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

[darkwader]

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?

@qlwjendm

Because there is a probability that any students could achieve 100%, but we don't award it. Your aim is to provide the expected result not the best conceivable result - and at 20% chance of achieving a 'B', the expectation is not a B - it would be either a C or even a D with that spread.

Do other teachers also back you up on this, or am I correct that this approach you've taken is very much the heart ion the issue and you will have caused so much pain today.

@mrsBtheparker

Personally, I wouldn't have cancelled exams. Perfectly possible to sit in June/July. If that wasn't the case I'd have done them on-line with on-line monitoring of rooms via web-cams - systems already exist to check no-one else present in a room and student remains in place. Thirdly, if needed I'd have delayed university starting until January.

If we cannot do any of that I would have requested every school out together an evidence bundle per student and had it assessed by a group of teachers in a separate group and given a grade allocation for a combined set of schools.

If a student went D, C, B in their assessment grades I absolutely would award a B. They are on an improving trajectory and would probably get a B. I'd also use my professional judgement of the student.

There are many complex reasons why the grades CAGs are above the usual cohort picture. Teacher optimism will be one. If you have a borderline student, you'd put the higher grade in this situation.

A huge amount of unfairness has come because you cannot rank between schools. Exam raw scores meant you could. The student ranked 1 in my school may be a stronger A than a student ranked 3 in another school. This process can't account for this.

You seem to be hung up on an idea that teachers deliberately inflated predicted grades due to being unprofessional but posters here have explained how they predict grades and why it might differ in an actual exam.

It’s accepted that predicted grades can be optimistic but why on earth wouldn’t they be? They teacher can’t know which student will have a good or bad exam on the day and why on earth would they predict based on an imagined worst case scenario for their students? It’s not dishonesty, it’s their knowledge of that students ability which is what is in theory being graded.

A common approach to grading wasn’t developed but teachers were asked to do it. It’s unfair to then blame them for a shit show that has some pupils receiving two grades lower than their mock results. The whole thing is a fucking fiasco.

Half a GRADE!!!!

And every teacher predicts the higher grade, it is aspirational and a real possibility. We are never asked to predict the lower possibility... think that through!

We can't be wholly accurate becaue the system is full of humans...

The aim is to predict what the exam would have achieved, so unclear why an 'A;' was predicted if poor at exam technique. I was so certain I had explained that! Let me try again.... because predicted grades are set early. We usually have much of a subject and most of the exam technique teaching to do, we base it on the common and individual errors we see in tests.

The whole fucking point is that I can teach, the student can learn and they will get a better grade when we have both done our jobs! Sadly some don't for a wide variety of reasons!

All you have show with that post is that you don't have a clue and won't process what teacher's are telling you!

And it does happen every year. We just don't see it because the predictors are not used. BUT the data is kept, analysed etc, so it can be used in catastrophes such as this year!

If Gove had not abolished course work
then the students would have had 5/6 of their grades going into lockdown
and ALL of this stress could have been avoided
nice work Gove and Cummings

@solidaritea

I mean that as a professional you are more concerned about maintaining the integrity of the education and examination system than individual results and able to predict accurately with moderate variance and minimal bias in order to remain valid status to mark and be in the profession.

Teachers can never anticipate which perfectly able student will mis-read a question or forget a whole page, or have a timing cock up and not finish. On average across a whole cohort these kinds of mistakes must make up a lot of the students who do less well than anticipated or than they're capable of but the teacher can't exactly just randomly allocate 'on the day fuck ups' to individual students.

[I dropped from A to B in art despite excellent results prior (no A* existed at the time) by mixing up monet and manet in my theory essay due to sheer nervousness so i know what i'm talking about!]

@CuriousaboutSamphire

You are getting a little loud in wording -0 but still why overall was there so much grade inflation predicted? Someone must have predicted these wrongly.

If you are saying that is completely normal, but is expected, then fine - but no-one should be up in arms today about the grades then being changed. Also, many of your colleagues are saying they can predict (and have done) very accuracy most years - so that doesn't back up some teachers being unable to do so.

@darkwader

Predictors will be inaccurate as they are based on the national data profile of previous cohorts. A level grade boundaries are adjusted to fit that cohort's data profile and are specific to that year group not to the grades A, B, etc.

Here you go. Knock yourself out reading all this instead of pestering MN

www.gov.uk/government/publications/awarding-gcse-as-a-levels-in-summer-2020-interim-report

Interesting that the grades at both A/A and A - C went up most in private schools.

Personally, I wouldn't have cancelled exams. Perfectly possible to sit in June/July. If that wasn't the case I'd have done them on-line with on-line monitoring of rooms via web-cams - systems already exist to check no-one else present in a room and student remains in place. Thirdly, if needed I'd have delayed university starting until January.

OMG! Not a clue!

Sit exams with most of the teaching year having been missed.

Using resources that just don't exist - don't argue with me I taught online courses and the infrastructure for a year's cohort to sit an online exam all at once does not exist!

