A Level U turn

[Jargo]

Holy shit, now based on teacher predictions.

@UntamedWisteria

HipTightOnions

Human nature. Even the best and most professional teachers aren't immune from human nature. Any of us would struggle in that situation.

I know, I am one!

Frippenos see above.

I have the greatest respect for teachers' professionalism.

But none of us are immune from prejudices that we may not even be aware of.

Wait, no i had the wrong info - she was told before the announcement that they were full even if the grades were overturned.

She’s not been able speak to anybody since the announcement - they closed early!

So there’s still hope

I'm really not having a go at teachers, but at the system - which couldn't have been designed to be more unfair deliberately

[quote SandyY2K]**@HipTightOnions

The CAGs need to be backed up with evidence..not just a grade ALLocation they does not reflect their ability.

They don’t though, SandyY2K. That’s what some of us are so upset about.

I know it hasn't been easy for you teachers. I have 3 teachers in my family and they talked about the individual profiles they did on students to justify the grades.

I totally agree that having to rank them was hard...in our case I believe from parent's evenings, that my DD was ranked highly in her A*s subject and wasn't downgraded.

As a pp said...ranking students..will mean of those in a certain category...teachers will choose the ones they like to be in a higher category...thus prejudices and bias come in and certain students (class clowns...black children etc) will be disadvantaged.

Such a difficult year... but I'm glad the decision has reversed.[/quote]
So as well as being biased, unprofessional etc., teachers are now fucking racist?? Have you any idea how much work and moderation has been put into the CAGs? I’ll give you a clue - background, race, class or any other -ism came nowhere near it. The events of the last few days have shown a new level of teacher distrust even from a Tory Government. But fucking racist!? No words.

Oh for goodness sake.

I know dd's college stuck to the guidance and would have predicted CAGs that were reasonable and realistic whereas perhaps some other centres may have been more 'speculative'. I personally feel that her CAG for Art should have been A* rather than an A (and may well have been at another centre), but frankly this concern is small beer compared to the monumental injustice of the algorith. Choose your battle!

As a pp said...ranking students..will mean of those in a certain category...teachers will choose the ones they like to be in a higher category...thus prejudices and bias come in and certain students (class clowns...black children etc) will be disadvantaged.

God, I missed this. How fucking dare you.

algorithm

thus prejudices and bias come in

Yeah, do you know who teachers are supposed to underestimate? Disadvantaged kids. And yet the uproar in Scotland was because disadvantaged students were given a much higher pass rate by teachers than the algorithm

So perhaps the suspicion of bias is overblown.

I knew everyone would moan whatever happened - typical!

What's your definition of everyone?... As some people are happy with the u turn.

’There'd have been howls of protest last week just the same if everyone had got their grades, but still rejected by their chosen Uni which would have happened if they didn't have enough places - maybe they'd have then selected via personal statement evaluation etc?‘

Every results day has students losing out on their chosen university. That’s why they have back up offers. What they’ve done is unfairly marked down some students by 2 grades or more while others have been given grades in line with their predicted grades. That might take away ‘back up’ offers too. For courses that require AAA+ or for subject courses like Maths or French a C would rule out an awful lot of options. Then they left the situation for DAYS while Clearing chugged along allocating places. Now those kids have an acknowledgment that the grading was unfair but they don’t have their places back.

If only we had a government that valued education
like Germany for example
news.sky.com/story/how-other-countries-in-europe-held-their-exams-12051074

This was what St Edmund Hall Oxford said yesterday explaining why they are hounouring all their offers:
*Over the weekend, St Edmund Hall has reviewed the applications of all students who missed their conditional offers when A-level grades were released last Thursday. It is apparent that a disproportionally large proportion of those students that missed their offers were from the state sector. The college had already taken the decision to make offers unconditional for a significant number of students but, in light of the growing concern around the process by which grades were assigned and can be appealed this year, it has looked again at the cases of those students whose places were not initially confirmed. All of our offer holders made powerful cases for admission last December and had UCAS predicted grades from their teachers that would confirm
a place. The college therefore believes that a very large proportion of them have strong grounds to appeal the grades that they were awarded.

Paul Johnson in The Times today also confirms who was advantaged by the Ofqual system and who was disadvantaged
First, and most obvious, the process adopted favours schools with small numbers of students sitting any individual A-level. That is, it favours private schools. If you have up to five students doing an A-level, you simply get the grades predicted by the teacher. If between five and fifteen, teacher-assigned grades get some weight. More than 15 and they get no weight. Teacher predictions are always optimistic. Result: there was a near-five percentage point increase in the fraction of entries from private schools graded at A or AIn contrast, sixth-form and further education colleges saw their A and A grades barely rise — up only 0.3 per cent since 2019 and down since 2018. This is a manifest injustice. No sixth-form or FE college has the funding to support classes of fifteen, let alone five. The result, as Chris Cook, a journalist and education expert, has written: “Two university officials have told me they have the poshest cohorts ever this year because privately educated kids got their grades, the universities filled and there’s no adjustment/clearing places left

[quote SandyY2K]**@HipTightOnions

The CAGs need to be backed up with evidence..not just a grade ALLocation they does not reflect their ability.

