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.

Phoenix can I ask you, what is the problem with growth mindset as it relates to teaching?

My understanding was that the concept, as originally envisaged by Carol Dweck at least, was more around having a positive attitude to learning and becoming more resilient in the face of failure. Is that not the case? Or is it used in a different way in a classroom setting?

The problem is, no-one's been able to replicate Carol Dweck's research results.

@thing47,

The concept is that of you think you can do better, this will translate into better results. It is subtly different from the simple but effective message of ‘if you do your best, you can be proud of yourself’.

The original study (from which Carol Dwek made a fortune) showed a ridiculous effect from minimal intervention, has not been replicated, and even Dwek has admitted it was flawed.

It seems pretty harmless, though, until you tss as ok to pupils (especially girls) who have been told to embrace it. It is no longer just they cannot do quadratic equations but they feel that there is a fundamental flaw in their character that means they lack self belief and are unable to try hard enough.

It is also used as a stick to beat teachers who just, however hard they try, cannot get set z to all 7s or higher…

Plenty of autocorrect and proof reading errors but I think you will get my gist.

There is evidence though that if you preface an exam with info such as "girls do well in these kinds of exams", girls do better than expected...and vice versa.

Believing you can do something doesn't necessarily mean you will do it, but believing you can't is definitely an issue.

As I understand it, all a growth mindset is saying is that ability is not fixed but can be improved by effort and hard work.

That is just common sense. When it comes to exams, it is not just the smartest DC who perform the best. It is those who work the hardest.

Genetics really doesn’t count for very much at all

Could you please provide the links for this? I’m not being goady, just genuinely interested. It’s not what I see in day-to-day life, which is that when two parents found school hard their children often do as well, likely confounded somewhat by specific learning disorders and ADHD being heritable.

One of my friends is a paediatric geneticist and she says that intelligence is even more heritable than height.

A quick google and medical literature search doesn’t show a single article that says genetics are insignificant, they all say the opposite.

Including one from Nature(!) which is high-prestige.

www.nature.com/articles/nrg.2017.104

It's interesting to compare 1980 to 2021 and to look at the number of students:

377,700 received A or higher and 588,000 received B or higher in 2021.

59,000 received A or higher and 147,000 received B or higher in 1980.

If there was no grade inflation, a student in 2021 near the bottom of the A* grade would have received a B in 1980, and one near the bottom of 2021's A grade would have received a D in 1980.

@hedgehogger1 - thanks for posting that, such a great article and simple explanation of what has happened.

What people don't seem to understand is that teachers have nothing to gain by over inflating grades because it would be massively shooting themselves in the foot as they'd have to explain why their teaching had suddenly become so poor that grades plummeted the next year.

The talk of grade inflation has been enormously frustrating and upsetting for dc (and their parents!) who worked really hard for their exams and did really well as a result. I wish the press would just shut up about it.

The talk of grade inflation has been enormously frustrating and upsetting for dc (and their parents!) who worked really hard for their exams and did really well as a result. I wish the press would just shut up about it

From the graph posted up thread, in 2002 20% of students received A grade which gradually trended up to 25% by 2019. This year 44% gained A grades, nearly half the cohort.

If you don’t think this is grade inflation, why do you think nearly half the year received exceptional grades?

@GreenLakes,

Growth mindset is all about the beliefs of the pupil and teacher, not just the self-evident fact that those who work harder do better.

For instance, if you tell a pupil in year 10 that they could not attempt an A level in a subject in which they have never achieved more than 53% in a test, that is not ‘growth mindset’

The ‘correct’ answer is that you cannot attempt it YET, but with self belief and hard work there is no reason why not.

The claims of the research behind it have been toned down a lot (after Carol Dwek took plenty of money), but most schools still claim to be ‘growth mindset’ schools, a bit like they used to embrace ‘learning styles’ (VAK etc).

In my experience it just translates a mindset of ‘I am not bright enough’ into ‘I clearly lack the necessary self belief and can’t try hard enough’. Which is more damaging depends on how the student values themselves.

