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?

Hardly much weight given to the CAGs.

My example includes 3 years. If you included those previous 3 years, your students would be capped at an A.

What's your skin in this game OP?

I would also like to know this.

If grades could be predicted accurately we wouldn’t need exams.
If exam outcomes were reliable we wouldn’t see increasing numbers of appeals and grade adjustments year on year.
If education was seen as a good in itself rather than a massive sorting hat allocating children to different life paths we wouldn’t need exams (or rather, we wouldn’t need the vastly cumbersome and inefficient mechanism we have at present).
Goes on and on ad infinitum
And YABU.

@Piggywaspushed

Was the algorithm not applied in all cases, because that is what the algorithm states happens.

I am hearing the frustration - and do appreciate it, even if can't get it. Any algorithm or model will naturally remove outliers and pull towards the average - including helping those are not so gifted.

@mbosnz

No skin other than the credibility of exam system should be maintained so when I/we hire, we can rely on the grades as being strong indicators. GCSE's are just a phase that are ignored, but A-Levels are really important, we choose graduates and non-graduates based on their A-Levels as they are more reliable as long as the graduate gets a high 2:1 or 1st. Many tech employers do the same for the first 5 years or so, and Scotland has probably made a huge mistake in their action, so am concerned why so many students are expecting something unrealistic - many of them would have been disappointed with their exams.

CAGs were not shared with students. Though we know they maybe in the future so we wrote them with that in mind too.
But OP do you realise that we are talking about human beings here? About whom we care very much. Teachers are not going to get to march of year 13 with A level students and not discuss the likely outcome with them. No predictions at all would be nice but it’s just not realistic

The point is that the algorithm doesn't account for the fluctuations in groups size 6-15. It doesn't take many students to have rubbish results in 2017/18 for your current students attainment to be capped despite their CAGs.

Can you explain why the algorithm (if it is so good) gave students Cs in Maths A level, and As in further maths?

Probably worth bearing in mind that many students are disappointed every year, but it's not news. This year it is. By definition there can't be more disappointed students than normal, given that overall pass rates (and numbers achieving the highest grades) have gone up.

I fully accept that there will be disappointed students who have been short-changed this year. But by definition some will have done better than expected - I imagine they're keeping quiet.

@Hercwasonaroll

Not sure why you say that - it seems to very much do that from reading the technical paper. The smaller the groups the less consideration of the statistical variance of prior results.

@Hercwasonaroll

I am not defending the algorithm.

However, the answer in the technical document is that for large cohorts, with large historical cohorts on the big subjects the statistical model is very robust. So the C is correct.

IUt then goes onto say that for small cohorts etc. that although it is likely to be too lenient, the best model in these cases is based on the CAG - and so this should be awarded. The algorithm is being very generous here - and the paper indicates the alternative would be to be very ungenerous.

My sons predicted grades (not this year) were AAA he got AAB so teachers were nearly spot on. I remember the process of getting the predicted grades was fairly strict, my son had a lot of backwards and forwards with his tutors to achieve those predictions.

One snippet on tv of the usual post exam celebration/commiseration showed a pupil holding a results sheet with a table of results showing mock grade, CA grade and eventual grade so SOME pupils are being given all three

Go back to the graph I screenshotted. Then go to the report, look at the formula, and see that CAGs haven't been given much weight.

You seem to be angry that teachers can’t pinpointedly predict the future, OP.

We generally do better than the weather forecast and without the computer modelling.

I agree with you that for large cohorts the algorithm is fine.

For small (5 and under) CAGs is fair.

The middle sized groups have been screwed over. Look at Fig 8.3 on the report, the historical variation of a class size of 6-15 can be huge.

And even though you can’t accurately forecast the weather, they still put it on TV every night.

Go shout at Sian Lloyd.

@LordOftheRingz

It's interesting how you said it - because on paper 33% of his grades were inflated, which is in-line with the over-estimation in general.

However, the vast majority of grades seems to be over-estimates, rather than some above and some below- and teachers have explained why this is - because it's encouraged to give a 'good day' estimate.

@darkwader I haven't voted as I don't agree with your statement but I strongly agree that grade inflation given by the teacher assessment would have left significant questions and it would not have been correct to leave the assessed grades as they were submitted.

I don't know what the correct thing to do would have been. Those students who have had their predicted grades significantly reduced are without a doubt personally affected and extremely disappointed and this represented 218,000 results. However, had the grades been left to stand, this would mean that the entire year of results would not be an accurate reflection of the benchmark that this exam is supposed to represent.

This was coming down the road like a train and to allow it to blow up today, especially after what played out in Scotland, was a mistake.

Yanbu.

Teachers may have had 10 students getting A* grades throughout the year.

Just because statistically 1 may be ill and not do so well and 1 may have had a wobble and done badly how can you expect a teacher to rank students knowing which if these 2 it would be.

Teachers make judgements on acheivements which they were ask to make. Not on variables they have no control over which may have affected some of the students.

phiney I am not sure the pass rate has gone up, I still have not heard the A*- E pass rate.

We have students who have done as well as expected in my school (usually the A* top rankers) but haven't noticed anyone do better than expected in more than one subject.

But, of course, you are right, The focus of the news is different.

because it's encouraged to give a 'good day' estimate.

Of course they do. Why would you give a bad day estimate and deliberately screw a child out of a grade that they could have achieved?

Teachers do actually care about the students they teach. It’s not a failing that they have erred on the positive side, it’s to their credit

And if government wanted to make sure it didn't affect the overall achievement affecting other years then they could have purely taken 2020 data out of leagues tables and progress 8 for secondaries etc and not used this heat for comparisons.

Has to be better than saying well last year you had no A's so your A students can't have one this year and you had a U so your lowest achieving student must have a U despite working at grade D for 2 years.

@darkwader - perhaps the system used when moderating by the exam boards is at fault?

@Hercwasonaroll

I've looked at 8.3 and I can't see why you think its not generous.

Where the model would predict 50% and the CAG 80%, for 4 or less, the CAG will be used to give 80% and between 5 and 15 the CAG will increase the grade. In fact the straight line provide much benefit to many students (assuming their CAG is higher than the model).