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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

AIBU that we must accept many teachers do not have the appropriate professional judgment regarding what students need to achieve for A-Levels?

308 replies

darkwader · 13/08/2020 12:49

There is no reason to suggest that nationally this year’s students are different significantly to previous years – certainly not as demonstrated by GCSE results.

Unclear why, but exam boards have been generous in this years results in all categories, showing higher results than last year, but needing to downgrade almost 40% of teacher assessed grade to remotely be a normal year.

Despite what teachers are claiming, it must be the case that 40% of grades were inflated by teachers – even if the individual students who had these inflated grades are hard to determine. The number of A/A*’s would not jump by 10%.

If every teacher had correctly provided grades, then the national mix would match previous years and no downgrading would have occurred. – so although maybe not the teacher who is specifically involved with a set of students; overall teachers are responsible for the disappointment because of poor grade assessment in the first place in aggregate.

Given that teachers have been predicting grades for university entrance for years and marking coursework in some cases – this shows the unfairness of such a system, as they are incapable of doing so to any degree of accuracy or potentially without bias towards those they know.

Students across this country are now being affected by this incompetence – even if not the students own teacher, the professional standards are to blame.

AIBU to now understand that this professional judgment does not exists for many, many teachers and they need to be evaluated each year before being allowed to be involved in marking and grading?

If AIBU - what am I missing?

OP posts:
SmileEachDay · 13/08/2020 22:03

I’ve also been pondering this - when we mark exams, we arrive at the number of marks, then the grade boundaries are set.

When the algorithm assigned grades, did it award just a grade or did it figure out how many marks a student would get...

Because I know many of our pre CAG discussions were focused around exactly how many marks a student got in mocks and assessments - were they 2 marks into a grade band? Or just under the ceiling for the next etc.

I don’t understand how the algorithm worked out the grades precisely without referencing grade boundaries.

It’s maybe good that I’m an English teacher 🤷🏻‍♀️

Piggywaspushed · 13/08/2020 22:04

Do you think it is faintly possible that the schools that think they got it 'right' were just lucky in having consistent prior data?

In my school 50% of subjects think they got their predictions correct and are patting themselves on the back. The other 50% are cross . Some of them may have lacked guidance on how to rank and predict, I do not doubt but some were, frankly , hard done by.

What that means is, overall, my school's results aren't rogue or weird but there are winners and losers.

HipTightOnions · 13/08/2020 22:11

When the algorithm assigned grades, did it award just a grade or did it figure out how many marks a student would get...

It didn’t think about marks. It worked out how many of each grade a school/subject “should” get, then allocated the grades according to the ranking order.

Hercwasonaroll · 13/08/2020 22:12

Do you think it is faintly possible that the schools that think they got it 'right' were just lucky in having consistent prior data?

I think this is true. Consistent prior data and classes of 20+ are a real advantage.

When the algorithm assigned grades, did it award just a grade or did it figure out how many marks a student would get...

Grades only. The rank order tells you where the student came in your centre. Nothing ranks students country wide.

SmileEachDay · 13/08/2020 22:15

It didn’t think about marks. It worked out how many of each grade a school/subject “should” get, then allocated the grades according to the ranking order

That’s what I thought.

But the rank order without the teacher predictions...such a blunt tool. It must have been obvious that it was going to not work on an individual level, surely?

HipTightOnions · 13/08/2020 22:15

Do you think it is faintly possible that the schools that think they got it 'right' were just lucky in having consistent prior data?

Could be one possibility, but also could simply be a difference in approach. In my school, 2 very similar subjects, large cohorts, consistent prior data, many of the same students: one cautious with CAGs, hardly any adjusted; the other more generous, and virtually all adjusted down.

Piggywaspushed · 13/08/2020 22:17

Surely your SLT should have intervened there?

Piggywaspushed · 13/08/2020 22:19

In some schools, sadly, it ahs been the students' choice of subjects that has affected their outcomes. People doing classics, history and biology in my school were likely to have them all downgraded. If you did all three : ouch.

HipTightOnions · 13/08/2020 22:20

You might instead say that the ranking order was a very precise tool. It forced us to make very difficult decisions, and at least it meant that the students given the lower grade were those who had been performing slightly worse overall (we had to take account of range of data sources) rather than those who just messed up somehow on the exam day.

SmileEachDay · 13/08/2020 22:20

Surely your SLT should have intervened there?

Yeah - our CAGS went through several layers of meetings, which included individual discussions about every student. This went back and forth until the Head was satisfied we were as accurate as possible.

HipTightOnions · 13/08/2020 22:20

Surely your SLT should have intervened there?

Yes they should!

HipTightOnions · 13/08/2020 22:22

I thought they had actually. Only realised today how much variation there was between subjects.

This must apply in spades between schools.

Hercwasonaroll · 13/08/2020 22:23

Agree that SLT should have adjusted those to make both subjects as cautious/not within the centre.

But the rank order without the teacher predictions...such a blunt tool. It must have been obvious that it was going to not work on an individual level, surely?

