A level grades

[DolphinFC]

If feel that value of an A grade ar A level has been reduced dramatically. I feel truly sorry for those very bright, hard-working students who would've got an A grade no matter what. Their deserved A grade is now lost in a pile of undeserved A grades.

I wonder if it's the beginning of the end for formal exams to be honest, of course a sharp rise following patchy teaching devalues them, but it's not the students fault- the vast majority of who have worked harder than ever due to the uncertainty and sketchy provision re covid. Its challenging to ensure teacher led grades are consistent across the country, but everyone did the best they could.

@blameitonthecaffeine

herecomesthesun But that suggests that you think the independent schools have been dishonest in their grading? I don't. I work in such a school. Our teachers are just the same as everywhere else and just as unlikely to be unprofessional. I think it's all the other reasons which have caused the discrepancy. And it's very hard to do anything about that now.

Well last year the stories were of entitled parents phoning up the head demanding a more favourable assessment. After all, they are consumers paying for a service. Different heads and different schools will respond to that differently (and no discredit to your particular establishment).

Do you not think it's odd that A*s rose by 3x more at private schools? Why not check it out? After all, if there's no irregularity, no harm is done.

@SusannaM

Wow. Only on Mumsnet. DD doesn't go to a great school, they've been hopeless over lockdown and their A level grades certainly aren't coming in at 45% A, infact many haven't made their predicted grades or uni places, they've been so badly let down. There will be plenty of schools who are similar, which makes this crowing on Mumsnet even more difficult to swallow. If the As are worthless, where does that leave the kids that didn't get them? Stop feeding into this media bullshit.

DD gets her GCSEs on Thurs, I am so worried for her.

Thank you. We're in a similar situation. My DSD just got her N5 grades today. As her teachers predicted, it's Cs all around.

Those Cs on paper don't show that she was getting progress warnings earlier in the year. That she was so switched off during the second lockdown, she was facing No Award in two subjects and a D in another. She got her act together, worked her behind off to properly study, to turn up to every Google meet on time, to contact her teachers for help even though she felt shy and stupid, and then spent her April vacation revising for around 20 different final exams.

I'm really glad she was too young to sit Highers this year, because that kind of dismissive attitude about exam grades completely diminishes her work.

Exams are a measure of a person's performance on a day. One day. And the well-to-do seem to spend an awful lot of money on extra exam prep for their teenagers, so I don't know where the baloney about exams being an "equaliser" comes from.

Most private schools didn't stop teaching throughout the pandemic. Dd didn't have a single day off school. Perhaps that made a difference?

I'd be more than happy for anyone to check out her A* s, she more than deserved them

The teachers in this thread have given really detailed accounts of how the teacher assessed grading was done. It would be virtually impossible for a teacher to get away with awarding a student a grade of their ability without providing piles of evidence to back it up.

I know this thread is about A-levels but just to give an account of the GCSE grading which will probably cause an equal stir. I didn’t teach Year 11s last year but the teachers in my subject department who did put in literally hundreds of hours into the assessed grading for GCSE’s (we don’t have a sixth form at our school).

Every end-of-unit test, assignment, work submitted, class tasks and homework they had access to since the child started secondary school was taken into account. All the work was re-marked twice, blind marked, blind peer reviewed/checked by a further two teachers in the department, the grades fed onto a spreadsheet and the average grade decided upon. The teachers then had to rank whether each student was a high level 7, a middle level 7 or a low level 7 (for example) and then the department had to rank each student in the year group from the highest performer to the lowest performer and grade boundaries were allocated. As other teachers in the thread have stated, some even sent work off to neighbouring schools to be marked by other teachers. The grades were sent off to the awarding bodies and we had a bundle of evidence ready to be submitted to back up the grade should the awarding body ask for it for any student at random.

