How were A level rankings decided and can children find their ranking?

[scubadive]

To any teachers, education people on here, how were rankings actually calculated.
For example, How did you rank less able students who were working hard and reaching their potential (say getting B’s, predicted B etc) against a very able student (With very strong GCSE’s), predicted A but not working too hard before the mock and got a low B in mock. Who would you rank higher and on what basis?? This is obviously a subjective decision, ie) do you go back the class work and mocks or do you go by who you know will ultimately achieve the higher grade, if the latter how would this be evidenced.

Also can rankings be sent to students and can their rankings be appealed?

Any information would be appreciated.

Place marking. One of my twins has completely unrealistic low grades.

Head of Department here. This will have varied from school to school I'm afraid and because Ofqual said from the start they would be moderating by algorithm not by asking to see any work or evidence there is a lot of room for variation.
I calculated my students' grades by looking at the mammoth amount of data I have for them - mock grades, classwork/homework/test grades, how well I know my pupils, how hard they've worked, trajectory and several years teaching and examining experience.
These were then checked by the Deputy Head and Head against school data to check I wasn't in fantasy land. I'm confident in my predictions as I usually get them right.
Ranking is harder, especially if you have lots of classes taught by different teachers. Luckily I teach all the A level sets and they have one other teacher so the rest of my department also contributed to discussions but I know and teach all the kids. So subjective decision. I went by who I thought would score higher, and yes, sometimes this is an average ability pupil who works hard over a lazy bright pupil - if that's who would have been likely to do better.
My SLT required us to have evidence for our rankings, but that was their choice and not required. Exam boards asked for no evidence whatsoever. I'm not sure you can appeal because to appeal you would have to be saying your child is better than x, r and q who were ranked higher, and as you have no access and school can give you no access to x, r and q's data you have no grounds for appeal on that basis. I can't imagine rankings can be given to pupils either although their CAGs can.

Do you mind me asking then, given the huge amount of work you did, were grades awarded close to the ones the school submitted? Did the results maintain the ranking order?

They did in my subject at my school but I haven't had the chance this year to compare notes with colleagues in other departments. So I don't know, sorry. We also wouldn't know if they moved round rankings within a grade based on, say, GCSE performance.

Oh sorry I missed your first question. My grades were almost unchanged but I had a very 'typical' year group for my school which is just lucky. Other department have had some shockers and friends who work in bigger schools are saying they have too.

I believe you can use a SAR to ask for ranking, but you can only appeal if there has been an admin error or if you think there has been discrimination resulting in a lower ranking.

What I’m feeling suspicious about with regard to the ranking is whether students with known Oxbridge offers were ranked higher than other able students. My dd has an offer from the university which is has been no 1 in her subject for several years. However the school always does photo on their social media of the students with Oxbridge or medical offers, and a big fuss is made in the papers of the successful Oxbridge students. My dd’s CAG was AAA and she was moderated down even though she had full marks for her course mark and the teachers had used her past exam answers as an example of A* answer. She knows she also scored higher in the Mock than a student with a Cambridge offer.

@AnIckabog thank you so much for your reply, apologies I missed i I thought no-one had commented.

It seems my school asked the subject teachers to do the rankings and then the SLT fit the rankings to the 3yr average. This led to my son being given a B for one A level when he has never had a B in his life in a year end exam ever fir any subject in any year.

Luckily this didn’t affect his uni place and he still got his first choice medical school, he had all grade 8 and 9 at GCSE, top 10% UCAT score and would no doubt have got 3A* at A level. He is very very able and has an exceptional memory so can cram very easily. ( For comparison I have 4 children at grammar school (all top set) but he is the most academic and best at exams) Knowing this and that he had a grade 8 music exam the week after his mocks which he was working for, he didn’t memorise all he needed to for his Biology mock. No big deal to him, he still had 3 months of past paper practice and revision before the real exams. He missed an A in his mock by a few %, the school have always said they expect students to go up at least one grade from their mock sometimes 2 and yet under this system say they couldn’t give him an A as they didn’t have enough to give out on the ranking/historic average system. And it wouldn’t be fair to rank him above someone who did better in the mock, (say got an A) I understand this point but it still makes no sense for him to get a B) Apparently if they had given him an A someone else who scored better in the mock would have had to get a B due to quota.

Now the algorithm has been cancelled it seems that teachers were actually free to award whatever grade they thought children would most likely get but too kate for my son.

Do I have no grounds for appeal, the government said at the start of all this that the students wouldn’t lose out under this system and yet my son still has, despite now all the grades being hugely inflated this year, he has effectively been downgraded. It’s a double whammy for him.

@TheFallenMadonna do you know what discrimination grounds are? Personal discrimination? How could you prove this?

Or could he appeal on the basis that the ranking must have been wrong as it led to him being given the wrong grade!

@AnIckabog, you reference to possible change in rankings due to GCSE’s, I originally thought that the algorithm took this into account but then understood that it only looked at the GCSE grades for the cohort as a whole and nit on an individual basis, academic now as they’ve cancelled this but it does seem tgat now past performance isn’t taken into account despite the government claim that it would be taken into consideration.