I don't think people predicted such a reliance on past data. Perhaps in cases where the CAGs seemed wildly wrong. But like Piggy said, her predicted A is 12% of her class of 8. If your historical data has no As including even one could look like a huge over prediction.

darkwader · 13/08/2020 22:23

@noblegiraffe

I'm not surprised - DPA/GDPR unfortuntaly now makes any judgement in all aspects off life a situation where nobody can write it down - but you have been forced to.

It gets worse; although the government consultation clearly indicated it would be malpractice to disclose the ranking, there is no GDPR exemption. Each student will be still able to know their position in the ranking based on a request, and if all but one student does this then the full list is known and then they could challenge the school on it.

OP posts:
itsgettingweird · 13/08/2020 22:24

@HipTightOnions

Who are your top 5?

It was very hard, but we did in fact specify who were our top 5 via the ranking.

Well yes because you had to.

Yesterday I asked if this could be done through some unconscious bias and you said no.

I do not blame teachers at all - this has been just as hard for them.

But you have had to either judge who was likely to be the student to have the off day (which any of them could have) or teachers have predicted none will and results have been downgraded by algorithm.

This is where statistically their is a flaw.

If 7 students have all had the best results once each over 7 tests it's still a guessing game and still a prediction.

There obviously would be winners and losers and obviously the pandemic is much bigger than grades .

I believe teachers are extremely capable of knowing their students. But they aren't clairvoyant!

MrsGatsby99 · 13/08/2020 22:25

DaffodilFlowersFlowersFlowersFlowers

Hercwasonaroll · 13/08/2020 22:25

then they could challenge the school on it.

Yup. Hence why we're not looking forward to it. I don't know what their challenge would actually achieve though.

cakeisalwaystheanswer · 13/08/2020 22:27

I think teachers have done their best and whatever method was used was always going to be unfair on some pupils. I also disagree with the decision to allow pupils to see where a teacher placed them on the grading list because for me that makes the decision seem personal and not professional.

I have checked my DCs school's results and the only one to have published their's so far is DS1's former school which has a detailed summary against previous year results. What is interesting about this is that although the results awarded are nearly identical to the last four years results 30% of the grades submitted by the school have been reduced, most by one grade a few by two as detailed by the head in his report below. I don't think this is due to teacher incompetence I just think it is impossible to accurately predict who will underperform on the day as most students will be expecting A*/As. The school is and always has been very selective so the cohort ability doesn't change but if the proposed grades had stood that would be a huge boost to this years results.

www.kcs.org.uk/media/5354/a-level-results-2020.pdf
www.kcs.org.uk/senior-school/news/a-level-results-at-king-s-college-school-wimbledon-2020

HipTightOnions · 13/08/2020 22:27

Well yes because you had to.
Yesterday I asked if this could be done through some unconscious bias and you said no.

You asked whether we would be biased in favour of students who would be more disappointed by lower grades and I said no.

We used a ton of data - including mocks - to derive the ranking. It wasn’t gut feel.

darkwader · 13/08/2020 22:44

@HipTightOnions

It didn’t think about marks. It worked out how many of each grade a school/subject “should” get, then allocated the grades according to the ranking order.

I don't think that is true if I read it correctly. The model gives a notional mark within the provisional grade, and then all the students are combined nationally to determine the cut-score's for each grade based on the same techniques usually used for exams.

It's described in steps 7 to 9 of the approach.

OP posts:
Notfeelinggreattoday · 13/08/2020 22:44

This goes to show that purely exams to judge isn't ideal as had we have had more coursework involved then it would of been easy to show results match the teacher expectation
Most teachers will be honest and probably actually shows that a lot of children don't reach their potential in exams , i know my ds gcse grades were lower than he worked at and was capable of as he just crumbled.
Mix of coursework and exams is the way to go and also any disruption to exams then their would be work to go off and which could provide evidence.
My youngest ds due to get his gcse for english lit we were expecting a 4/5 now with downgrading and his school hasn't had great results last two years i expect he will get a 2 or 3 awarded by the system

HipTightOnions · 13/08/2020 22:49

Oh, thanks darkwader. I had been relying on what must have been an oversimplified explanation! I assume the mechanism you describe has the same effect? I will read the detail properly.

darkwader · 13/08/2020 22:52

@Hercwasonaroll

Damages - if you can then not justify the data they could sue the school for predicted losses because of the impact on their life chances. If they lost out on a firm university place and the rationale was clearly wrong then it could be significant. More likely a years income as they resit.

In reality, very few people would try it, and even fewer would get it to hold up.

OP posts:
Hercwasonaroll · 13/08/2020 22:55

The effect of applying this equation is, individually for each centre, to space students
evenly across the mark range available for that notional grade. The mark for the
lower most student at each notional grade is calculated dependent on the difference
between the actual predicted grade distribution, 𝑃𝑗
, and the notional grade
distribution that it was possible to achieve due to the discrete nature of the students
making up the actual distribution

Notional mark evenly spread. Exam scores aren't evenly spread.

Hercwasonaroll · 13/08/2020 22:56

No school would predict under the data they have available, as the CAGs have shown.

Ofqual are the ones ruining life chances with their misapplied algorithm to small, fluctuating cohorts.

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