In the end the CAG didn’t make any difference. The key think was rank order and the proportions of students who had got each grade over the previous 3 year average in the school.
So if historically a class of 20 averaged 2 *s, 2As, 4Bs, 3Cs, 9 Es then if you were this year ranked at no 12, no matter if your CAG was A, B, C, D or E you would get an E. it was about using the tank order to maintain the historic ratios - where it was fully applied. It can explain why some students might be downgraded by 1 grade and others by several.
Students mostly don’t know the rank order they were put in, plus they often don’t realise how many students historically get low grades in their school. This explains it on a macro level.
The more the CAGs didn’t fit with the a schools historic averages, the more likely significant downgrading was.
It felt even worse for many students too, because their point of reference and expectation wasn’t the CAG which they didn’t know until yesterday, even if then, but their ucas grade which wasn’t involved in the process. Many CAGs will have been lower than ucas predictions because schools know only 16% achieve those grades - they are wildly optimistic - partly to help students get offers and partly because although schools often know roughly x% will get certain grades they don’t know exactly who, so need to be generous. So the CAGs from most schools were too generous (and it seems even more generous in relation to historic averages) in non selective schools, so downgrading happened and needed to happen even more strongly than in schools which had only been slightly generous in relation to historic averages.
But for the students, the heart of the disappointment lies in the gap that they think about being the one between ucas and what the boards awarded ——even bigger a gap than the CAG and awarded grade.
Students often don’t realise how few students achieve their ucas prediction. Taking exMs and realising they didn’t go brilliantly helps calibrate expectations down a bit, but there was none of that this year. Gov kept saying students would get what they deserved and in student minds this was the ucas prediction. No wonder there was disappointment.
And clearly errors have been made on an individual school basis with historic averages not being delivered this year.
But even if historic averages had been delivered to each school, or slightly better (and overall grades are up this year and the disadvantaged into uni in higher numbers more than ever) there was always going to be huge disappointment because students had in mind their inflated ucas grades and the system could never deliver those without grade inflation of probably over 25%. Even if the CAGs had been used the inflation would have been over 10%.
Government knows we can’t have inflation of 10% and schools know too, but parents and students don’t see the bigger picture or even have enough info to understand that the A grade predicted to ucas was extremely optimistic, the child was ranked 10/30 and given a CAG of B, but that in that school students below the top 25% haven’t got above a C for the last 3 years, so the system will deliver a C. If they had taken the exam, actually a C is what they probably would have got....but we don’t know for sure. But the key is that in their mind, they thought the government were saying they would get the grade they deserved and it was an A. A massive gap in understanding and expectation.
And the Press are disingenuous. They know how the system worked and that more have got higher grades than ever, that schools in disadvantaged areas were more likely to inflate their CAGs even more, so that’s why they were downgraded and they know that ucas grades are achieved by less than 20% of students....but they are feeding the rage and that students have been cheated.
Most people when they think about it realise this year group weren’t 10% cleverer than previous years. But it’s hard to think about the bigger picture when students have had 6 months to feel they will get their ucas grades, plus vitally have lost all control over the final grade. Even though most in an exam would have got their CAG or below, if taking an e am there was still the POSSIBILITY of better, and that loss of possibility however remote, is hard to come to terms with, because for many it didn’t feel remote but a massive improvement they were going to make.