Change Uni intake dates... which will have knock on effects forever!

I would have requested every school out together an evidence bundle per student and had it assessed by a group of teachers in a separate group and given a grade allocation for a combined set of schools You would? Paid for by whom? On what additional days of the week? Theones between Monday and Tuesday or Friday and Saturday! WHat would be in the evdicence bundle? Remember not every school will ahve the same resurces and not every student will have cmpleted the same work. No 2 courses will necessarily have taught the same part of the syllabus, chosen the same discretionary topic..

.. and that's before you get to the different exam boards, multiple boards avaialble, multiple boards used within each school. Totally different topics and exam etiquettes.

YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT!

You might also want to track down the More or Less guy who established last year that exam marking in English and history is woefully inaccurate and unpredictable : and yet 'standards' are based on this.

It may not actually be the teachers who are the inaccurate ones, you know...

sushigo
Absolutely right.
I don’t get why people (including teachers and exam boards) are finding this all so difficult. Of course the predictions will be high. If children have an above average chance of receiving a grade it would be grossly unfair to submit a grade lower on the grounds that statistically some of the students would not actually achieve it.

Sit exams with most of the teaching year having been missed

Most if the teaching year wasn't missed at all. Schools shut end March, exams start in May. In between are two weeks Easter hols. 4 weeks teaching was missed.

I'll get louder, if that's what it takes!

If you are saying that is completely normal, but is expected, then fine - but no-one should be up in arms today about the grades then being changed. You have misunderstood much...

Also, many of your colleagues are saying they can predict (and have done) very accuracy most years - so that doesn't back up some teachers being unable to do so. Again, you have ignored most of what has been said. My explaining how the discrepencies occur does not negate the accuracy of any teachers predicted grades. It just explains how the discrepencies occur!

Your arguments relies on the assumption that what would be an A in 2017 would also be an A in 2018, 2019 and 2020. That isn't the case

You're wrong. An A in 2017 should reflect the same ability as an A in 2020, 2019 etc. The grade required changes because some years papers are easier.

Understood - I hear the reasons, but they are contradictory. Some are saying they can predict, others are saying its normal not to be able to.

Its very clear though that there is no point asking for predictions from many, as even when only a 20% chance of getting a grade, a teacher will still choose this path and expect the best progression.

I understand people wanting to do the best for their students and that they indeed may have that professional knowledge - but in this case, the examination of grades must always be taken out of teachers hands and there is a bias - and this was a mistake - not the professional capability, but maybe the professional conduct.

I'm going to leave it there, as the jury indicates AIBU - but someone is responsible for those 40% of increased national grades and I don't know who that is.

[quote darkwader]@solidaritea

I mean that as a professional you are more concerned about maintaining the integrity of the education and examination system than individual results and able to predict accurately with moderate variance and minimal bias in order to remain valid status to mark and be in the profession.[/quote]
But the profession is teaching, not grade prediction.

I do think that there is bound to be some bias. It would be mad to deny it.

I teach primary, not secondary, but every year I know that I have lots of borderline pupils who can pass the SATs. Some do, others just miss the pass mark
Of my borderline pupils, typically 80% make it. But if i had to predict which ones didn't, I'd really struggle. So I'd either guess at 2 who wouldn't manage it (woefully unfair) or put them all through (would be wishful thinking).

I don't think it would be sensible to exclude me from the profession because of being bad at grade prediction any more than it would be sensible to exclude me for being bad at singing. Both are parts of my job, but not the most important parts.

I think not sitting the exams was more to do with the issues of a pandemic...

museumum
Totally. I don’t why people don’t understand this.

You just really assume those past exams are correct. I urge you to read up more about inaccuracies of exam marking.

@ListeningQuietly

If Gove had not abolished course work then the students would have had 5/6 of their grades going into lockdown and ALL of this stress could have been avoided nice work Gove and Cummings

And is ASs hadn't been abolished England could have followed Wales. Another thank you to Gove

OP, you are showing your lack of understanding (understandably as you have no experience).
Imagine if you watched a runner complete a 1500m race 20 times, and noticed that they always put a sprint in for the last 100m.
Imagine that you were to judge their running ability on the 21st race, but the race was cancelled with 100m to go.
Would it be more reasonable to assume that ...

1. They would have again put a sprint on and that last 100m of the 1500m race would have been faster than the earlier ones ( the comparison being that year in year out the trajectory between mock and actual grades is strong progress)

Or

1. Say that there was no reason to believe the runner would put a sprint on, even though they had every reason to and had always done so before...(the comparison being awarding students grades based on earlier work when they have months of intense progress to add to the mock prediction... the last few months are intense exam prep... it is unreasonable to assume that this will not lead to progress).

You are missing the dynamic aspect of assessment...you are essentially being asked to predict where a student will be at a given date, not report where they were at a date in the past... if you did not use your knowledge of usual rates of progress, then adjust it for individual attitude etc...that would be unprofessional.

Why don't you people obsessed with bias look at the distribution of exam grades for different groups in normal years?