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 don't answer on principle on here when people start demanding you answer their questions @NotBadConsidering

@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.

@hedgehogger1

Did not need to read any further after this reply. You explained perfectly why the grades are as they are this year and its just a shame that more people won't have seen it or glossed over it because it was a long post (probably the same ones complaining how much easier it is to get a-levels than in their day).

I’m not demanding. You were quite happy to “demand” an answer yourself. from a poster if they worked in a private school or not.

You’re deliberately avoiding the obvious end point of your arguments throughout the thread. You have asserted that these grades are all fully deserved. I’m trying to ascertain if that means you genuinely hold that belief and there can’t possibly be any inflation. You’re refusing to answer because you know deep down of course there are going to be kids who are thanking their lucky stars and you know deep down that if 50% of kids are considered elite enough to get an A/A then an A/A isn’t worth a dime and we can’t tell who the really good kids are. If you had courage in your convictions that the marking has been flawless you would say these aren’t possibilities.

So many people who want the pretty lie rather than the ugly truth.

I think if any kid who normally would have got a B gets an A it doesn't matter a jot and good luck to them

I don't believe D students would have been given As, no

Sorry, I'm not sure if you have an A level dc or not

@hedgehogger1 explains things perfectly btw

Universities arent stupid. They will simply start ignoring grades, and will simply request module by module % and will select the top students based on those. If the government/ofqual allow too many students to all get 100% and it gets too hard to distinguish the best, universities will start demanding international baccalaureate or other alternatives to ensure they can select.

@NoIDontWatchLoveIsland

Universities arent stupid. They will simply start ignoring grades, and will simply request module by module % and will select the top students based on those. If the government/ofqual allow too many students to all get 100% and it gets too hard to distinguish the best, universities will start demanding international baccalaureate or other alternatives to ensure they can select.

Well they haven't done this for this year or next year and then afer that things will be back to normal so I doubt they'll do this

@Bryonyshcmyony

I think if any kid who normally would have got a B gets an A it doesn't matter a jot and good luck to them

I don't believe D students would have been given As, no

Sorry, I'm not sure if you have an A level dc or not

If you think it doesn’t matter that any kid who normally get a B ended up with an A, you’re saying to all those kids who normally get As that you don’t care their result has been devalued. One big happy group kids all lumped together who all deserve a participation medal like on sports day aged 6.

Why does it matter if I have an A level kid or not? It’s only those that do who are seemingly blind to the idiocy of all this. I actually have a nephew who is A levels next year. This will affect him massively as there will likely be huge recalibration with tougher marking to compensate, plus competing for places for all the decidedly average students who got inflated marks this year who didn’t start uni this year. I have every confidence that whatever grades he gets, there are people in this year’s cohort who will have better grades than him that won’t be as deserving.

But yay! Let’s all give everyone a medal this year because they deserve a break! Who cares about those that follow this shit show eh?

This is a fairly decent independent, #achievetheextraordinary, fees 15k, up to 37k boarding

A LEVEL RESULTS
...............2016.......... 2017 ............2018 ..........2019 .......2020.......2021
A*.......... 12% ...........8% ............3%.................. 4% ..........16%
A*-A .......35% ..........30%.............. 23% ..............18% .........41%........approx 60%
A*-B ........61% ...........49% .........51% ............47%............69%
A*-C ........82%........... 71% ...........79% ...............71% ..........88%
A*-E .......99% ............93% ...........98%................ 98% .........100%

One big happy group kids all lumped together who all deserve a participation medal like on sports day aged 6

🙄

Amazing someone with no skin in the game can get so angry about it.

I do have skin in the game. I just explained why.

Amazing how people with skin in the game are unable to think objectively about it and think their kids are all amazing and can’t possibly entertain the idea that the cohort of 2021 isn’t actually a bunch of geniuses.

@hedgehogger1

The challenge is that if you KNOW every year one of your 5 "sure shots" stuffs up, and you know one might be close to the boundary in a tough year, really you need to take the two poorest of the 5 and predict they won't make it. It feels tough because you are focusing on the individual students and considering how you explain to them that they didnt get there. By making you predict, they made you answerable.

And the only way to answer those students is to say "the boundary was tough to hit this year".

Of course it was never going to be done this way, so here we are with half the kids getting top grades. Yes they've worked hard but no, half the kids do not deserve top grades or they wouldnt be top grades, would they.

@Bryonyshcmyony

I think if any kid who normally would have got a B gets an A it doesn't matter a jot and good luck to them

I don't believe D students would have been given As, no

Sorry, I'm not sure if you have an A level dc or not

Of course it doesn't matter to you because you're not impacted by it! What about tpeiple who sat exams 2019 and previous, or 2022 and after? Talented (esp. working class) kids who's hard work is undervalued because everyone got the same? Students mislead into thinking they can handle an intensive STEM course?