They don’t though, SandyY2K. That’s what some of us are so upset about.

I know it hasn't been easy for you teachers. I have 3 teachers in my family and they talked about the individual profiles they did on students to justify the grades.

I totally agree that having to rank them was hard...in our case I believe from parent's evenings, that my DD was ranked highly in her A*s subject and wasn't downgraded.

As a pp said...ranking students..will mean of those in a certain category...teachers will choose the ones they like to be in a higher category...thus prejudices and bias come in and certain students (class clowns...black children etc) will be disadvantaged.

Such a difficult year... but I'm glad the decision has reversed.[/quote]
Oh, I thought I based my ranking on 20 years of professional judgement taking into consideration each pupil’s attitude to learning, essays, mock exams, homework and then that rank order was discussed at length within my department and compared to each pupil’s data predictions based on their KS2 performance but oh no, I’m a racist and have favourites. How dare you.

Andromeda
Indeed - somewhere like Peter Symonds where over 600 take Maths A level each year were screwed from the outset

UntamedWisteria

Because we (as a school) knew that if CAGs were used that this would come up.

We were rigorous in our evidence to prove our ranking system.

This means that marks were from through out the year.
Homework
NEA
Mocks
Mini Mocks
Practicals etc.
We even had some external moderation with other schools.

We marked everything that we could to provide a mark.

It was only after the marks were in place that we even looked at the names.

It makes me wonder how many parents would like to challenge on "unconscious bias"

@AndromedaPerseus Thank you, that is much clearer now.

Stupid an but can university withdraw CES offered through clearing and give the places back to the kids who met their offers?
I'm suddenly reallyglad my niece did an apprenticeship from 16 not Alevels

[quote ListeningQuietly]If only we had a government that valued education
like Germany for example
news.sky.com/story/how-other-countries-in-europe-held-their-exams-12051074[/quote]
If only, Listening - though I suppose that as long as our young people can answer the phone, the government will be content, After all, they are working hard to reduce us to a third world nation, and this is a step in the right direction as far as they are concerned.

I'm sure that most teachers would be fair in their judgement. It is likely that some schools will be more optimistic than others so there will be some unfairness but there is unfairness with the exam system anyway. It's well known that different markers don't give the same marks in "subjective" subjects such as English for example. I think this is the best that could be done given it is now too late to do much else.

@SleepingStandingUp

Stupid an but can university withdraw CES offered through clearing and give the places back to the kids who met their offers? I'm suddenly reallyglad my niece did an apprenticeship from 16 not Alevels

No.

Paul J is wrong about private schools however. Tghe very successful ones that get the top grades with very very selective entyr at 11+ )(and state grammars) have quite big classes actually with everyone working at a high leve. The smaller private schools like mine where only 2 of us did German A level have smaller classes. Eton has written to parents about the grades issues. It is not just state schools who have been badly affected by the pointless lock down and pointless exam cancellation which Ih ave been against right from the start.

But FrippEnos no-one could possibly challenge on 'unconscious bias'. But the fact that you mentioned it must mean you acknowledge it exists.

If two students score identically taking every single criteria, you still have to decide to put one above another, don't you?

And what if the dividing line comes between those 2 students?

I really feel for teachers, I cannot imagine how stressful this whole thing has been for all of you, especially in the last week.

It's known that black children are underpredicted at GCSE level. They usually achieve higher than predictions.

This is all part of unconscious bias and systemic racism. I've had these under predictions my children and with children of other family and friends.

If systemic racism applies in health care and the police... why would schools be any different?

The problem is the systemic nature and the unconscious bias, means you don't even know this is the case.

That's a whole other issue...but it exists...denying it doesn't make it not reality.

It's systemic and not directed to any individual teacher....just like not all police are racist...even though the institition is.

I don't want this to become about race. .it was just in relation to the ranking.

GTG

@noblegiraffe Yeah, do you know who teachers are supposed to underestimate? Disadvantaged kids.

My own experience of this, as a kid from a disadvantaged area, was that I came across different forms of this.

My primary school was in a rough as hell council estate. After I got admitted to Oxford (see next paragraph) I was asked to go back and speak to the current crop of p7 kids. I clearly remember one of the teachers saying to the assembled 50-60 kids "one or two of you could go to university". I'm early 30s so this was very much in the time of pushing many to uni. But the aspirations for that cohort of kids were so bloody low. That said - if those teachers (I know they were primary school but I don't think it would be any different) thought they had a chance to give those kids a foot up I think they would have.

I went to secondary school in a more wealthy area. I was definitely the poor kid. Didn't matter what I did, the teachers underestimated me. I got straight 1s/As (no A+/*s here) on tests but yet my predicted grades were always lower. A on higher english prelim, but still my english teacher put me down as a predicted B because he "thought I'd just had a good day"

I got straight 1s at Standard Grade, straight As at highers, then got an unconditional offer to Oxford. The fuckers were still predicting me Bs for advanced highers (I ended up leaving and not sitting them as I didn't need them) - I don't know what I would have had to do to make some of those teachers believe in me.