If they f***ING delay the GCSE results I will not be accountable for my actions

[ScrapThatThen]

They need to sort it out before Thursday or allow centre assessed grades.

I work in children's mental health. Stop heaping unfairness on unfairness and uncertainty on uncertainty. Give them 2 weeks notice of where their life goes next fgs.

Does it matter?

Of course it matters. Employers, universities and colleges have limited numbers of places. If you increase everyone's grade, the demand increases beyond supply and employers, universities and colleges would still have to find ways of "cherry picking" higher numbers of applicants who had "the right grades", so would have needed to look at other criteria to weed out back to number of places available. It just moves the problem down the line. Solves nothing.

But to come back to the original point, pupils need to know where they are going to studying 1 week after GCSE results day. They can't wait for their appeal. The subjects they start to study and where they go to study these is often dependent on the results they have in their hand on the first day of term. So if the government will issue CAGs on this Thursday, then a 2-week delay with all schools and colleges to use CAGs for admission criteria seems the only way to ensure pupils are in the right place studying the right subjects in 2 weeks' time. Of course, it would be better if the government ensures fair and accurate grades are given on Thursday (CAGs or, less widely applicable and feasible and less widely acceptable, valid mocks).

At the end of the day, what should have happened is that teachers/schools should have predicted a raw mark rather than a grade. Then Ofqual could have used the normal standardisation process. The idea of teachers awarding grades and then ranking within each grade was fundamentally flawed from the outset. I remember posting on here and other fora at the time that it was unfair as the "bottom" ranked pupil at A grade in school A could have been better than a middle ranked A grade at school B, yet the former would be downgraded to B whilst the latter retained their A despite being a weaker student. Sadly, like a lot of things, it was an entirely foreseeable unforeseen (like a lot of things done by civil servants/quangos).

@monkeytennis97

Ah but Gavlar Williamson is all about 'doing it for the children' In 25 years of teaching I have never seen such incompetence (and as much as it pains me I include Gove the vile bastard).

I'm always amazed that when I point out Cummings was Goves advisor and is now Boris' and look at education is both reigns - how many people didn't realise.

And we all know Cummings loves a statistic 🤔

@Badbadbunny - they haven't increased everyone's grade. Everyone gets the grade they could have got.
No-one can predict who would have had done a bad exam, so no-one knows which individuals would have underperformed and brought the overall grade levels down.
It is not a case that the grade levels are higher because of overmarking or lying.
The overall grade level can be higher and still be entirely accurate and fair for individual pupils.

They've had 5 months. FIVE MONTHS to ensure it was right and fair.

And England has not only had five months, but the Tory party actually mocked the Scottish Government/Sturgeon for getting it wrong initially. Mocked them. And here we are, in an even worse position...

Farcical.

@ShinyRuby

Totally agree & was horrified when I heard about this possibility. Dd is stressed enough about her place at Sixth form, if this went ahead she would start on the same day as results. She's prepared for the results to be disappointing but just wants to know now. Just been through all this with dd1's A Level results, it's all an absolute fuck up & so so unfair.

Bloomin heck ShinyRuby what a stressful few weeks for you all - praying this is all sorted fairly for all the sake of all impacted

Yes, the use of the word 'inflation' is basically a lie. These 2 posters have explained why grades based on CAGs/predictions will be slightly higher overall, but still entirely fair and accurate at the individual level.

No! Some schools reined in their CAGs because they knew they would be subject to moderation: others were generous.

Going back to CAGs would not result in slightly higher grades “overall”, it would result in higher grades for some students and disadvantage students whose schools were more cautious.

I don’t know why more parents aren’t worried about this!

Why on earth did the UK cancel exams anyway? We still had to take them here, 2 meters between desks, masks except when moving in and out of the room. Delayed by 2 weeks but still taken. There hasn't been the drama.

(CAGs or, less widely applicable and feasible and less widely acceptable, valid mocks)

But the CAGs for A level were artificially inflated by 40% so you have to assume the same for GCSE as they're the same teachers/schools.

Re mocks, the term "valid" is the key. Schools vary massively as to what they do for mocks. Some schools would have done "proper" (i.e. past papers) mocks at the end of year 10 and around December/January year 11, so will have 2 sets of data, both valid. Others won't have done proper year 10 mocks at all. Some will have cobbled together a kind of pseudo mock using selected past paper questions. It's a mess with no consistency. Some schools even did peer-marked mocks where the pupils marked eachother - there's no way that's valid for real grades! I think what will come out of this is that schools will be required to do "proper" mocks, i.e. at the end of year 10 and Dec/Jan year 11, they sit real past papers (with topics they've not yet studied at that time left blank and time adjusted accordingly). Then, god forbid, if anything like this happens again, there's at least some "real" evidence to work with.

@Badbadbunny

I would trust teacher assessments far more

So how come they've had to be moderated down by 40% to come in line with previous years?? The only conclusion to that is that teachers unrealistically uplifted grades. There are no winners in this- schools & teachers should have been more honest, Ofqual should have been more competent.

For those blaming Boris, you do realise the exact same problem happened in Scotland that has a different government, don't you???

And despite being said over and over can you not understand that it isn't grades inflated by 40% (although I've no doubt some schools tried it)

Its students not being downgraded on a guess of who would have owed mired in the day and who wouldn't due to extenuating circumstance.

If the people moderating felt a whole school had inflated that should have been dealt with on a school level with requests for evidence etc.

Instead of universally downgrading students including in schools where they've already adjusted CAGs to match prior attainment.