Have a read of Hedgehogger's post (near beginning of the thread).

The thing is exams are a very poor, limited way of assessing a child's capability. My dc are both intelligent. One suits exams, one underperforms in them. Does that make the exam-suiting one cleverer than the other one?

I'd say that rather than grade inflation this has been a year of equality of assessment. Assessment based on teachers' knowledge of the whole child not an assessment based on how they hold up under pressure and how good their memory is. It's been a year of success for those who don't traditionally succeed because they don't fit into the round hole as they are square pegs.

I'm a square peg. I managed to do well enough to get decent results and a good degree but all the way through my education, even my University tutors would say I could contribute really effectively in tutorials but never produced the same level of work on paper.

So for all my fellow square pegs, hurrah, you succeed at last! Ignore the grade inflator haters and enjoy the one year fellow square peggers were allowed to fulfil their potential.

@nolongersurprised - my post was a reply to you!

2022 is going to be a bit of a bugger for square pegs, unfortunately.

@Phineyj - you're not wrong! My youngest is the square peg in our family. They will be hitting A-levels in 2023. Not going to be fun. I'll get my chisel out...

@hedgehogger1 post helps with the grade inflation for A-levels but there doesn’t seem to have been such grade inflation with GCSEs. DS GCSE grades were broadly in line with what we had been expecting, and that seems to be the case for many. There seems to have only been a slight increase from last year for those students getting 7-9s, the equivalent of As and A*s in A-levels. Why don’t the same criteria seem to apply?

So now it just means there are lots of square holes for square pegs! It doesn’t mean these kids are brilliant and they’ve been unmasked all of a sudden. We are talking about half of all the kids who sat A levels.

I'd say that rather than grade inflation this has been a year of equality of assessment

So you believe that half of the cohort are sufficiently talented to achieve these exceptional grades, and always have been but the assessment has been unfair? Half the cohort are so truly exceptional that they deserve the highest grades?

I get that everyone feels they are brilliant except for xyz reason which means they don’t test well, or don’t express themselves well or whatever.

But if half the cohort are “exceptional” then the word has become meaningless.

@Phineyj

2022 is going to be a bit of a bugger for square pegs, unfortunately.

It’s going to be a bugger for everyone, square and round pegs, because they will have to make the holes triangle shaped to bring things back to more sensible levels. As nolongersurprised says, if half are exceptional, the word is now meaningless.

Assessment based on teachers' knowledge of the whole child not an assessment based on how they hold up under pressure and how good their memory is

In addition, there will be students now who are eligible for medicine who wouldn’t have been before.

As in my previous post, I don’t necessarily think the study in medicine is hard, but the volume is huge and students do need to be able have good retention of work studied and the ability to filter through the volume to work out what’s important. There are a lot of exams.

Studies do need high levels of cognitive proficiency, good memories and the ability to pass exams.

For exam courses where the academic standard and load is very high, grade inflation matters a lot.

*students, not studies!

An 'A' is fantastic but not exceptional though is it. That's the whole reason for the stupid A* system. So in old school terms there's been a massive shift of people getting Bs. Not so exceptional I think.

Btw my dc got the results they deserved IMO (teacher, proud parent, owner of mum-goggles but able to remove them, I HOPE. DH's dad ones are firmly attached to his face, never to be removed ).

@nolongersurprised - absolutely. Academic rigour is academic rigour. If students aren't capable of what is needed for their course then they will drop out or scrape 3rds. It's not an ideal situation at all. I just hate the belittling of students' achievements. A lot of students will have deserved the grades they got but are having those achievements devalued by the eye-rolling about grade inflation.

@ineedaholidaynow
I have no evidence for this but my theory of A level grade inflation is this. Lots of A level classes are smaller, I know there are big colleges etc but plenty of places still have v small cohorts. Therefore when grading the historical data wasn't given as much weight as at GCSE with bigger cohorts. Meaning that at a school level, the grades didn't appear hugely inflated because the year on year profile would be spikey anyway. However at a national level the grade profile has shifted upwards.