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.

They aren't having bad days in exams is the point

I agree OP.
There's no way 43% of kids should get an A/A* grade. If 43% are "above average", it's not the average.

When I did A Levels (and O Levels), the top 10% got an A, next 10% got a B and so on.

That meant that whether the exam was "easy" or "difficult" in a particular year, the best kids got the best marks.
So in a world where everyone got 90%, only those who got 99% would get an A.
If everyone got, say, between 50% and 60%, those with 59% would get an A, 58% a B etc.

Seems a much better way to differentiate, and takes into account that the difficulty of an exam can vary from year to year too.

Your post is incredibly insensitive. Those kids have had an absolutely shit 18 months, extremely detrimental to the mental health of many. I’d give them all A*s just for getting through it.

If anything they are probably “fairer” grades than when proper exams are sat. I was ill during my exams and fucked them up. My straight A*s became Bs. I felt very hard done by! Much less chance of that happening when teachers (who can see how hard you’ve been working and are marking how well you might have done on a reasonable day) have power over what grades you get. Really this is only benefitting people who might have been very nervous/ were ill etc on the days of their exams.

Obviously grade inflation is a bit of an administrative nightmare but it’s quite shitty to imply that the grades weren’t generally deserved.

They didn't take exams this year @MrsFin 🤔

Indeed.
45% awarded A and A. *

Obviously youngsters are so much more intelligent that 20 years ago.

The examples were from 2 & 3 years ago, pre covid. Not 20 years ago.

Our niece has done exceptionally well today. She was predicted to get AAB and has got AAA. She worked her socks off, especially since Christmas. Constant working, revising as all her social activities had disappeared. Friendships have fallen by the wayside. Lots of issues around anxiety have surfaced in the last 18 months. So great results today but at a cost.

I would put good money on there being many young people in the same boat today. Great results but at a huge personal cost. So let's just keep that at the forefront of our minds please.

Your post is incredibly insensitive. Those kids have had an absolutely shit 18 months, extremely detrimental to the mental health of many. I’d give them all As just for getting through it.*

I disagree that it is insensitive. The point is not that any individual student is undeserving or should be regraded, but that as a whole the system hasn't worked for the cohort and their grades will not serve the purpose they worked for. What is the point of attending school, through such difficult circumstances, if the end goal moves the goalposts so significantly?

@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.

Absolutely spot on. Journalists should have to sign to say they’ve read this before writing anything at all about grades. I do get that non-teachers won’t realise all of this (and why should they?), but journalists really should be up to speed.

@MrsFin

I agree OP. There's no way 43% of kids should get an A/A* grade. If 43% are "above average", it's not the average.

When I did A Levels (and O Levels), the top 10% got an A, next 10% got a B and so on.

That meant that whether the exam was "easy" or "difficult" in a particular year, the best kids got the best marks.
So in a world where everyone got 90%, only those who got 99% would get an A.
If everyone got, say, between 50% and 60%, those with 59% would get an A, 58% a B etc.

Seems a much better way to differentiate, and takes into account that the difficulty of an exam can vary from year to year too.

Good points.

To be honest apart fro. University entry who cares about A level grades once you have a degree

In the end A levels and GCSEs are just a passport to the next stage. With all due respect you don’t really know what you are talking about. It was inevitable that the grades would be higher than usual and after last year’s algorithm balls up there has been no correction to the TAGs. Students have suffered massive disruption to their education- those getting A level results had two sessions of lockdown to contend with. There was huge uncertainty about how the assessments were going to work and by the time schools got the guidance , in some cases, it was too late really to organise syllabuses in the most sensible way. I’m an English teacher and I’ve never worked as hard in my life as I did last term: huge amounts more marking and high stakes mark8ng at that, endless checking and meetings. If you look at the broader picture anyway the grades have changed over time. It is now harder to get an A in English than it was in the As era for example. Exams are problematic in all sorts of ways, not least in subjective subjects where the marking can be hugely variable. So in summary yours is a pretty ignorant and Grady comment.

But it’s not like C or D grade students are suddenly getting A*s. As PPs have said, it will all come out in the wash at university anyway and students will sink or swim. Employers will care more about your choice of university, subject, degree grade and how you come across in the interview. An employer will be able to spot an elite student a mile off. Job applications for graduate jobs are absurdly competitive.

No employer is going to look at a student that comes out of York or Durham University with a 2,1 or a first class degree in Physics and then look at their A-level grades of 4 A*s of 2021 and think “this must be a student who has had their grades significantly inflated therefore isn’t an elite student”.

Yes I think people are forgetting the possibility that not all A* students will perform to that standard on a particular day in an exam for various reasons, plus they had nothing to do but work!

What will they do next year? Keep the pass rate for A* and A into the high 40% or move it back down to pre covid levels? Or is it just going to keep going up?

I do feel very sorry for those currently in Year 12. I think it is going to be a very uncertain year for them now, and don't forget they were also the year group hit with the non examined GCSE grades too.

