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 help manage graduate recruitment in the firm I work for and we will not be penalising any student, A’level or otherwise for the results they received in the pandemic. It appears clear that the way in which grades have been awarded for the last two years may be inconsistent from school to school. However, there are plenty of ways for employers to assess candidates applying for graduate roles besides looking at their exam results.

@herecomesthsun

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.

Yes, this is what I was wondering. Super selective grammars must be a little fed up and their students are at a disadvantage this year (and probably next) in relative terms because these are the grades their students would normally achieve and there is no opportunity for the kind of grade inflation other students and schools are benefitting from as there is no grade A** or grade 10 etc (not that I think there should be, but this year is not a normal situation).

@HappySonHappyMum

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

Would you like salt and vinegar to go with that huge chip on your shoulder?

DS took his 2 years ago, he and many of his friends would of done much better without pubs, nightclubs and parties even with final exams. DD has done nothing but study, she had little else to do, with multiple exams for weeks.

@Theredjellybean

My dd doesn't feel hard done by, but does feel that results do not reflect ability and effort and performance on the day anymore. I have two dds, dd1 got three a* today, no surprise, she was expected to from beginning of sixth form, she also worked hard, and would have done well on the day if she'd sat exams. She's off to Bristol to do medicine. My other dd got a*aa... She was a b /c level ability, she wS never predicted more than three bs. Her mocks in December were bbb, and she has definitely not worked that hard, not enough I'd say to jump up grades so much. She is now saying she is going to decline her offer to study at uni, as she wants to reapply with her better grades next year to get into a more prestigious uni.. She is also talking about doing medicine. I love her vety much but she really does not have academic capabilities for this. So what happens.. She goes, she sinks, there is stress and anxiety and wasted money and a knock to her confidence. I am trying to remind her how much she wanted to do original. Course... And I can see my other dd feels her results are devalued.

On the one hand, there may be a lot of competition for those med school places, and possibly universities will be picky about how they assess students for places given the high grades overall.

On the other hand, there's a lot more to med school than getting A grades in A levels.

Has DD no 2 done a lot of voluntary work experience around health care? Can she make her application stand out in other ways? Could working hard make a big difference in the future do you think?

We certainly will need a lot more doctors in the future.

I had an interesting conversation with a friend who is in charge of admissions for an Oxford College . . . . . she said that lots of people will have done better than expected this August, and will be tempted to defer going to Uni for a year and will try and get into a 'better' (more elite) Uni than they currently have a place for, on the strength of their better than expected A-level results. But my friend said that she and fellow admissions officers have already had discussions about this and - if it's back to exams in 2022 - will not be comparing 2021's results equally with next year's. ie. if someone comes to them with three as from this year and is up against someone with 3a from A-level exams next year, then the person who sat exams in 2022 will be getting the place. Essentially, she said that Uni admissions people are treating this clutch of exam results with a big pinch of salt.

That's interesting and rather odd, WingsandStrings. Oxford has entrance exams and interviews, and a baseline requirement of three As, not A*s. I'd assumed that they put greater weight on their own entrance procedures than on raw A level grades.

If anything, they could regard it as a bigger pool of talent to draw on than usual.

DS got his A level grades today. His last full week in college was March 2020. Most of his learning since then has been done remotely via a screen in his bedroom.
No peer support groups. Constant IT issues. Teaching shortages due to Covid.
No other year group has suffered such disruption since the war.
Any high grades this year are very hard earned, not the opposite.

They’ve probably dropped the standards because of Covid. It’s been such a tough time for youngsters I wouldn’t begrudge anyone a lowered bar at the moment.

@wingsandstrings

I had an interesting conversation with a friend who is in charge of admissions for an Oxford College . . . . . she said that lots of people will have done better than expected this August, and will be tempted to defer going to Uni for a year and will try and get into a 'better' (more elite) Uni than they currently have a place for, on the strength of their better than expected A-level results. But my friend said that she and fellow admissions officers have already had discussions about this and - if it's back to exams in 2022 - will not be comparing 2021's results equally with next year's. ie. if someone comes to them with three as from this year and is up against someone with 3a from A-level exams next year, then the person who sat exams in 2022 will be getting the place. Essentially, she said that Uni admissions people are treating this clutch of exam results with a big pinch of salt.

That would be a very harsh step for Oxford to take when the exam grades awarded this year were completely outside the student’s control.

Dropped the standards? Where did you get that idea from? Read all the teacher comments on this thread, they have been properly assessed and moderated,

@Livinghereinallentown

They’ve probably dropped the standards because of Covid. It’s been such a tough time for youngsters I wouldn’t begrudge anyone a lowered bar at the moment.

Who has 'dropped the standards'? Every single teacher who marked the assessments?