@HipTightOnions there isn't time now to moderate each individual schools' CAGs.
I agree that some schools (and sixth form colleges for A levels) will have given the benefit of the doubt upwards. My DS school probably didn't - it is very rigorous and seems to predict downwards.
But it is too late. What you are suggesting is what exam boards/Ofqual/government should have been doing since June 24, but didn't do.

@Badbadbunny I don't think you have to worry about mocks. The government seem to have quietly dropped that promise.

@UntilYourNextHairBrainedScheme

Why on earth did the UK cancel exams anyway? We still had to take them here, 2 meters between desks, masks except when moving in and out of the room. Delayed by 2 weeks but still taken. There hasn't been the drama.

Same knee jerk reaction that closed the GP surgeries, hospital wards, shops, etc etc completely unnecessarily. Far more thought/planning should have gone in to trying to keep things open.

OK, close schools if they thought it was necessary, but saying that exams were cancelled at the same time was completely over the top and unnecessary. Schools/teachers could have continued to teach the GCSE and A level students for the last bits of their syllabii, either remotely or via socially distanced classrooms in school. If only exam year pupils had been in school, then there'd be lots of space for them to SD, even on a one day per week basis. Due to lockdown, pupils would have had plenty of time for home study/revision too! Should the exams have proved impossible (after proper consideration not knee jerk) they could have been cancelled up to several weeks later.

Lots of schools were mega cautious predicting their CAGs as they knew if they went in too optimistically the Centre would be marked down.

I'm waiting on DD's GCSE results - we had DS1 A level results last week (still waiting for college to send his CAG) - He was downgraded in one, but did better than he thought in another, so over all did better out of it than some of his friends - he had not applied to uni and was taking a year out, but now is stressing about over subscription next year.

They can't delay the GCSe's 0 DD is supposed to enrol at college next week then start her content heavy courses first week in September.

I'm trying not to let DD see I'm obsessing over this.

My DC is staying at his current school for sixth form but with colleges - does the current school do a reference and then they get an offer? Assume, colleges could just proceed with all offers if that is the case or do they over offer?

They cannot delay- we have six working days from the results day to start of term. Students need to know whether they have a place at our 6th form or need to go elsewhere. We cannot physically accept all that applied and were predicted high enough grades- that would be over three times our capacity!

@dreamingofsun

I've read about algorythms being bad for pupils in low scoring schools but no-one has said much about it being bad for boys. We all know boys leave it to the last minute and ignore course work/mocks. Mine all had really bad gcse predictions and then pulled it out of the bag in the real ones.

To reduce already low teacher predictions further would have been so very different to what happened in reality

This.. this sums my son up to a tee! I’m worried about his results and what it’ll mean for him! X

@Samcj02 yes, I agree.
It is like they are using continuous assessment that the pupils didn't ever know was taking place.

It is also perfectly acceptable to hold something back in year 10 so that you don't crash and burn with the demands of year 11.

Plus a pupil who is already 1 grade below what they could have got in an exam due to the ranking system and internal school self-moderation will then be 1 grade lower again if there is even one grade reduction with moderation/algorithm.

I get what people are saying about boys but I disagree.

I have a ds who struggles with school environment (autistic). He worked hard and revised properly from start of year 10 and suffered horrific teasing (some bullying) from other bigs who thought calling him a swot etc was acceptable.
They then laughed at him for working so hard on his mocks and saying he shouldn't have bothered as he had months left.

Ok, I get it's not all boys.

But I do think that it would be better to buck the trend that boys think working hard from day 1 is a negative than allow those who made a conscious choice to not do this get better marks just because they were able.
Those who choose not to put the effort in from day 1 should learn a hard lesson imo.

Moving the goalposts now would be really unfair to students at those schools!

Except it’s the government who moved the goalposts already -

I gave Alex, Mollie, Mo and Sheera a C. I put them in order, using my knowledge of those children - because I had to, but essentially I was confident they’d all get a C (how? Because I’ve assessed them and worked with them and taught them)

The government don’t even take my grading into account. All 4 kids might not get a C. Or one of them might not. If the rank order is valid - based on my professional opinion - then so are the CAGs.

Honestly- discounting teacher grades outright is just nonsensical.

A centre by centre approach for those who were wildly outside historical data would have worked.

And by the way, it is not a 12% cohort grade rise if CAGs are used for GCSEs.
For GCSEs it is only a 9% cohort grade rise.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/16/gcse-grades-would-boosted-9-percentage-points-teacherspredictions/

You cannot blame teachers for a slight inflation. If we have a class of 30 at GCSE and this is our usual prediction:
Five 5s
20 4s
5 3s
we would usually be pretty spot on in our predictions.

However, of the 5 people we would have definitely predicted to get a 5, only 3 would. 2 of the others would come from the 4s. We might have had 7 or 8 people who were on that 4/5 boundary, but statistically, we would have known only 5 would get it, because we know every year, some kids don't get it.

The problem comes when we have to decide WHICH five of that potential eight students will be the ones who get the level. Any one of them could, and it's unlikely to be the weakest three who miss out (otherwise we'd be much better at predicting in the first place). So when you ask us who will get a 5, it's very hard not to say "all eight of them".

If your son or daughter was one of those eight students, would you want me to allocate them a 4 or a 5?

Anyone know why the results weren't announced in July as was the original plan? I thought it was stupid at the time they announced results days would be put back to the usual dates as they'd have the teacher/school data far sooner than they'd have real exam results so could/should have been able to announce the results a few weeks earlier than usual to allow for appeals to happen before Unis/colleges had to finalise their acceptances.