A’Level disasters 😔😣

[OverTheRainbow88]

Any other schools been majorly hit?

It does seem strange course work was not taken into account.

I honestly think it would have been better to have got A level students sitting exams through August and results would have been back by beginning of October and uni courses started then.

@caringcarer yes but if you flunk aN exam that’s a whole lot easier to rationalise and come to terms with. Not a nice experience but fundamentally your own fault.

The comparison with UCAS predictions is invalid because these a submitted 9 months and are aspirational with a view to getting university offers. The CAG In contrast which were submitted this summer were calculated according to Ofqual parameters and were much more robust and of course based on the whole years work.

Now is as good as time as any to learn that everything in life doesn’t always go as you hoped. This year couldn’t have been foreseen by anyone.

I think these you people are pretty clear everything in life doesn’t go as you hoped given they’ve missed their last term at school, associates leaving events, prom etc, possibly their 18th celebrations etc etc.

It’s not the end of the world, and they will need to bounce back from this but bloody hell surely they’re allowed some time for disappointment and upset about something they’ve worked for despite lockdown. In fact, in light of all the changes and restrictions it’s possible these results will feel even bigger than they usually would - it’s fine to talk about other options but let folk be upset even just for a minute.

Resilience is about growth in the midst of adversity, it’s not about pretending the adversity doesn’t matter.

DS got AAA in his mocks, he has received BBB. He also won a prize in two of his subjects. I was about to ask him if he wanted to appeal when I could hear a keyboard being typed on with great gusto. He was already writing his appeal.

@merrymouse

They don’t have to just accept these grades - they can appeal or sit the exam in the autumn.

How? Where? With what help? Has the government announced additional teaching for children who haven't been in school since March? Or are you assuming that the parents will facilitate all of this? What about children who don't have parents who can sort this out for them?

My daughters Grammar has already come out and say no support or school time for resists. Even though 70% of them have had grades reduced.

Reading through these posts, I think DD has been one of the lucky ones, basically getting awarded her realistic predictions.

What she didn’t have to factor in was sitting at least one exam with crippling period pains, which knocked two grades off the affected GCSEs.

Bet that wasn’t in any government algorithm.

Usually if you’ve got 5 students capable of achieving an A, you might only have 4 achieve it on the day. Maybe they didn’t revise one area enough or stuffed it up.

But all of those students WERE capable of getting an A.

This is why teacher predictions can look generous. Because they reflect what the teacher knows the pupils are capable of, but they cannot predict who will underperform on the day.

It does matter. It isn’t all about universities. My son was applying for a particular career which he is passionate about. He only needed 2 Cs. Very achievable we thought as his report grades based on assessments were ACC. Instead he has come out with CDE. So that’s it he has to resit one in less than 55 days with no extra help, no intensive revision by the school and at the moment not sure of the syllabus. It is so disappointing for him. 7 years of aiming for this mid career and it all comes down to not revising for his mocks and a computer programme. If it had been an exam I could have said it was his fault.

@Jellycatspyjamas

Now is as good as time as any to learn that everything in life doesn’t always go as you hoped. This year couldn’t have been foreseen by anyone.

I think these you people are pretty clear everything in life doesn’t go as you hoped given they’ve missed their last term at school, associates leaving events, prom etc, possibly their 18th celebrations etc etc.

It’s not the end of the world, and they will need to bounce back from this but bloody hell surely they’re allowed some time for disappointment and upset about something they’ve worked for despite lockdown. In fact, in light of all the changes and restrictions it’s possible these results will feel even bigger than they usually would - it’s fine to talk about other options but let folk be upset even just for a minute.

Resilience is about growth in the midst of adversity, it’s not about pretending the adversity doesn’t matter.

Exactly this. It’s all very well for me with 30 years under my belt since I left school to say that it isn’t the end of the world, there are still options and it will all work out OK but I’d have been completely crushed and knocked sideways at the injustice that this has happened to me. It’s fair enough to get a lower grade when you mess up an exam but to wholesale completely fuck up the results of a complete generation of kids is not on. Some will have to change course and career plans. Some might not be able to make those plans at all now. And even if they do get an appeal they’ll never get back that moment of opening the results and the joy of seeing how their hard work paid off.

