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Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To be struggling to take this years GCSE grades seriously

387 replies

awaywiththecircus · 20/08/2020 20:08

It’s no the dcs fault but I do think the GCSE results this year will be taken with a pinch of salt. I do feel sorry the the students who would have actually got a bunch of 8 and 9s if they’d sat the actual tests as it seems more than ever are getting those grades this year and it does make you wonder. We’re they not meant to be for the very top percentage of students? I’ve spoken to a parent who is pleased the marks were centre assessed as he thinks his ds probably wouldn’t have passed his maths and English if he’d actually sat them,

OP posts:
Piggywaspushed · 21/08/2020 07:58

OP, why does it bother you so much?

I sincerely hope you don't work in recruitment in any way, shape or form.

If it is because you have a year 10 or 12 child, that doesn't mean you get to blame to 11s and 13s for something the government needs to address.

portico · 21/08/2020 07:59

Would be good fir government to enforce AS levels for current Y11s, where they choose to do specific A Levels. This would be a good way to validate/ or discredit their Y11 gcse results.

Tbh, I am surprised the government never enforced EOY Y10 public exams, and same with AS Levels. Would have saved a lot of hassle. And, no one of this modular testing malarkey either.

Fizzpopcrackle · 21/08/2020 08:02

OP leave the kids alone, let them enjoy their grades. They've spent the past 5 years working towards this. They should feel able to celebrate as much as they want.

To any year 11's that may have seen this, please remember your grades are real and will be taken seriously. Please ignore anyone who suggests otherwise and celebrate as much as you want. You deserve to celebrate.

Branleuse · 21/08/2020 08:04

Well i only scraped a 4 in the one i was in for, probably due to my mock result and attendance, but my dc didnt pass. Its not as if everyone did

chubbyhotchoc · 21/08/2020 08:05

Colleges and higher education establishments will start having their own, if unfair system, of working out who gets on what courses. If they suddenly have 7s, 8s and 9s coming from schools that don't normally have that many, they won't get the places. They'll give the places to the kids with the same grades from the schools with better track records.

AuntieUrsula · 21/08/2020 08:16

Sky News claimed the number of those achieving the highest available mark - a grade 9 - surged by 40%. Someone in education might be able to confirm if that source is true, it seems ridiculously high

Bear in mind though that with small numbers, percentages often look much more dramatic than they are. About 4 in a 100 kids get a 9 in maths. A 40% increase still only makes that 5.6 kids in a 100.

SmileEachDay · 21/08/2020 08:18

Colleges and higher education establishments will start having their own, if unfair system, of working out who gets on what courses. If they suddenly have 7s, 8s and 9s coming from schools that don't normally have that many, they won't get the places. They'll give the places to the kids with the same grades from the schools with better track records

No, they won’t. That would be illegal.

Figmentofmyimagination · 21/08/2020 08:22

I read yesterday that home schooled children and those who worked for their exams privately (eg some adults who needed English or maths but messed up as children, or people taking qualifications in subjects not taught in their school) were given no grade at all. How soul destroying. Children who were resitting to try to improve their A levels (with a conditional university place depending on the outcome) were simply told they would be given their old grade. What a fiasco. There should have been an optional socially distanced exam centre available to people who were not studying in a school or college setting. How could they not have foreseen this weeks ago?

dontdisturbmenow · 21/08/2020 08:29

My eldest scored significantly lower in their actual GCSEs than her predicted grades and mocks. That's because they got over confident after very high grades and didn't put in the work expected. They learned from it, worked very hard for their A levels and then excelled as predicted.

My second performed much better than predicted and in the end,almost as well as my eldest despite a much difference in predicted grades.

There is no system that will be fair for all, so better to move up than down, hopefully it will motivate those who got better grades than they might have otherwise received.

RaspberryRuff · 21/08/2020 08:31

@ZombieFan

Jeez, have these poor kids not been through enough without people now pissing on their exam awards? What have they been through? They have got to lie in bed for 3 months, playing on their phones/computers and avoiding any studying/exams. Its been absolute heaven for them. No one is pissing on their grades, everyone is just being honest that they have been devalued. Sit the exams in Oct/Nov if you feel hard done-by.
Wow, that’s a bit of a generalisation. I might be a bit old now but I’d have been bloody crushed if this had happened to the exams I’d worked so hard for and had such high expectations from, never mind for people to then tell me I didn’t deserve the grades I got and that the misery of lockdown and missing months of education and seeing friends was “heaven”. I have a slightly younger teen and it’s certainly not been “heaven” for him with no school and not able to see or interact with friends for ages. Have a bit of compassion. Or maybe you can’t remember what it was like to be young and school and exams meaning so much to you?
areyoubeingserviced · 21/08/2020 08:31

@Pikachubaby- your niece should not be doing maths if she was working at a level 4 or 5. She will definitely struggle.
Even students who have taken exams and achieved grade 8 at maths, struggle with A level maths. It is hard.
This is the issue though , sixth form places will be taken up by people who cannot cope with some courses.
I don’t mean to sound like a negative Nancy( my dd has done well out of this) , but I do feel that this is going to backfire

RaspberryRuff · 21/08/2020 08:33

@LimitIsUp

Guys - don't get angry with the naysayers. They are just a bit dim, what can you do?
Good point. Thick as mince themselves and jealous probably. Quite sad really.
RufustheSniggeringReindeer · 21/08/2020 08:37

Would be good fir government to enforce AS levels for current Y11s, where they choose to do specific A Levels. This would be a good way to validate/ or discredit their Y11 gcse results

I don’t think it would

Ds1 (a few years ago) got an A in maths....in his AS level he got an E

By your ‘proof’ (obviously if he was in this cohort) his A grade would have been discredited

Pikachubaby · 21/08/2020 08:41

Can we all agree that Gavin and Boris should be put in the stocks for this total mismanagement of education and grades?! Angry

chomalungma · 21/08/2020 08:43

If someone was predicted to get a 4/5 in maths, then chances are that the school would probably put them in for the Foundation paper.

