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.

@beigebrownblue

DD here is getting G.C.S.E results Thursday.

It's a stressful time and I'd like to pat on back all students and parents/carers who made it through.

If anything I'm thinking future employers/staff at universities will consider this to have been a particularly challenging year, and will respect the resilience of all those students who have consistently worked to get through, regardless of grade etc.

I was always told that continuous assessments are harder than exams and it never lets up. That is certaintly what our experience has been.

agree, my DS3 was shattered as he finished school from weeks and weeks of continual assessment. I suspect some of the posters here have no exam age students.

Thanks to the teachers who have come on and put their point across, along with all your hard for our DSs and DDs

I don't think YABU although I would never say that to my daughter or to anyone in real life. My daughter has got 2A* and 2A today. She was not predicted to do that and it doesn't tally with her GCSE performance. She probably does have the ability to get those grades but not the confidence or the nerve. She would have been anxious and panicky before real exams. She has never performed well in exams - she misreads things, gives up in a panic, struggles to think clearly etc. She was predicted AABB but it wouldn't have been a surprise if, in a normal year, she had got lower than that. That doesn't make her actual results unfair as it is a reflection of raw ability. But it does make them unlikely and a contributor to the grade inflation.

hedgehoggers post is very good and very clear but, if the result of removing unpredictable slip ups from the equation is that nearly 45% get A or above, then I would argue that the exams in normal years aren't fit for purpose. If a cohort has the ability to do that well then they should be able to do so. Having a bad day shouldn't affect the rest of your life like that. But then I also think grade boundaries would need to be adjusted so we don't have nearly half on the top 2 grades.

Not sure how top unis are going to cope this year - especially given how many of last year's cohort deferred. My daughter went for an optimistic first choice and a realistic back up. She's got into the optimistic one easily. There must be thousands in that position. I hope there's room for them all.

The different way some schools have approached testing and grading can make an impact on the grades. Comparing the way DS's school and another local college approached the testing for A-level students, DS's school seemed much stricter in their testing conditions and preparing their students, whereas the other college seemed to be spoon feeding and very lax in their exam conditions (letting students 'see' other students answers) Not sure how they have done their grading but if a student had significant 'help' and gets an A, it is not very fair on the student in the same college who got an A by their own hard work, or a student in DS's college who got a B, as that college has been stricter all round.

At the end of the day, grades are there to get you into university nowadays. You will soon find out if your abilities don't tie up with your grades and most jobs now have some sort of test to see if you are capable of doing the job. I would probably keep an extra eye on anyone who got grades this year as I just don't believe that almost half of students are bright enough to get the top grade. Statistically it just doesn't work that way. No one is saying these kids didn't work hard but it's doing no one any long term favours. The ones who always would have got an A are now not distinguishable on paper, the ones who shouldn't have got the grade will find it hard to keep up, the ones who didn't get the top grade will now be feeling way worse because half their peers got an A so how can they not berate themselves and think down on their abilities.

But at the end of the day, it's not fair however its done. It's not right the way its fallen but it has allowed a lost generation of kids who have had suffered these past two years to get a step up where they need it and I for one am not going to scream for fairness to other years because these kids haven't had fair. They deserve a little helping hand like a lot of the rest of us have had.

@SafeMove I agree totally.
@Saucery - no surprise there! Or that it's not being widely reported.

My ds was one of those getting top grades today and he bloody deserved them. Here are my thoughts based on my limited experience of having 2 now go through a levels.

Firstly, I think btec etc are now seen as a real alternative to a levels so students who are not aiming for top grades will explore them as an alternative option. Lots of ds friends have done them instead of a levels.

Secondly this cohort have not had a normal 'coming of age' type experience. No drunken house parties, no clubbing, less opportunity to meet girlfriends/boyfriends so have actually knuckled down and focused on their studies like adults have been begging them to do for generations. Our older ds who took a levels long before the pandemic certainly had more distractions in his life.

Thirdly, as pp have already pointed out you have removed the potential to fuck up on the day. Turn 2 pages over at once, miss reading a question, nerves make the mind go blank etc now have far less of an impact.

Combine all this together and i can see why the grades have worked out how they have. Ds has performed consistently well throughout his education and predicted high grades from the start. He deserved what he got today.

I know of two girl’s who got their A level results today:

1 fairly bright, goes to decent but not massively over achieving comp. been awarded 3 A*’s.
1 very bright and diligent goes to very successful grammar, awarded far less than expected (so did my year 12 son in his grammar). School actively said they were going to downgrade predicted and estimated grades because they were worried about over inflation. Ie if you achieved grade B in year 12 end of year, they were going to predict you would achieve a grade C at A level because work gets harder.

How is this fair? Girl B definitely the brighter and very hard working. I feel so badly for this cohort. I was hoping it would all be back to ‘normal’ next year when my two sit their A levels but in the news this morning it said it probably wouldn’t be. I can only hope it comes out ‘in the wash’ in the next stage of their eduction, although some won’t have the opportunity to show that.