@wingsandstrings

I had an interesting conversation with a friend who is in charge of admissions for an Oxford College . . . . . she said that lots of people will have done better than expected this August, and will be tempted to defer going to Uni for a year and will try and get into a 'better' (more elite) Uni than they currently have a place for, on the strength of their better than expected A-level results. But my friend said that she and fellow admissions officers have already had discussions about this and - if it's back to exams in 2022 - will not be comparing 2021's results equally with next year's. ie. if someone comes to them with three as from this year and is up against someone with 3a from A-level exams next year, then the person who sat exams in 2022 will be getting the place. Essentially, she said that Uni admissions people are treating this clutch of exam results with a big pinch of salt.

Sure you did

@bevelino

I help manage graduate recruitment in the firm I work for and we will not be penalising any student, A’level or otherwise for the results they received in the pandemic. It appears clear that the way in which grades have been awarded for the last two years may be inconsistent from school to school. However, there are plenty of ways for employers to assess candidates applying for graduate roles besides looking at their exam results.

THANK YOU

someone who genuinely works in recruitment!

@Lalliella

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.

Wow. That's going to be dead handy when they turn out to be not as academically gifted as their grades imply and fail in their further studies or career they embark upon.

This isn't sports day where everyone gets a medal for taking part.

As employers we're going to have to be extremely vigilant around this unprecedented grade inflation.

A* was introduced to bring back some differentiation after A-grades became de rigueur. Now something else is needed.

"As employers we're going to have to be extremely vigilant around this unprecedented grade inflation"

set your own exams and entrance tests like most big employers do?

@Bryonyshcmyony

"As employers we're going to have to be extremely vigilant around this unprecedented grade inflation"

set your own exams and entrance tests like most big employers do?

We use A-level results, in part, to determine who to actually invite for tests and assessment.

Oh well. At least you'll have a lovely big pool to choose from.

I don't know if the private school thing is true or not but the BBC is reporting on a state school in London which has got 55 pupils into Oxbridge!! To be honest, all my children were/are privately educated so I don't know much about modern state schools but the one I went to got one pupil into cambridge once in the four years that I was old enough to take an interest. Fair enough, it was a very bog standard one but it sounds like there has been huge change - in some areas at least. 55 is way more than any large public school will get into Oxbridge in one year.

@bevelino

I help manage graduate recruitment in the firm I work for and we will not be penalising any student, A’level or otherwise for the results they received in the pandemic. It appears clear that the way in which grades have been awarded for the last two years may be inconsistent from school to school. However, there are plenty of ways for employers to assess candidates applying for graduate roles besides looking at their exam results.

Absolutely this. I work for a big company and, like most large employers, we have updated recruitment procedures and processes in place to guide us in handling recruitment during and after Covid. For the next couple of years when it comes to considering applications from school-leavers, we’ll be mindful of the background to grades achieved in 2020 and 2021, and recruit with an awareness that somebody who got a B might, in another year, have gotten an A or a C – and we’ll therefore put more weighting on the personal statement they submit with their application, and how they come across at interview. And then in 5 years’ time, when a 23-year-old with a degree and a couple of years in their first job applies, we’ll be far more interested in the results of their degree and what they can tell us they’ve learned in the working world so far, then in whether they got an A, a B or a C at A level, anyway.

YABU
Teachers can never be 100% sure which pupils will perform well on the day and obtain their predicted A*/A and which ones will underperform.
There is no such thing as a pupil who is guaranteed to obtain a grade A whatever.

@cptartapp

DS got his A level grades today. His last full week in college was March 2020. Most of his learning since then has been done remotely via a screen in his bedroom. No peer support groups. Constant IT issues. Teaching shortages due to Covid. No other year group has suffered such disruption since the war. Any high grades this year are very hard earned, not the opposite.

Absolutely. Anyone who says otherwise is churlish and out of touch.

And I would advise anyone with results from 2020 or 2021 to remove the year they left school from future CVs so churlish and out of touch potential employers can't indulge their badly informed bias.

It's also worth employers considering that people who are good at exams are not necessarily good at slogging it out in the workplace (I am someone who overperforms in exams). This year's results may actually be a better guide to ability in the workplace as they are not all based on an exam.

Brampton Manor Academy, probs. They hit headlines earlier in the year when they got more Oxbridge offers than Eton . The Telegraph readership thought this was terribly unfair .

They appear to be doing a fab job of advocating for their (very talented) kids. It is not a selective school at year 7 entry but very selective to get into the 6th form from what I can see.

Also note Peter Symonds & Hills Road 6th form colleges. They also get around 50 kids into Oxbridge each year, but have about 2k or so in the 6th form, still very well done to them.

As someone who went to Oxbridge from an atypical background, I generally rather like this sort of thing.

Yes, that was the one herecomesthesun Incredible achievement, selective or not. My daughter's independent school is selective too and they haven't got anything like that number into Oxbridge. Smaller cohort, probably, but fairly sure this school has still easily beaten them on percentage of cohort too.