To think the 2 tier GCSE system is wrong

[countingdaysuntilretirement]

My dd is in year 11 and will be doing her GCSEs in June. There has been some discussion on whether she would be sitting the higher levels or not - she's borderline on most. I have only just realised that you can't get lower than a grade 4 if you take the higher paper - if you do badly you don't get a grade 1,2 or 3 but are simply ungraded. But if she takes the foundation level she can't access the higher grades.

This means children are having to take a gamble with their papers. I would have thought the higher level would just add an additional paper or layer - not that you risked losing a GCSE altogether if you had a bad day.

Can anyone rationalise this for me?

You used to be able to mix foundation & higher for MFL & could get a grade B with that. But they got rid of that which is a shame as some students are good at reading but find the speaking harder for example.

Yes @converseandjeans you could do a H paper for reading and a F paper for listening for example, and they would average it out. Tho the speaking and writing were CA so they were not tiered as they were self-setting if that makes sense. But I had a student once who wrote amazing controlled assessments, really excellent and error-free, and yet collapsed in an exam room, so they took F reading and listening (their choice, for confidence reasons) and yes, ended up with a B overall.

With mock papers most children get pretty consistent results so the teachers can pick the best option for the child. Not many children are will have a range of a 3 to a 6 in a subject depending on how they're feeling on the day. That's a big difference in ability.

It will be true of some though, and it will be best to speak to the teacher and do some mocks of each type to see which suits her best.

You should go on YouTube and google “which tier to choose, higher or foundation” there are teachers creating content on this topic who talk through the pros and cons. The higher tier grade boundaries are lower to achieve a 5 or 4, you need roughly around 40%. If you know the exam board, google the 2024 grade boundaries to get a better idea. I heard of a lot of students resitting maths nov 2024, sitting the higher paper, who had previously entered the foundation in June 2024, and they achieved their grades more easily. It’s a bit late for the school to not have made this decision though, as the higher content should have been being taught already. If she has not been taught the higher content in maths, she should not consider sitting the higher paper.

In your position I would check very carefully that she has been properly assessed for exam access arrangements and that she is definitely receiving all of the adjustments that she is entitled to in all of her mocks. This is urgent as the deadline is in March and the assessments have to be carried out by a specialist teacher. The arrangements might include extra time if she has processing difficulties, rest breaks, a separate room.

If, with all of these appropriate adjustments, she is still freezing in exams and falling off the bottom of the Higher paper then I'm afraid there is simply nothing to be discussed as it would be unethical to enter her for the Higher paper.

I wonder if colleges requiring a 6 re saying that so the student has taken the higher paper?

BTW the lower grades are not a fail or equivalent to a U, they are a level 1 pass which allows a student on to a level 2 course at college.

I hate to say it but the missing out on a 1/2/3 really doesn't matter- if they don't get a 4 its likely they'll need to resit anyway. I can't think of anything where having 1/2/3 counts for anything other than a measure of how far you are from getting to a 4.

Given that only a grade 4/5 counts, the fact that it's all the same exam is a nonsense anyway. You're right, they may as well go back to O level and CSE.

Or even better do away with them altogether and just have a numeracy and literacy test and then do A levels/BTEC/whatever else as a leaving certificate at 18.

182 out of 240 on foundation v 79/240 on higher it looks like (for Edexcel) - if you google it all comes up (grade boundaries - they do change year on year though). Like MFL though, most of the content would be inaccessible for some pupils on higher. I haven't looked at maths, but MFL are worlds apart

True but having recently had to look at schools it seems very few care about the progress 8 scores. The ones that do seem to have better ‘value add’ for their higher achieving children then those that don’t. Obviously this might just be in the area I was looking at.

This. I had no knowledge of progress 8 scores until recently. Our school heavily pushes it's grade percentage on 4/5 pass rates at open evening etc

If a school chooses to highlight its headline outcomes over its progress 8 data in its publicity then it either has poor progress data or doesn’t trust parents to understand P8. Within education communities progress measures are everything. Schools who fixate on their 4+ or 5+ outcomes will by definition underserve their pupils at both the highest and the lowest levels.

And Ofsted also look at Progress 8 so they might be able to pull the wool over parents' eyes, but come inspection day it will definitely be noted.

Not always - P8 only includes those who have Key Stage 2 Data. This excludes many children who were not in the country at the time, any that were privately educated, unwell or had a parent who decided to withdraw them. It also includes the effect of frequently higher ability and often higher income families where they've taken dance, drama, speech and music exams outside the school, as well as community languages.

The other limitation is inherent in the system, being that it is in the interest of the primary to show the greatest level of progress for those that were assessed at KS1 - the much discussed teaching to the test and far too frequent occurrences of malpractice (as evidenced by disciplinary records).

When I'm importing and analysing/comparing baseline assessments, I can see particular schools where their children have scored securely mid range and expected levels, but the children when assessed independently appear to have regressed into the lowest ability band within the course of six weeks - not even over the summer, but six weeks after the SATs whilst they are still at their primary. It's exactly why so many schools use CAT4s or other baseline assessments - the data from KS2 is inherently compromised by the nature of the system and whatever the DfE might say, you still need to be able to see the underlying facts to be able to get the kids the education they deserve (which often involves picking up SEND that the primary hasn't shown the slightest indication of awareness about).

