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.

Most students will have the university they chose on tracking that they picked on what they believed they could achieve at the time. the places in clearing/adjustments is reduced especially for universities ranked as elite and the ones left some have high GCSE requirements in relevant subjects. Unless deferring there will be little change.

Bryonyshcmyony

I absolutely didn't mean the schools couldn't be bothered to teach! They were told that they didn't have to by the government I believe, not their fault. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

It wasn’t ‘clear’ because you said this:

Obviously there were variations, but our private school didn't miss a single day of full online teaching right from the very beginning.
Either teaching matters or it doesn't.

My DD did really well in her A levels, but she deserved to. Throughout the pandemic she did nothing but work. Despite going to an independent school, our internet connection is terrible, which made it really stressful. The assessments and exams set by the school were relentless as they had to produce so much evidence. On top of this was the added stress of applying to universities blind, having never visited them in person (online open days didn't really help).

This cohort of students (and their poor teachers) have had a hell of a time without any of the enjoyable parts and rites of passage. It's been one hard slog. Then they had to read in the press about inflated grades which makes them feel even more rubbish and demoralised.

I’m sure this point will have been made somewhere in the thread: inflation of grades appears to be much more prevalent in independent schools (70% of grades in independent vs 42% in state academies and 39% in state secondaries). So this sort of bollocks from @Franklin12: “It shows that the teachers should not have been given this level of responsibility. Some will have used this as an opportunity to move their students upwards, some will not understand what they are doing, and some will use their political bias to try and change society” would appear to be a baseless accusation.

Speaking for my colleagues in our region’s sixth form colleges and state secondaries, we did our level best as professionals to apply the (inadequate and ill-thought-through) guidance we received from government and from Ofqual/exam boards and did so with integrity. We worked our arses off through two lockdowns providing the best teaching we could to as many students as we were able to reach - for a host of reasons, this was nowhere near the level of provision friends who are teachers in independent settings were able to provide for their students. Pissed off about that? Take it up with a government that failed to provide laptops, adequate free school meals, or more than three weeks’ notice of end-of-year assessments to an entire cohort of children.

An excellent explanation of the statistical reasons for moderate ‘grade inflation’ has been provided up thread. Where more extreme grade inflation looks to have taken place, exacerbating the attainment gap between those with the resources to access education during lockdown and those without, perhaps greater scrutiny is merited. Ultimately, I wouldn’t know, not having taught in the independent sector during this unprecedented period - there could be a number of mitigating factors at play that I’m in absolutely no position to speculate about.

That being the case, perhaps we should focus on congratulating this cohort of students, who should feel incredibly proud of their achievements in the face of immense adversity, and lay the blame for the wider consequences of the mismanagement of education during the pandemic at the government’s door.

I think anyone who done well in their A levels deserved it. Worry about your own children not others. Alot of theses students have self taught over the past year or so . My son was in front of that screen for many hours everyday . There were not full lessons on zoom it would be a chat about the lessons that day. Then they were left to get on with it. It could have been where there were no class type distractions that helped students so they got more done or done better work. There were times my son was extremely stressed and it really effected his mental health. He also caught covid so that did not help.

I might be wrong about this so it's a question really. Is this a class thing? Is it that the middle class are upset that working class are getting good grades and the middle class think that can't be possible? Are they upset that their child has gone to private school or grammar. And children from an academy school has done just as well as they have?

Pulsefinger that's exactly what the last few pages of discussion have been about!

I don't think anybody has been trying to blame state schools. I certainly wasn't. I'm giving other ideas to go against the theory that independent school teachers awarded higher grades than they shoukd have due to parents demanding it. Which I think is a largely groundless accusation. Most people agree that teachers are professionals who do their jobs properly. Independent teachers are no different in that regard.

What I think you could argue is that it was unfair of private schools to continue with the curriculum and do full online learning when the govt had suspended the curriculum and they knew most pupils were not getting that level of provision. But: a) some state schools also did that and b) private schools are businesses and would not have survived if all the parents had withdrawn fees for no service provided. So I don't think that was ever a realistic option. You'd also have to apply the same logic to non covid times - pupils can only have what the least privileged can access is never going to be accepted by anyone.

No-one is blaming the students. But some are questioning how this has arisen and what are the impacts going forward.

If you look at the split of grades @Generalpost it is the independent schools that have shown the biggest grade inflation, so it is more likely parents of pupils in state schools that would be asking how has this happened

It happened because indie schools didn't stop teaching. Full online school from day one.

Our school defended themselves very robustly against parents demanding higher grades. I know it happened at my local state (that parents demanded higher grades not thst they necessarily got them!).