@Coffeeandbeans- that’s it
Exams are not a perfect solution. However, if students would have taken the exam they would have felt that they had been given the opportunity to prove themselves.
However, the fact that you are at the mercy of a computer must be demoralising .
Many have lost university places, through know fault of their own. The appeals system will not work for these people .

Bet that wasn’t in any government algorithm.

It would have been if they wanted to recreate the same grades as last year. However, I can’t see how it could have been fairly accounted for by a teacher.

It’s impossible to fairly compare the grades a cohort is capable of and the grades any cohort gets on an exam on a particular day.

There is bound to be a difference, but an algorithm can’t fairly recreate that.

Still lots more than normal got predicted a grades. It’s one thing to say teachers get confused due to capability but folks need to remember grades were predicted at 30 percent higher than any other year.

This wasn’t some situation where it was a few percent. This was a situation where grades were predicted at thirty percent higher than ever achieved. So stunningly wrong.

Now we could argue was the motivation to help the pupil. Or to help the teacher, who got higher results for their class, or to help the school look better and have a record year, but thirty percent improvement in performance is enormous and needed to be fixed due to the knock on impact,

Seventy percent of grades weren’t touched. Thirty percent were. Some individuals will be penalised through that and it needs to be managed via appeal. But it was always going to happen due to the sheer scale of the over exaggerated grades and the correction that needed to be done. And in such a short period.

If schools had kept to average performances and made the tough decisions themselves this would never have happened. The root cause is without doubt the sheer scale of the over performance predicted by schools.

Herc posted this on another thread. It explains it well.

twitter.com/samfr/status/1294032966293827585?s=21

I think students studying some of the creative art subjects are being particularly disadvantaged relative to other students - essentially because they have no opportunity to resit the exam in the autumn. This option is closed to them, and them only.

My dd's Graphics 'exam' would have consisted of several weeks of prep which is marked as part of the exam (i.e reflective writing on the graphics project you intend to deliver during the exam, research into creative influences from other established graphic artists and other sources who have delivered similar projects, graphic 'experiments' and initial work ups etc - followed by delivering the finished product during the exam which consists of a week of studio time in exam conditions

The 5/6 week work up plus the full week long examination can not be offered as an exam 'resit' in the Autumn so dd has no opportunity to prove that her grade was wrong

It’s one thing to say teachers get confused due to capability

Correct about their pupil’s capability, but unable to predict the effect of exam specific circumstances on individual results.

Average performances will be affected by things that are outside the pupil’s control e.g. illness and things that are difficult for a teacher to fairly predict e.g. how much revision will be done.

Over prediction was inevitable because exam performance is a flawed measure of capability.

The bizarre thing for us is though my daughter didn’t get what she wanted or was capable of. She’s been offered a place through clearing at a far better uni. Explain that one.

If schools had kept to average performances

I did : still got downgraded. It is not as simple as you would like it to be.

twitter.com/a_weatherall/status/1294012623776817158?s=21

This works through the maths in a straightforward way that explains why some of the grade decisions are bonkers.

@lovelyupnorth

The bizarre thing for us is though my daughter didn’t get what she wanted or was capable of. She’s been offered a place through clearing at a far better uni. Explain that one.

A lot of unis are desperate for students because their international students applications have fallen through the floor!

That's brilliant smile that is exactly what happened to my class...

Bouncing back infers zero consequences and an immediate joyful jump back up.

That might be what it infers you you but it’s not what I mean - which is clear from the rest of my post. The reality is kids (and parents) will need to find a way through this, I’m not suggesting it will be easy but the world will keep turning and life will move on. It always does.

Yes there will be young people who don’t get their choice of university or the course they wanted and they will need time to process that, and to figure out what comes next. Resilience is found in that very process of working it all out - it’s not a quick or easy thing. I was challenging a poster who was suggesting that young people upset about this needed to be more resilient (meaning they’d find another way and not be upset), ie I was agreeing with you.

Minus the U. But it was the rounding that did for my lot.