Congratulations to all who received their grades today. Don't let anyone take the shine of your achievements. To those who are uni bound I wish you every success. I hope that you will have the uni experience you deserve and that we are now starting to get back to some some of normality. Uni years are meant to be enjoyed and lived to the full - you are about to start a great adventure.

@Morgoth

But it’s not like C or D grade students are suddenly getting A*s. As PPs have said, it will all come out in the wash at university anyway and students will sink or swim. Employers will care more about your choice of university, subject, degree grade and how you come across in the interview. An employer will be able to spot an elite student a mile off. Job applications for graduate jobs are absurdly competitive.

No employer is going to look at a student that comes out of York or Durham University with a 2,1 or a first class degree in Physics and then look at their A-level grades of 4 A*s of 2021 and think “this must be a student who has had their grades significantly inflated therefore isn’t an elite student”.

Exactly. How on earth would they even begin to choose which were "inflated" and which weren't? The PP who said her employer would assume all 2021 grades were inflated - are they just not going to employ anyone?!

@MrsFin - much greater numbers of students sit A levels now than in the 1970s and 1980s. There were also no Assessment Objectives then so the whole process was less transparent than it is now. You really can’t compare as now huge numbers also go on to University whereas it was about 5% then. The whole educational landscape is very different in so many ways that it’s not really possible to compare.

The PP who said her employer would assume all 2021 grades were inflated - are they just not going to employ anyone?!

I think there is a real risk that employers can't differentiate between candidates and that jobs end up going to students from better off backgrounds, who have something like DofE, horse riding, nepotistic internships or world challenge which sets them apart. While that undoubtedly happened pre-COVID, the grades were at least more spread out to provide a counter balance.

@spongedod

Indeed. 45% awarded A and A. *

Obviously youngsters are so much more intelligent that 20 years ago.

The examples were from 2 & 3 years ago, pre covid. Not 20 years ago.

🤣🤣 I know. I wasn't referring to the data I was talking about how dumb we were 20 years ago!

Go back 20 years and a mere 18% received an A grade. No A then. Now 44% at A and A so either they work harder now, we were dumber or something else. It's just one measure A level grades and once degrees are achieved then off to employment where other skills are required.

Well my dd is definitely cleverer than me and I got As 35 years ago

@ClaudiaWankleman

The reasons that there are slightly more A grades than usual the last couple of years is because all teachers can do is award grades based upon historic performance of the student.

It's not just 'slightly more' though @Morgoth It's a large and steep increase and that is what makes it difficult to differentiate. When you're young and your grades and choice of subjects are all you've got to give an employer an idea about you, it's really vital that you can give an honest account of yourself.

Regardless of whether grades derived from exams really are 'honest' - we've all had bad exams that we think don't show us to our full potential - they were an agreed and accepted way of measuring achievement. Inflated grades don't have sufficient granularity to do students justice.

I agree. I’m all for exams as they are a leveller. But the point is, teacher assessed performance based on evidence of historic achievement of each student is the best measurement you have got in the absence of exams. There is no other better alternative at present.

GCSE and A-level results will be insignificant and inconsequential pretty much once an employer has seen a candidates degree classification, degree subject choice and their choice of university. A realistic BBB student who was predicted AAA will struggle with a medicine or Veterinary Science degree for example and his or her degree classification will reflect this.

It will all come out in the wash eventually.

Well said, Hedgehogger1.
My daughter has just received excellent grades at A level.
She worked hard for them and deserves them, whatever anybody else thinks.

@ClaudiaWankleman

The PP who said her employer would assume all 2021 grades were inflated - are they just not going to employ anyone?!

I think there is a real risk that employers can't differentiate between candidates and that jobs end up going to students from better off backgrounds, who have something like DofE, horse riding, nepotistic internships or world challenge which sets them apart. While that undoubtedly happened pre-COVID, the grades were at least more spread out to provide a counter balance.

That's an issue with employers then. Don't most big graduate schemes have exhaustive selection anyway?

My son worked very hard for his results and I think there's little room for this sort of snobbery around this year's results.Two of his friends who are both from very difficult backgrounds couldn't cope with the lack of structure and have dropped out with nothing as they couldn't get the course work completed. They're the real people who have suffered from the current situation.
In years to come no-one will be looking at my son and thinking that he didn't deserve that a*, only a few sad parents will have some bizarre tally sheet.

@Streamside

My son worked very hard for his results and I think there's little room for this sort of snobbery around this year's results.Two of his friends who are both from very difficult backgrounds couldn't cope with the lack of structure and have dropped out with nothing as they couldn't get the course work completed. They're the real people who have suffered from the current situation. In years to come no-one will be looking at my son and thinking that he didn't deserve that a*, only a few sad parents will have some bizarre tally sheet.

Bloody well said

@Theredjellybean

None of us are saying your dc aren't nice people etc. But really, a* Was introduced to distinguish the very highest ability students, the very few, rare intellectually outstanding pupils. Do you really believe that near on 30% of this years pupils fall into that category?

I agree with this, it's useful for Universities and students to be able to differentiate between bright, hardworking students and the really gifted ones who would have been able to answer the top level questions. I fear the same for GCSEs, where 9s will undoubtedly be awarded, despite being intended for the very top %.