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?

@Scatterbrainbox

Super analogy :)

Most if the teaching year wasn't missed at all. OK, I exaggerated, I should have left it to ALMOST ALL of the fine tuning and exam technique teaching that happens once the syllabus has been fully taught.

Those last few weeks is the time we spend trying to persuade students who did no homework, no revision, no resource making to do some now! It's why we offer revision lessons over the Easter break, etc etc.

@Hercwasonaroll

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

Because that would not serve their teacher bashing agenda. And would require an understanding of the role...

Woah! Scatterbrainbox That'll do it!

I think you only need a very small amount of erring on the generous side at the boundaries (and why wouldn't you) to need a large amount of downgrading to bring results back into line with expectations in aggregate.

75% students achieve less than their UCAS predicted points each year. The outcome and outcry were entirely predictable and should have been thought through in advance rather than taking the government by surprise.

@CuriousaboutSamphire

Woah! Scatterbrainbox That'll do it!

Sorry, I'm so fed up of the ignorance. That l every Tom, Dick and Harry think they could do better because they have a vague recollection of their GCSE experience 25 years ago. It would be like me telling a surgeon how to improve their performance on the basis that I had my tonsils removed when I was 5 and take my kids to the GP on occasion 🙄

@Scatterbrainbox

I have to admit that is a very good analogy - and do understand it. But it was stated that the teacher had assessed them as only having a 20% chance - however appreciate there could be progress.

But, in terms of grading I'd still only predict with data for 20 runners one first place, one second and one third, and not give the benefit of doubt to assume there will be 15 first places and 15 second places and no last place because all could have achieved it. (and this is the issue here)

Sorry, I'm so fed up of the ignorance Don't apologise. I was a a sport lecturer, I should have thought of that analogy myself. Twas a veritable good'un!

But I can see I missed the so have another

@CuriousaboutSamphire

Sorry, I'm so fed up of the ignorance Don't apologise. I was a a sport lecturer, I should have thought of that analogy myself. Twas a veritable good'un!

But I can see I missed the so have another

Sorry, is OPs experience of exams that they once sat some A-Levels, or are they actually a teacher/lecturer? I didn't read all the posts as I got The Rage.

however appreciate there could be progress. No, appreciate that ther WILL be progress... that's the point. That and the progress can be made and stll the student can, for many reasons, from losing their favourite pen, to the death of a parent, just not perform well on the day!

in terms of grading I'd still only predict with data for 20 runners one first place, one second and one third, and not give the benefit of doubt to assume there will be 15 first places and 15 second places and no last place because all could have achieved it. (and this is the issue here) NO NO NO!!!

There can be any number of 1st places etc. Ye gods! The predicted grade doesn't set precedence. You've gone further away from an understanding, not closer!

UCAS prediction are not the same as actual predictions.

A mistake made in England over the last 8 years ish is that the exam boards have stopped taking predictions from schools. Imagine if they still did? They'd have actual data!! And evidence!!

@DontBeShelfish

Sorry, is OPs experience of exams that they once sat some A-Levels, or are they actually a teacher/lecturer? I didn't read all the posts as I got The Rage.

They once sat some exams, presumably about 20 years ago given the average mumsnetter's age 🙄.

Interestingly, this seems to be the OP's first post. Daily mail must be looking for more stories to distract from the mess that is the government's handling of the Covid crisis. The migrant dinghy pics must be losing their effect 🙄

[quote darkwader]@Scatterbrainbox

I have to admit that is a very good analogy - and do understand it. But it was stated that the teacher had assessed them as only having a 20% chance - however appreciate there could be progress.

But, in terms of grading I'd still only predict with data for 20 runners one first place, one second and one third, and not give the benefit of doubt to assume there will be 15 first places and 15 second places and no last place because all could have achieved it. (and this is the issue here)[/quote]
But that's not the issue. You're suggesting teachers gave U grade students As and there is no evidence of this.

As pp said, it doesn't take much generosity at the individual teacher level to have an effect on the overall figures.

in terms of grading I'd still only predict with data for 20 runners one first place, one second and one third, and not give the benefit of doubt to assume there will be 15 first places and 15 second places and no last place because all could have achieved it. (and this is the issue here)
Band head on brick wall.

To add to the running analogy. Imagine you had several marathons run my 20 people. Each person has a position from their race, but how do you order them all without knowing their times? Because that's what ofquals statistical model tried to achieve.

@Scatterbrainbox As soon as I saw their post it set off my Daily Mail alarm. 🙄

[quote solidaritea]@Scatterbrainbox

Super analogy :)[/quote]
Not quite. The runner could have fallen 40 metres before the finish line.....

The algorithm was crap, but so are teacher's predicted grades! I know myself when asked to write refs for my students or predict their final degree result that I always err on the side of generous, partly because I am trying to represent my student well, and partly because I look at their potential to achieve at its highest, obviously often they don't then get that result for a myriad of reasons. Now I limit myself to descriptors of results already achieved for this reason so the reader can make up their own mind.

It has been easier within our university as we, in general, already had quite a few results as assessment is done throughout, so we had a no-detriment policy so students would not get further results worse than their average at a certain time point in March. This compensated students for the stress of having to do more assessments in lockdown and changes in format, but also meant they had something to play for in terms of improving grades as well.

Unfortunately because schools all do mocks in different ways, record them differently, at different times, mocks can't really be used in the same way but the government have decided to do so. My own dd is not affected as her school put a lot of emphasis on mocks and she revised hard so if she has to get her mock results for GCSE we are happy with that, but we are about the only ones.

Teacher predictions are not shaky because teachers don't know their pupils' abilities, it's because of the large margin of error in the result which they can never ever predict, and the tendency then to make higher rather than lower predictions given that's what is needed for their school/individual pupils who they like to achieve.

Going forward, obviously more teacher assessment and standardized mocks will be the way to go, not to depend on final exams (private exam pupils will have been royally stuffed by this).

@titchy

Or the runner ran 360m normally, and the last 40m online?

Statistically, 1 or 2 runner out of many may have fallen 40m before the end. This would not affect the overall statistics for thousands of students. If you were to consider the probability of that happening and spread that risk across the many thousands of students in the national cohort, teachers should perhaps reduce their prediction by 0.01% to allow for that. Also, the real life equivalent would be a death in the family etc and would very definitely be considered exceptional circumstances.

what am I missing?

So much that I don't think you'll ever understand.

@Scatterbrainbox

Statistically, 1 or 2 runner out of many may have fallen 40m before the end. This would not affect the overall statistics for thousands of students. If you were to consider the probability of that happening and spread that risk across the many thousands of students in the national cohort, teachers should perhaps reduce their prediction by 0.01% to allow for that. Also, the real life equivalent would be a death in the family etc and would very definitely be considered exceptional circumstances.

Remember, the last 40m should have been run over zoom. Because someone ran to the shops once, and talks to her nan on zoom all the time, so it can't be that hard to run a race over zoom.

I dunno. I think that secondary teachers had a hard, unprecedented task to grade students without an exam. I'm sure the results will have disappointed some students, and some students will have got lower/higher than they deserved. But criticising a system that was created to solve a crisis seems silly.

Op is being very persistent with this

I actually think you are talking rubbish. Apparently this was a very bright year. And did better in their GCSE's than the year before. And were expected to do better in their A'levels than the year before.

And no. Neither my Ds1 nor Ds2 are in this year, so I'm not prejudiced.