School actively said they were going to downgrade predicted and estimated grades because they were worried about over inflation. Ie if you achieved grade B in year 12 end of year, they were going to predict you would achieve a grade C at A level because work gets harder

Yeah that didn't happen

Whaylt do you guys think will happen in future years as although it was fair to allow teacher assessed grades this year, this level of inflation is unsustainable going forward. Unis wont know who to accept without resorting to entrance exams which would make the whole experience more stressful

What do you mean?

Next year exams will be back and the number of A grades will fall.

Mumsnet will be full of threads moaning about their child will be disadvantaged compared to this year's.

@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.

I feel desperately sorry for the students who do deserve these grades and the figure is not 44%.

Bizarre. Teacher here. Our moderation process was to set exams based on exam board material. We also used our formal mocks. We marked. We moderated internally and then moderated again, without prejudice, by using teachers from another school. Finally, we blind marked anyone who was close to a boundary. No time for social engineering; instead, knackered teachers doing all of this extra, vital work for free whilst also supporting the mental health of many fragile students.

Oh and quite a few of the teachers moderating are normally employed by exam boards to do it, so they did the work that they’re normally employed to do for free as well. They’re knowledgeable and qualified.

Can everyone pls read Hedgehoggers post on the first page before swearing at the OP....
(Thank you Hh, really interesting to read about the actual grading process. The lack of bell curve absolutely makes sense...there's no real comparator this time).

(Oh and the 44.3% is 70% for private schools)

@hedgehogger1 Thank you for your brilliant post .

Yes, excellent post from hedgehogger.

It's possible to acknowledge that the percentage of "top" grades is significantly higher than usual the year, without denigrating the students' efforts during what has been an extraordinarily difficult time.

Sadly the shambles of a government/education department has failed totally in this, why no planning for a worst-case scenario given last years joke.

Boris Johnson instructed the DfE not to come up with contingency plans for cancelling exams this year because he thought that the existence of contingency plans would make it more likely to happen.

schoolsweek.co.uk/institute-for-government-covid-handling-report-lockdown

And the DfE thought exams were going ahead right up to the point where Johnson closed schools and cancelled exams.

The failures came right from the top.

Congratulations to those getting good exam results today and on Thursday. Even getting through this year and through the assessment process has required remarkable resilience on their part, so to come out with good results as well is something they should be very proud of.

and some will use their political bias to try and change society

Surely this is quote of the day 😂😂

Oh and the 44.3% is 70% for private schools

Is it?

Do you happen to have a link for that

Agree that hedgehogger's post is spot on.

In addition I have to say that I've found the year 13's this year have worked above and beyond. The extra uncertainty and possibly lack of social life means they have thrown themselves into their work. My grades are slightly above expected but they have more than earned it and I have solid evidence to support it. I don't know whether this is the case in other schools but I suspect it is.

And to add to that. I marked the mocks blindly (which works for most students except when their handwriting is really distinctive) and moderated with another school. I'm also an experienced examiner so pretty confident in my marking.

Lovely goody OP there. Can only surmise that you've paid for private education for your DCs to get yourself shiny As for your kids. Of course 70% of them got As against the 39% from state schools - which dramatically skewed the results that are all over the news. Takes the shine off your privilege I suppose! Perhaps we should all be thinking how private schools can achieve such high results and try to replicate them in our state schools so everyone - not just the rich - can achieve. Oh sorry Gav's sorted it hasn't he - our DCs are going to start learning Latin soon aren't they

It doesn't really affect us, as not year 12. However, my son's state
school normally gets in excess of 45% A and A* grades in sixth form.

The results went up by about 2% this year, as opposed to nearly 20% nationally.

I can see why there might have been pressures on grade inflation generally though, how could teachers not give kids the benefit of the doubt.

It's a shame that this is going to cause so much confusion and oversubscribing at universities.

I wish them all well however, I'm sure they would all have rather had a normal year by far.

Also curious about the 70% for private schools (that sounds well dodgy if true)

Following on from @hedgehogger1 post, do teachers think the exam system is flawed, with everything hinging on 1 or 2 days for each subject.

I was a nervous wreck in exams, would sit, for what seemed like hours, just plucking up the courage to open the paper, then would cry, so would have a reduced time to actually answer the questions, and wasn't really in a fit state to do my best. Luckily I managed to pass all exams taken of various forms, but put huge mental toll on me (and my parents watching me fall apart in exam season). However, it didn't stop me taking A-levels, a degree and professional exams!

Still feel sick when I see an exam hall. Think I am stressing more than DS about his GCSE results on Thursday.

Although I passed all my exams my grades were always lower than the work I did in class, sometimes by about 20%. I am old so did O-levels so have never experienced coursework being used for grades.

I'm not sure I would have coped with the extreme pressure students were under in their last term doing continual assessments (or the pressure I would have put on myself)

But is there a fair way to ensure as many candidates as possible achieve their true potential. The exam system certainly didn't let me achieve my true potential, but being someone who worries a lot and puts huge pressure on myself, not sure what system would have worked for me.