Teachers didn’t award grades on a whim or out of thin air. It’s perfectly valid that teachers graded fairly and there has been grade inflation. That’s what happens when you don’t have the leveller of exams. Remember, teachers can only grade performance and ability based on historic past performance but they cannot possibly know which students in the cohort will be the statistical unlucky ones who lose their nerve and don’t perform well on the day.

@Bryonyshcmyony

It's depressing that some recruiters literally can't make a decision without A level results, even though they may not be any indication of the applicants ability to do a job

No kidding!

I can well imagine parents phoning. I just don't think many (if any) schools would act on that. One successful parent would tell others then it would get to the media and the school would be seriously damaged by the scandal. I also think upset parents phoned state schools last year. They probably didn't get anywhere either.

I don't have access to anything I can investigate though - I'm just a part time, self employed dance teacher.

I don't think the rises are odd, really. I think the overall rises are mostly explained by hedgehoggers post on page 1. I think the differential between state and private is mostly explained by the very different lockdown experience that the average private school pupil had compared to the average state school pupil not from a privileged background.

To really know, I think we would need to see the statistics for:
the rise in A grades between state schools in affluent areas and state schools in less affluent areas.
the rise in A grades between state schools that did live teaching (or at least continued with the curriculum the govt officially suspended) through both lockdowns and those that did not.

I think some thorough checks need to be done, especially on schools where there is a lot of grade inflation since 2019.

That’s already happened. The exam boards were in charge of moderating between schools, they called for samples of evidence from every school, and an algorithm was used to highlight potentially dodgy schools for a closer look.

So if you’re not happy with the way the grade profiles have turned out, blame the exam boards and Ofqual.

We had to keep our grades within the same realms as the past 3 years, with a little wriggle room. Eg 2% cohort got an a* in 2017, 4% 2018, 0% 2019. So I could possibly go to 5%, with v v good evidence, but I'd have to make sure the rest of the group fit in the overall pattern. And teachers are professionals. We know what our students can do.
We've also had that gut wrenching moment when that dead cert for c gets a D and misses a uni place and you later find out the grade boundaries moved by 5 marks, or they didn't quite get the focus of the question right or they chose the question no one else would touch with a bargepole. But you know that that kid should have had the C. I actually struggled more to award A*, because you think:"could it be better?"

If so many students lose their nerve in exams (and I was one of them) surely exams need to go, as they can't be a fair representation for so many students

Think teachers will be very glad to see the return of externally marked exams.

There’s a definite argument for making them not quite so high stakes though. Maybe modules contributing to a final grade like Gove scrapped.

@ineedaholidaynow

If so many students lose their nerve in exams (and I was one of them) surely exams need to go, as they can't be a fair representation for so many students

I sort of agree and disagree with this.

Agree that exams aren’t always a reflection of students capabilities and some students are better versed and more confident at taking exams and holding their nerve on the day than other children of similar ability.

I disagree with this because that’s life. Often we only get one chance or climactic event to showcase what we’ve got and not bottle it. It’s an important life skill. Job interviews, degree exams, applications, first impressions, musical performances, sporting events - the Olympic Games are even a good example!

The vast vast majority of kids get the grades they deserve on the day. It will align with their ability. There will of course always be students who don’t perform to their full potential or students who have a great day exceed expectations. That’s life. There will always be outliers.

Bright and successful A-grade children who have a terrible day on exam day will still succeed in life if they work hard and remain consistent. Repeating or retaking the year, recalibrating their expectations, or playing the hand they’re dealt with and knuckling down and revising harder in the future are all options. It happens to people in life all the time. We might not have got that interview we wanted that we thought we were perfect and the best candidate for because we messed up some answers on the day. You learn and do better next time.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/08/10/grade-inflation-feels-nice-results-day-slow-burn-will-come/

"Even a cursory glance shows there’s been a particular surge in top private schools’ grades compared with last year, and in London grades compared with the north east. Does that make sense? Sounds suspicious, if you ask me."