As soon as they knew it was teachers assessments our school went into overdrive. Dd had about 60 assessments from January to June.

So private schools got a 70% rise in As because they were online

How come they didn’t get that sort of raise when they were teaching face to face

(I may be being very thick this morning bryony 😀)

@RufustheBadgeringReindeer

So private schools got a 70% rise in As because they were online

How come they didn’t get that sort of raise when they were teaching face to face

(I may be being very thick this morning bryony 😀)

I think they've always had a higher proportion of As and A*?

My point is surely the constant unbroken teaching would have had some effect on outcomes?

@hedgehogger1

I did not write the following but think it needs sharing here

You will read a lot this week about inflated A-Level grades with teacher's predictions and how teachers have deliberately exaggerated grades for their own gain.

Think again. We haven't. Let me explain.

Let's take five members of an A-Level class who are all slated to get B grades overall. They have been progressing all through the course towards those grades and look pretty good so far.
Now let's take a NORMAL examined year. Your five sure-shot B grades go into that exam room and sit those papers. Now let's go to August and you get the following:
Students 1 and 2 get B grades as expected
Student 3 spends extra hours revising, practising and practising, manages to revise the one question that comes up and gets an A
Student 4 drops to C because they were one mark off the higher-this-year boundaries. Any other year would have been a B.
Student 5 missed either one question/one text/one case study/one equation and dropped to a low C or even a D. Yup they screwed up, either by accident/stress/personal circumstances and there's at least one every year in every class who does.

Now let's take THIS year. Your five sure-shot B grades are back again, only now you have to predict their grades. They have all been consistently working to this level.

Do you give them all B's? Of course you do because that's your evidence. Which student becomes your scapegoat? Which one do you 'assume' will be the screw up or victim of boundaries? Student 1 who had that one bad assessment? Student 2 who has bad attendance? Student 3 who works at B grade but it is really low in the band? Student 4 who has major family issues? Student 5 who is actually capable of more but doesn't revise and blags assessments? No. You don't. Because you don't let (you are also forbidden to let) bias cloud your judgement. So they all get B's sent off, including that one student who may have managed an A.

So grades will go up and be artificially high, but of course they will, it's an anomaly year. You have no data to draw your usual bell curve from (what makes a B one year may not another).

Teachers haven't exaggerated grades, instead we are working against:

• Previous years boundaries that go up and down, sometimes quite dramatically. I have had students get A's one year and C's in another with exactly the same mark.
• Not knowing what is on the paper (e.g. mine only get examined on 2 out of 3 possible topics and if one particular one comes up, some students will do better)
• Each year also brings 'bad' papers and 'good' papers - you get one bad paper/poor question/poorly worded section and that's your cohort all down - teachers have been asked to predict against this too.
• Giving students the benefit of the doubt because you know they COULD and have demonstrated in assessment that they CAN so why not give them the grade?
• Exam marking is notoriously unpredictable, inaccurate and uneven - particularly in essay based subjects even in regular years.
• Also I cannot speak for other teachers but this year's group for me have been one of the most able I have had - and having a student's personal progress judged against previous who may have been less able/more disadvantaged/more scuppered by course changes seems ridiculous.

Also, quite bluntly, predicting and ranking exam candidates for teachers has been hellish. I don't think anyone would like to be asked to rank a group of people on their POSSIBLE performance knowing that the grades they give will make or break a student's future.

And finally, students WORKED for these grades. Teachers didn't magic them out of thin air. We based them on eighteen months of evidence, assessments and grades. And every time someone declares 'oh they aren't real grades' you belittle their work and achievements.

Save your judgements for the govt who turned schools into exam factories which means it's all on one or two papers at one moment in time.

(EDIT: This example can also be applied to the upcoming GCSE results too)

EDIT 2 - Also this year's grades will not be included in schools progress/judgements and league tables so it is literally in no teacher's interest to inflate grades artificially.

Agree with all this. Teachers have evidence and have used that to give the grade. An exam is a snapshot of one day, teachers assessment is based on the last two years do if anything, gives a better picture of the kids ability than a one off exam.

Dunno

But a raise of 70% due to online lessons seems a bit unlikely to me (based on nothing before someone requests evidence 🙂)

Surely if private schools do so much better, and im not being snide if its a 70% rise thats incredible, online then surely all their lessons should be online

Personally i felt from listening to children and parents that online learning wasnt better than face to face…and not because there wasnt the online provision (ds2 6th form were very good compared to others) but because face to face was just better

Sorry bryony

I was so slow typing i missed your other post

@RufustheBadgeringReindeer

Dunno

But a raise of 70% due to online lessons seems a bit unlikely to me (based on nothing before someone requests evidence 🙂)

Surely if private schools do so much better, and im not being snide if its a 70% rise thats incredible, online then surely all their lessons should be online

Personally i felt from listening to children and parents that online learning wasnt better than face to face…and not because there wasnt the online provision (ds2 6th form were very good compared to others) but because face to face was just better

My point is that online (summer term 2020) was better than nothing at all.

