A’Level disasters 😔😣

[OverTheRainbow88]

Any other schools been majorly hit?

@sunglasses123 individuals cannot appeal , only a school can appeal and the allowed grounds are very restricted so for many there will be no option to appeal

And for those who say the exam should have been sat....MN were screaming at schools to close. The teachers disappeared in many cases (my two friends children and my two nephews were left with next to nothing to do). The Head at my friends school claimed that they couldnt do anything regarding Zoom classes as some students didnt have broadband and it wouldnt be fair and also teachers didnt want to appear on Zoom calls because some students used their images to put onto porn sites apparently!! In the meantime teachers were on full pay (and I speak as a child of a now long retired teacher).

@sunglasses123

Bluntness is 100% correct. You cannot give everyone A* and A's. That is a silly suggestion. Next year's A Level students would then claim they have missed 6 months of a 2 year course and it goes on and on over the years. You would get a DDD student for example going to somewhere like Exeter or Bristol with say an over inflated BBB and struggling massively with the course. They would probably drop out. The universities wouldnt cope and I speak as someone who didnt go to university as in my day there wasnt the aspiration to attend from my bog standard sec modern.

What it has shown sadly is that some schools have used this situation for their ends to social engineer their pupils and themselves which wont end well for either side.

As I have mentioned many times. If you really think your child has been misrepresented then get the evidence and appeal. If there is no evidence then I am struggling to see what anyone can do.

Have you not read that individual parents/pupils cannot appeal. The schools have to and they may not want to bother. Exams boards don't communicate with parents.

You would get a DDD student for example going to somewhere like Exeter or Bristol with say an over inflated BBB and struggling massively with the course. They would probably drop out.

You will get that anyway - this is an exercise in getting the right numbers, not getting the right pupils. As well as that, pupils haven't been in school properly since March. Many won't be in a position to pick up a university course in September.

As I have mentioned many times. If you really think your child has been misrepresented then get the evidence and appeal. If there is no evidence then I am struggling to see what anyone can do.

And again, the children who have parents who will fight their corner aren't really the issue.

Also you cannot just. ‘ use your mock result’ . There is as yet no guidance but it is likely that the school may be able to use your mock result as grounds for appeal , and that’s as far as it goes.

@sunglasses123

And for those who say the exam should have been sat....MN were screaming at schools to close. The teachers disappeared in many cases (my two friends children and my two nephews were left with next to nothing to do). The Head at my friends school claimed that they couldnt do anything regarding Zoom classes as some students didnt have broadband and it wouldnt be fair and also teachers didnt want to appear on Zoom calls because some students used their images to put onto porn sites apparently!! In the meantime teachers were on full pay (and I speak as a child of a now long retired teacher).

I was one who wanted schools to close. However I thought they should open for exams and if the government hadn't been so slow to lockdown in the first place it would have be possible, as it was in Germany and other countries. This was not an unavoidable shit show.

Have you not read that individual parents/pupils cannot appeal. The schools have to and they may not want to bother. Exams boards don't communicate with parents.

I don’t even think it’s that they may not want to bother, but the cost may be an issue for some schools.

DD1 has a decent uni offer which was her back up option. Her HT has said they will appeal on principle all of the results they disagree with (their rankings seem to have been ignored), but some schools may not be able to afford to do that. They may have to select pupils who need the appeals the most for cost reasons

Pease - you are giving up already. What do you want? You speak to your Head of Year, find out what needs to happen. I recognise that you cannot appeal yourself but what is the alternative - leave it?

Having said that - where are the teachers inputs in this? If I was a teacher and had a pupil who was being unfairly treated I would be doing everything I could to fight and assist that person.

Some teachers I am afraid to say have caused this by over inflating the grades. If I had put a student on say an A and it came back as a C I would definitely have something to say about it unless of course I had inflated it in the first place with no real evidence.

What it has shown sadly is that some schools have used this situation for their ends to social engineer their pupils and themselves which wont end well for either side

This, with the greatest of respect, is total bollocks.

And this And for those who say the exam should have been sat....MN were screaming at schools to close. The teachers disappeared in many cases (my two friends children and my two nephews were left with next to nothing to do). The Head at my friends school claimed that they couldnt do anything regarding Zoom classes as some students didnt have broadband and it wouldnt be fair and also teachers didnt want to appear on Zoom calls because some students used their images to put onto porn sites apparently!! In the meantime teachers were on full pay (and I speak as a child of a now long retired teacher) is a massive rehash of the eleventy billion MN threads explaining at painful length exactly what lazy bastards teachers are.

🙄🙄🙄🙄

As I have mentioned many times. If you really think your child has been misrepresented then get the evidence and appeal. If there is no evidence then I am struggling to see what anyone can do.

And again, the children who have parents who will fight their corner aren't really the issue.