Attainment 8 covers everybody who sat exams. Being aware that this isn't the be all and end all, as an inherently high ability cohort will look better, but also being mindful that P8 isn't the cover-all-bases measure that successive governments have sought to claim, is how parents can look at data - the numbers that leave in Y11, the rate of permanent exclusions in the Autumn term, the comparison between P8 and A8,

Not always - P8 only includes those who have Key Stage 2 Data. This excludes many children who were not in the country at the time, any that were privately educated, unwell or had a parent who decided to withdraw them.

There are only a handful of state secondary schools where these criteria will affect a statistically significant proportion of the cohort, likely grammar schools with a very high intake of children who attended preps and schools with very volatile populations and very high numbers of new arrivals to the country (I worked in one). P8 is imperfect but not for this reason.

Back of a fag packet anecdata says it's running at about 20% of any given primary's pupils - 1-2 out of 5 from each primary will be missing KS2 data.

In my experience, 20% is pretty statistically significant.

It's absolutely not my experience that a typical secondary school is consistently missing KS2 data for 20% of their intake. I'd be genuinely interested to see your source / working for that claim.

Government data says 8.3% of pupils weren't assessed in all three subjects.

My source is unfortunately unverifiable as it's confidential data - I'm not making it up, but maybe it'll be reassuring to confirm my processes to show if there isn't KS2 data on record, that's because there isn't any and not because I'm a bit crap and lazy? 😀

Summer term - export results from the Primary Assessment Gateway. Have already obtained UPNs at this point, so easy to do.

Summer term - CAT4s. Export from Testwise and do a quick analysis, map to the correct results sets and import onto the MIS once admitted (necessary for timetabling in Nova and the Parentpay preadmission sync/etc).

Summer - Holiday - September - importing CTFs from feeders. If I'm lucky, they've remembered to tick the box meaning they actually hold the KS2 data. But it's so patchy, I've never relied upon that. Oh, and because secondaries can't access the youngest of the cohort's data until they've reached 11 years old in GIAP, giving the UPN, still checking the PAG for the very late summerborns.

September onwards - catching up on late starters, in year admissions and missed CATs, exporting NPD KS2 data from GIAP once I get the update on Slack that it's been added. Occasional reassuring of SLT that I've got baseline data on every student, I've already created a series in 4Matrix and it's all been there since the end of the first week of term.

I've already created a marksheet template ready for the data with assorted pupil information columns to include previous school and a column to calculate average KS2 Reading and Maths score to then use two separate nested IF THEN ELSE formulae to place them into the appropriate High, Middle and Lower categories for KS2 and CAT4s (conveniently, the Mean SAS is already on the CAT4 data, which saves me about 90 seconds).

If I then click Calculate and Save, I can export unformatted to Excel and it's easy as anything to see who has KS2 data, who doesn't and whether there are any discrepancies between KS2 and CAT4 bands/the schools where this happens.

It's about 1 in 5 without KS2 data (excluding the in year admissions, where it's more of a 60:40 split of not having data to having it, the rate of absence of data increasing the higher up the year groups you go). It's not a selective area and it's not any more or less diverse than any other state school in the area.

You know that’s schools not bothering to send over the data, right?

there's not usually many/ any questions in the higher paper that are at level 2/3. In the old style GCSE's, the first three questions on the high paper overlapped with the foundation paper, but the rest were at higher levels, I assume it's still the same. So if you only get, say 20 marks, you've not demonstrated the skills needed for levels below the one you're being assessed at.
For example, one of the overlap questions for the board I sat always used to give a recipe for something, and then there were 2 or 3 questions which asked you to work out the quantity of something you'd need to make a different amount of the recipe (eg a recipe was given for 8 cupcakes, and you'd be asked how much flour you needed to make 12 cupcakes, and how much butter you'd need to make 20 cupcakes). In the higher paper, the idea would be that this was an easy question, and you'd then use those skills to answer more complicated questions. In the foundation paper, this may be the most advanced form of the skill you'd be asked to do, but you'd have been asked earlier a question about 'if bill and ben share out 18 beads in a 2:1 ratio, how many beads does ben get'.
Part of this logical is 'it makes no sense for kids who'd be doing foundation to sit a paper with half the questions they can't answer' and 'it makes no sense for kids who're more advanced to have to demonstrate basic skills in basic questions where we can see they'll be using the same skills in multi-step, more advanced questions'

Could you get her to do a few past-papers from the appropriate exam board at home, and grade them for her (the mark schemes will be available online)? Try maybe two at each level, and then you may have a better idea of how she's doing and you can have a discussion with her and her teachers about what will be best. For most classes, they'll be being taught to a syllabus based on which paper they'll be sitting (higher has more advanced content),so they should have some idea of which paper she's being taught to at this point in the year!

Some GCSE subjects currently don't actually have tiers.

In fact the vast majority don’t.

The only ones that do (as has been said) are
maths
science (so this will be two or three GCSEs, depending if double award or separate sciences are sat)
MFL

The OP hasn’t said which of these her DD is taking, but at most it is five GCSEs out of 8-9-10 being sat; obviously it may well be fewer than that.

My understanding is that basically the higher paper only covers the assessment criteria (BTec background here!) for the higher grades. Therefore you can't be awarded lower grades as these have not formally been assessed and there would be no way to distinguish say a 1 from a 2.

You know that I've already allowed for schools not sending it over by getting it from the PAG and GIAP, right?

Kind of skimmed your post, but the government data is 8.3% so 🤷‍♀️