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/29/private-school-parents-twice-pushy-study-finds/

"Private school parents are twice as pushy, study finds
Almost a quarter of teachers at fee-paying schools say they have been put under pressure by students' families over grades

Private school parents are twice as likely to have pressurised teachers over grades, a study has found.

Almost a quarter (23 per cent) of teachers at fee-paying schools said they have been approached or pressured by students’ families into giving out higher predictions, compared to just 11 per cent of teachers at state schools in deprived areas, according to a survey.

The poll of over 3,000 teachers, commissioned by the social mobility charity the Sutton Trust, also found that just under one in five (17 per cent) of teachers at state schools in wealthy areas felt pressured over grades.

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, insisted that grades would be based on pupils’ performance rather than those whose “parents have the sharpest elbows”.
He said teachers had tried to ensure grades were fair but many had the “additional strain” of coping with pressure from parents."

Think teachers will be very glad to see the return of externally marked exams.

completely agree

No sharp elbows at dds private school. We trust the teachers.

@morgoth but how can you say the vast majority of students get the grades they deserve in exams if there has been such a huge inflation of grades especially since 2019, the 2 years exams weren't taken. When I took exams (many years ago) A grades were rare, not the norm, probably closer to 10%.

And the students getting the grades this year have missed a huge amount of their exam lessons out of school

Is that because of the time pressure and stress of sorting out the grades @noblegiraffe or because you think exams are the best (if not the perfect) way of assessing students?

[quote ineedaholidaynow]@morgoth but how can you say the vast majority of students get the grades they deserve in exams if there has been such a huge inflation of grades especially since 2019, the 2 years exams weren't taken. When I took exams (many years ago) A grades were rare, not the norm, probably closer to 10%.

And the students getting the grades this year have missed a huge amount of their exam lessons out of school[/quote]
I wasn’t referring to this year and last year. I mean in normal times. When I was talking about how the vast majority of students get what they deserve, I was talking about pre-Covid times when students could sit exams.

here's an idea - recruit on ability to do the job, rather than ability to pass exams?

And a very good idea at that, except that for some positions proper qualiications are genuinely necessary, be they A levels, a degree or whatever else. Not necessarily just because of the subject matter either, but to demonstrate that the candidate's capable of learning and development

Obviously that applies to Uni places as well, and if mistakes have been made this year students may find themselves struggling with a course to which they're academically unsuited - hardly fair on anyone, including the students themselves

everyone is equal bit some are more equal than others... guess who really benefitted from the top grades. Quelle surprise

Here's the crucial data- yes grades up everywhere but up more or independent schools at top grades .

So 2019: 16.1% of independent candidates got an A*
2020: 27.4%
2021: 39.5%

Compare that to Sixth Form Colleges

2019: 6.1%
2020: 10.4%
2021: 12.3%

DailyMaui Do you have the figures for normal schools? Makes sense that independent would be biggest increase and 6th form colleges lowest but we;d need to see general schools to make more sense of it?

Herecomesthesun Can easily believe that about the amount of pressure. Just can't imagine many teachers giving in to it. Or being able to even if they wanted to. In any sector. I actually also thought the percentage difference of pushy parents would be higher - paying fees makes a lot of parents extremely demanding.

If you think no teaching for a term makes a difference to student attainment then you can't be surprised that independent schools have done better than some state options?

@DailyMaui why would Sixth Form Colleges have the lowest increase?

It was me that assumed that holiday . Might not be the case. But they seem to have had a huge amount more Covid disruption and a lot more online learning than schools so I would expect that to have an impact.

The private schools did step up with regard to the online teaching. If they hadn’t the parents would be demanding their fees back. That goes so way to explaining the differences.

The state system did less well. My nieces schools were awful. Teachers didn’t seem interested. Kept referring back to the Head who wasn’t responding promptly to queries and kept blaming the government. This let down the children and some decided that if the school didn’t seem interested why should they so they effectively down tooled from March 20.