Why even have formal education if everyone just gets an A? Let's just give out participation certificates. Even with coursework, 50% of the cohort are not deserving of the top grade.

You can make the argument exams aren't the best method of assessment, but this botched batch of grades is not the answer to that

I do think this year’s dc have been amazing. From Reception to 6th Form, every single one of them.

For those fretting about OPK, maybe there’ll be a news story in a year, or 3 years, about the failure rate at Uni and you can be all smug about how you were right and 50% of the A level cohort this year are useless entitled thickies who didn’t deserve their place. Warm your cockles with that thought
Alternatively, you can read the posts explaining exactly how the grades were arrived at, from people actually doing the job and accept that assessment over a two year period will give different results to intensive exams. Perhaps even accept there are many contributory factors to attainment of A level grades (opportunity, class, type of school, parental engagement in education right through 3-18…….).

@Bryonyshcmyony

One big happy group kids all lumped together who all deserve a participation medal like on sports day aged 6

🙄

Amazing someone with no skin in the game can get so angry about it.

I agree with @NotBadConsidering and I have skin in the game. You don't need a kid this age to see it might be a bit of an issue.

I don't have a child taking public exams yey, but I do care about the issues for example with competition in clearing. Children who were very carefully graded at state schools to be in line with past performance will be at an unfair disadvantage competing with kids whose independent schools marked them overgenerously.

If it weren't for the element of competition for University places (or jobs) and it was just a pat on the back, it wouldn't matter.

It's probably more useful to here from non parents. Parents are more likely to be biased. Everyone wants the best for their kid, so parents whose kids got top grades won't mind and wonder what the big deal is. "My DC worked hard, so they deserve an A*"

The other issue, of course, is schools knew uni offers before awarding grades.

If a pupil is expected to get AAB, and has an AAA offer to read medicine, how tempting is it for the SLT to bump up that B to an A?

It's probably more useful to here from non parents

Useful how?

Very interesting that selective state schools got higher grades awarded at GCSE than the indies.

GCSE grade 7-9
68.4%...... state selective
61.2 .........independent
28.1...........academy
26.1...........comp

So how did kids at indies do so much better comparatively at A level?

@TheReluctantPhoenix

The other issue, of course, is schools knew uni offers before awarding grades.

If a pupil is expected to get AAB, and has an AAA offer to read medicine, how tempting is it for the SLT to bump up that B to an A?

Veeeery hard to mark down, even more so if we are talking Oxbridge, very hard for the school to deny kids opportunities like that (I am told)

ah re GCSEs

"Grammar schools usually outperform those in the independent sector, in part because many private schools choose to take so-called international or IGCSEs or similar qualifications, rather than the exams regulated by government agencies."

maybe that helps account for some of the discrepancy

@TheReluctantPhoenix

The other issue, of course, is schools knew uni offers before awarding grades.

If a pupil is expected to get AAB, and has an AAA offer to read medicine, how tempting is it for the SLT to bump up that B to an A?

I can't speak for other schools but my DH teaches a-level at a grammar and they did not look at what the DC needed for courses and were careful not to inflate grades - both on an individual basis and beyond a typical year's results. He found out today that 15% of the DC in his subject weren't given the grades they needed for the course they wanted, but some of them were taken by the university anyway.

[quote NoIDontWatchLoveIsland]**@hedgehogger1

The challenge is that if you KNOW every year one of your 5 "sure shots" stuffs up, and you know one might be close to the boundary in a tough year, really you need to take the two poorest of the 5 and predict they won't make it. It feels tough because you are focusing on the individual students and considering how you explain to them that they didnt get there. By making you predict, they made you answerable.

And the only way to answer those students is to say "the boundary was tough to hit this year".

Of course it was never going to be done this way, so here we are with half the kids getting top grades. Yes they've worked hard but no, half the kids do not deserve top grades or they wouldnt be top grades, would they.[/quote]
Absolutely this ^

The answer from @hedgehogger1 contained an example of a student who was close to the B/C boundary but predicted a B.

Educators have accepted, apparently unanimously, that the correct thing to do is to predict a B for that kid in the knowledge that they are equally likely to get a C. The exams then resolve any disconnect between prediction and reality.

We all know that exams are not totally fair. Even if you accept that they test how well one deals with pressure as well as pure academic ability, they take no account of the student who received bad news last night, or who is feeling unwell but will be fine tomorrow. But looking at this year's results it brings to mind Churchill's quote about democracy: it's the worst system of government except for all the others.

The other issue, of course, is schools knew uni offers before awarding grades

not necessarily

I actually thought the system would have worked better if schools had been allowed to tell students what their grades were likely to be so they accepted offers accordingly. Not much point accepting an AAA offer if you were going to get BBB. And despite the hysteria on this thread about "everyone getting As", there were plenty of kids who did not get what they needed.