Parents can’t appeal, only the schools can

If the school hasn’t got the budget or hasn’t got a HT who will then pupils don’t have an appeal route

@Bouledeneige

My DS just told me of a friend at school who was not A star material but decided he wanted to apply for Oxbridge. He therefore asked his teachers to give him good predictions which they duly did. They predicted A* AA (or thereabouts) and he was offered a place - a realistic assessment would have been more like BBB. Today he got his results and got ABC and apparently the college accepted him on the basis of his predictions. I'm not sure if thats entirely correct in detail but its the gist (DS gets arsey if I keep asking details!!).

However, I'm not sure that if its true that its done the student any favours. Oxford is very hard work and many excellently qualified students find it extremely taxing. This friend might really struggle to keep up if he doesn't bring his A game. So I'm not sure inflated grading really does anyone a favour. Just an anecdote - not trying to rub salt in any wounds.

I got awful grades in A level and Oxford still accepted me. A tutor actually told me they didn’t give a damn about A level grades.

I did very well there, my A level grades made no difference.

UCAS end of year report for 2019

Have a look at chapter 8 in this document for info on just how inaccurate predicted grades are. There is a massive amount of unfairness in this years results but it wasnt exactly a fair or transparent system before. "Only 1 in 5 18 year olds met or exceeded their predicted grades in 2019". (Eng, Wales and NI). Yet very many students receive unconditional offers based on these results. It's crazy and it doesn't make sense.

The fact that it's the mid and lower achieving students who are historically given the most inaccurate and over optimistic predictions means that it would make sense that these would be the students who would be hardest hit by 'downgrading' this year.

I fully accept that some parents dont know how to object/couldnt give a toss etc but are those children who have just received their results going to achieve high grades? The occasional one perhaps but there are people who live in such chaos that they just wont/not be able to achieve their potential (whatever that happens to be)

If not the parents - what about the teachers fighting for their pupils?

Having said that - where are the teachers inputs in this? If I was a teacher and had a pupil who was being unfairly treated I would be doing everything I could to fight and assist that person.

Several teachers have posted exactly that on the thread

They’ve probably got fed up of being called unprofessional and lazy by numerous people and stopped contributing. Can’t blame them

And again, the children who have parents who will fight their corner aren't really the issue.

And again, parents can't appeal.

"I think one of the unfair outcomes of this will be that private schools will throw money and resource (not to mention lawyers) at the appeals process whereas state schools simply won't have the resource to do so. So there will be a double whammy given that I assume private schools will have had more of an incentive in the first place to inflate predictions."

I think you're overestimating the wealth of many private schools. The one I work in (not one of the top ones but a name you might recognise) is set to make a £3m loss this year because of reduced summer term fees and other costs. They're also, like many private schools, a charity. They have been hugely affected by the downgrades but certainly don't have the money to start engaging lawyers who will charge tens of thousands.

Surely it's in all schools' interests to produce the best possible grades? Not all private schools are grade-focussed. Many have other USPS.

I got awful grades in A level and Oxford still accepted me. A tutor actually told me they didn’t give a damn about A level grades.

Was this in the 80s?! If so things have changed.

@sunglasses123

I fully accept that some parents dont know how to object/couldnt give a toss etc but are those children who have just received their results going to achieve high grades? The occasional one perhaps but there are people who live in such chaos that they just wont/not be able to achieve their potential (whatever that happens to be)

If not the parents - what about the teachers fighting for their pupils?

This isn’t just about the A* pupils.

The pupils, like DD2’s best mate, who was predicted (CAG before ucas predictions are brought up again) CCC and has been given EEU have been completely fucked over.

They’ve not just had uni offers taken from them, many have had uni at all taken from them

And again, parents can't appeal.

I understand that - I meant 'fight their corner' in a more general sense.

So why did teachers over inflate the grades in some cases?

@mrpumblechook

I got awful grades in A level and Oxford still accepted me. A tutor actually told me they didn’t give a damn about A level grades.

Was this in the 80s?! If so things have changed.

No, in the 90s.

So angry for these kids

What a year to cock up kids futures. They have given up enough.

School has to go ahead now. Pubs will have to shut if cases go up.

We can't fail anymore kids. I'm furious
Have a dd going into yr 10 in sept

FFS - how many times does it need to be said that the CAGs are not the same as UCAS predictions. I personally gave two students lower CAGs than I’d predicted for UCAS because I had an additional 8 months of evidence and UCAS are always aspirational!

They’ve not just had uni offers taken from them, many have had uni at all taken from them

Agree.

It's also not clear how resits would work fairly, unless university places are to be increased in 2021.

We are ok , ds has got into his firm , albeit with slightly lower grades than he thought he could have achieved in an exam .

All I am doing is pointing out that you are factually wrong in advising people to appeal . There is no mechanism to appeal as yet and by the looks of it there is unlikely to be one . Many schools will not be able to afford to appeal they will have to raid current year budgets to do so even if they can fit their concerns into the very restricted permitted grounds. So this is intrinsically unfair.

The evidence was there Ofqual could have investigated cases where the model threw up large differences from the CAG and called for the paperwork. That would be moderation , this is randomised .