I feel more sorry for those who got Bs. Any other year a B would be a great grade to get, but this year with almost half of students getting A or above, B grades have been hugely downgraded. This year an A grade has become the level of ‘good’ and B is in the bottom half of the country.

Rufus To me, the logical answer seems to be:

Grades have risen overall due to hedgehoggers explanation about teachers having to predict on children's best potential rather than allowing for those that will mess us or just miss a grade boundary.

Grades may also have risen overall due to teens having less of a social life and more time with nothing to do but study.

Those two explanations for overall grade rises have had a much bigger impact on independent school figures due to those pupils being more likely to have had less damaging pandemic experiences due to things like live online teaching from first day of first lockdown, access to technology, space and time to work more effectively and teachers who didn't have so much time taken up with pupil welfare concerns. Of course many state school pupils had many or all of those advantages too. But I suspect that sufficient numbers of them dud not to allow the skew in figures.

But I have no statistical evidence for that either.

Does anyone know of a DC who did not make their Oxbridge offer?

Brampton Manor had 55 offers and all made the grade. This was in spite of lockdowns when when they would not have had access to study spaces, wifi etc from 6am to 6pm. All the Oxbridge candidates at DS school made the grade which is unusual pre 2020. Usually 4-5 miss the grades. Who would want to be the teacher who shatters a dream?

@igelkott2021

In all honesty what do folk expect recruiters to think, faced with a farce like this

Oh I don't know. Oh here's an idea - recruit on ability to do the job, rather than ability to pass exams?

What's the point of A-levels then? You're losing sight of the purpose of testing.

They're supposed to be a measure of academic ability which is good indicator of suitability for many careers and further study.

Might as well not bother at all if we want all entrants to get the same grades "because they've had a hard 18 months, bless...".

How do you go about looking for people in the top 5% of academic ability to study medicine if everyone in the top 50% has exactly the same grades?

Oh good more minimisation of education by a brainwashed OP

The results this year came from numerous assessments, were repeatedly moderated in school and across schools in the authority, and also checked against previous years for anomalies which were queried and needed to be justified.

The pure fact of the matter is that pupils generally do better in assessments than memory based exams where a million factors can throw you off in that 2 hour window - running late, got a headache, parents arguing that morning, dumped by boy/girlfriend and so on.

At no point in any career will you have to do your best work while being banned from referring to information. Just visit your gp - see them double check in a book whether medication A might interfere with B. Go to hospital and watch the doctors or nurses discuss diagnoses and treatment and medication. The list is endless

The exams aren't fairer than teacher assessment. Sometimes there are just a few marks between an A and a B. One year there were two marks. The exams are just marked by teachers in other schools and in the arts/humanities subjects the marking is inherently subjective. Ofqual themselves said that both an A and a B could be a valid grade for the same paper, depending on how the marking criteria is interpreted.

When we have grades this year, we have the fairest ones we could think of. If a child got some As in essays it was hard to say that they were a C grade student even if that's what we thought they'd actually get in the pressure of exams.

These kids are all exceptional to be able to achieve at all under the circumstances of the last 18 months with interrupted schooling, serious illness, poor access to the right technology, teaching staff trying to rewrite entire courses to work online while also parenting their own children. Children trying to learn in a house with parents working from home, other children trying to do online learning. Vanishingly few people were set up to have 3,4,5 people all online trying to work or learn at the same time.
Many adults crumbled under the strain. Posts on here every other day that parents can’t cope with home schooling and working.

It’s super shitty to slate the efforts of kids who have had 18 months of this at a critical time in their education.

Go to hospital and watch the doctors or nurses discuss diagnoses and treatment and medication

But the point is more that a medical degree is academically rigorous. If A grades are handed out without discretion then there may be students doing the degree that genuinely struggle with the high volume of work plus the academic demand.

Similarly, for maths degrees. Presumably they expect students taking the degree to actually be genuinely talented at maths, rather than a student who was average in their cohort.

It’s very feel-good for about half the cohort to get top grades but it also means that the grades aren’t very meaningful.

Yes, in hindsight looking at my A Level academic year, the idea that half of them - or higher, given I went to a Grammar school - could have been eligible to study medicine is utterly preposterous. I hope someone is giving these kids good careers advice and telling them what they’re actually capable of at university, rather than what their grades make them eligible for, otherwise the dropout rate is going to be significant over the next 3 years.