If they then got an 8, you would have thought the school would suggest to the pupil that A Level maths would not be for them.

Still, a few weeks of calculus and solving simultaneous quadratic equations usually would help someone see that they might not be suitable to A Level maths.

OrangeCinnamon1 · 21/08/2020 08:49

@chubbyhotchoc

Colleges and higher education establishments will start having their own, if unfair system, of working out who gets on what courses. If they suddenly have 7s, 8s and 9s coming from schools that don't normally have that many, they won't get the places. They'll give the places to the kids with the same grades from the schools with better track records.
I think you may be overestimating the importance of GCSEs to Higher Education here. Yes they are used in few areas but not to.the extent you think.
GetOffYourHighHorse · 21/08/2020 08:53

'What have they been through? They have got to lie in bed for 3 months, playing on their phones/computers and avoiding any studying/exams. Its been absolute heaven for them. No one is pissing on their grades, everyone is just being honest that they have been devalued

Exactly. It was an impossible situation though, but all this 'they've been through so much!' is bollocks.

It's just a shame for those who would genuinely have achieved good passes, kind of spoils it for them really.

mrpumblechook · 21/08/2020 08:55

I love all the faux concern (i.e. jealousy) people have for their nephews/nieces/friends children who got a higher grade from the one they were working at. That happens with exams all the time. My eldest DD was normally getting a 5 or 6 in maths but in the actual exam she got a 9 for her GCSE. She was having a good day. Similarly people have bad days and get a much lower grade than they deserve with exams. And subjects can be very variable according to the marker. A study found that if you give the same English or history A level exam to 2 different markers, the grade will vary in about 55%.
Basically exams are not the panacea and it may turn out that this years students have marks that better reflect their ability than other years because they were accessed for work done over a few months rather than just over a couple of days. Time will tell but in the meantime people should mind their own business and stop pissing on other people's chips.

mrpumblechook · 21/08/2020 08:57

Forgot to add the link showing the variability of exams according to the marker. The report was done by Ofqual www.thestudentroom.co.uk/news/thousands-of-a-level-students-will-be-given-the-wrong-grades-on-results-day-will-you-be-one-of

HPFA · 21/08/2020 08:58

@portico

Would be good fir government to enforce AS levels for current Y11s, where they choose to do specific A Levels. This would be a good way to validate/ or discredit their Y11 gcse results.

Tbh, I am surprised the government never enforced EOY Y10 public exams, and same with AS Levels. Would have saved a lot of hassle. And, no one of this modular testing malarkey either.

It was pure ideology. There are genuine problems with fair assessment of coursework. But none of this applied to AS Levels and it made life easier for universities too.

But it wasn't how it was done when Michael Gove went to school so of course it was bad.

chomalungma · 21/08/2020 09:03

My eldest DD was normally getting a 5 or 6 in maths but in the actual exam she got a 9 for her GCSE. She was having a good day

That's one hell of a good day.

And it just raises questions about teacher assessment vs a single few weeks of exams.

WhatamessIgotinto · 21/08/2020 09:10

Exactly. It was an impossible situation though, but all this 'they've been through so much!' is bollocks.

You are showing that you have no idea. You have no clue what this year has done to the mental health of many, many young people in their situation including my own son. And no, that's not 'bollocks' either.

itsgettingweird · 21/08/2020 09:12

@Twiningalldaylong

My son's grades were near identical to his predicted grades and his mocks. We were.so happy for him in the morning but we did start to feel more and more deflated as the day went on and the news came.ouy
This.

I said to ds this morning to shut his ears to the media and calls of grades are devalued etc.

He had no surprises yesterday. Everything pretty much spot on to what he expected except language where expecting a 4 and got a 5. But he's realistic enough to know that he should stick to course that required 4 in English rather than the alternative requiring a 5.

I said to him that where there are possibly cases of schools inflating grades they've actually not done the students a favour and it has no actual effect on him.

He got what he worked for and what he needed to do what he wanted to do.

It's not the grades that are devalued it's the people who are choosing to devalue students by not trusting the centres who are best placed to know students abilities.

And the lack of moderation was the fault of government not planning enough and doing a last minute I turn when they realised what they had been told for months was actually true.

I'd much rather a student have a 6 when they are realistically a 4 and go on to college and carry on level 2 course as planned than a student who was working at a 6 get given a 3 and not get in the course they are capable of.

Asuitablecat · 21/08/2020 09:12

I think we all just need to agree that O'levels were the only proper exams ever taken in this country and that the rest of us have progressed purely down to ridiculous gcses and grade inflation over the past 25 years.

CasperGutman · 21/08/2020 09:13

Many countries have education systems in which pupils' results depend on school-based assessments and their teachers' experience of working with them. That's not a disaster in itself.

This year's results won't exactly be comparable to those from other cohorts, but that's an issue in other systems and, if we're honest, it's always been an issue in the UK too. I might have done much worse on my A Levels if I'd been faced with the previous year's papers; I'll never know.

Employers and anyone else who makes use of GCSE and A Level results needs to accept that they are only a very crude indicator of a particular kind of ability, and use their own methods to choose between candidates. They should have been doing this anyway!