway, it would have been grossly unfair to keep in place the highly arbitrary discounts that were imposed originally.

*mocks and high marks all this year- under this system its quite possible one will be a B.

@cdtaylornats

The appeals process would be useless - no process would work fast enough to get the results before Universities require them. No universities will hold places in case Scottish students hit the required grades.

The whole thing has been a shambles.

Why is Swinney still in a job?

I disagree. Unis already have an extra week to account for appeals this year. They could have been directed to have an extra two weeks, and boards expedited appeals where a uni place is at stake - this already happens and is a tried and tested process.

clearly the mechanisms (whatever they are?) aren't working.

What makes you say that? Unis would have been flexible this year. Making contextual offers is pretty common already. But no one has the chance to see that now.

Agree with OP. What were they doing for all those months anyway? The SQA should have pulled in samples of evidence to back up grading and assessed evidence from any child they planned to downgrade.

@GisAFag why shouldn't parents sue if their DCs haven't been awarded the grades the school predicted they should achieve?

In Scotland I've heard of coursework and course assessments simply not being taken into account when grades were awarded- in some circumstances this was to the pupils benefit, but not in all I would imagine. No one is - I hope - going to be nodding their heads sagely 10 years from now saying well this job applicants exam grades are poor, but remember it was 2020.

FWIW in Scotland I know of quite a few instances where the pupils have received higher grades than were predicted or indeed expected by parents or pupil, and this is at state school. So the grades overall will be a lot higher as no one's going to argue or appeal an upgrade.

highly arbitrary discounts

Whatever else they are, they are not “arbitrary”.

@user1471517900

If you look at the positive side, what it might do is encourage or get someone into further education or a job they might not have previously got. This could help people who wouldn't have previously got a chance.

Are there more places in further education and more jobs then? If not, then they'll be competing against others for the limited places. Surely colleges, employers etc will just inflate their entry requirements too (in the knowledge of this grade inflation), so pupils will be back where they started. Ie if a course provider usually accepts A grade students, but there are so many of them, they change the criteria to A* instead.

OP have you just accused all teachers in schools where the SQA originally changed the results of being dishonest? Seriously? That is out of order.
Does that apply to those whose estimates were upgraded too? Maybe they just hated their classes

@Aragog

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.

But @aragog universities are already making different offers to Scottish students because they sit different numbers of exams- ie your BBB vs AAB example doesn’t work because most Scottish students get offers based on 4 or 5 Highers and possibly also some Advanced Highers taken the year after.

I couldn’t agree more with @Notthemessiah and @MintChocAddict.

This fiasco was clearly avoidable had there been some degree of independent moderation such as spot checks on teacher assessments backed by evidence. I think the issue would have been is that in a lot of cases there is no evidence and that the majority of these assessments would have been shown up for the sham they are. In my view the assessments should still be undertaken so as to identify the scale of this over assessment, and steps taken to re educate teachers who incorrectly allocated grades.

Pupils at schools who did correctly allocate grades will be unfairly prejudiced by this u turn. In a race to the bottom pupils at independent and high performing schools, some by way of bursary or placing request, will lose out on university offers given the contextualised admissions which are skewed towards pupils from lower socio economic backgrounds. It is these high achieving young people who are being discriminated against.

Nicola Sturgeon herself said that results at this level would not be credible, and John Swinney can’t bring himself to say they are on channel 4 news. Clearly they are prepared to put that to one side to pander to those shouting loudest with a view to the election next year to the detriment of society as a whole.

Oh and the SNP's policy of "narrowing the attainment gap" appears to translate as "everyone passes".

I have a child in one of the aforementioned leafy suburbs and he's done well in his Highers. What it means in terms of Uni applications who knows, he has more than he needs for the course he's looking at but who knows.

Grade inflation is definitely a thing - the course I started at in 1990 was looking for BBBB at Higher when I applied, now the exact same course is looking for AAAA.

why shouldn't parents sue if their DCs haven't been awarded the grades the school predicted they should achieve?

Or, for that matter, why shouldn’t parents of a very high achieving student sue because the value of their grades has been reduced?

If you have 4 students who you think all have about a 75% chance of getting an A grade you would predict them all that grade. In normal exams one of them probably would get the grade below. Which one would be impossible to predict when you are likely to be talking about 1-2 marks different

In which case the teachers would’ve ranked them 1 to 4. The student in place one would have a chance of retaining the grade; The student in place four moving down

The only way that the system would have worked this year would be to include the moderation in combination with the predicted grade coming from coursework/mocks/expectations and ranking within the grade

Remove one element of this and the whole thing falls apart

@OverUnderSidewaysDown I couldn’t agree more!

@OverUnderSidewaysDown

I’m sorry for the children and pleased that the decision has been reversed. BUT I would really like to hear from the teachers in the most deprived schools why they thought their students would achieve a twenty per cent improvement when compared with each of the previous school years. If this was in any way realistic then the reason for the expected improvement should be widely publicised. If there’s no valid reason for that expectation it is those teachers, not John Swinney, who should be the target of criticism.

That's my thinking too. If teachers have been over-estimating the results then they need to be challenged for doing that.