Will a GCSE grade 7 from one school be equal to a grade 7 from another?

[katieloves]

In the eve of Gavin Williamson’s big announcement regarding GCSEs and A’level my annoyance at this whole situation has resurfaced. The current year 11 and 13s have been treated terribly. Considering they’ve barely been in school during their entire course how on earth are teachers meant to fairly grade each student? And how can we know that all grades are fair when there’s no grade boundaries etc. and not much work done in school to base grades on?

We can't, they won't be, but how will anyone ever know for sure?

They won’t be, but what other way is there? The main problem will be if the students don’t actually have the right knowledge and are given a high grade anyway. That won’t be good for starting jobs which require a certain level of knowledge or for university courses.

I doubt it, but the kids have bad rough time, I hope they can get their grades and move on.

My dd is holding it together but we will be glad when we get to the Summer

I am not sure how else they can do
It tbh , Dd missed 9 months of schooling last year

They won’t be. Nor will they be comparable to past/future years. It’s farcical. They should have left exams as an option. I think a significant number would have preferred that.

I can’t think of a fair way of grading them apart from exams and obviously they’re not fair this year either because of the multiple disparities between schools online learning, access to laptops, episodes of isolating etc. Just a complete shambles overall.

@bumbleymummy I agree, my ds would much rather have had exams and was gearing up for them. So angry they were cancelled with absolutely no plan in place and the dc and teachers left hanging for weeks.

If most are similar to ours they are being tested constantly...so guess they will have some to go on.

They weren't last year either. I know that doesn't make it any better, but I hope there is a consideration in the future that grades awarded over the pandemic are more indicative than anything else.

Today’s news pretty much confirms that yes, grades are going to be overinflated. What a kick in the teeth for the children who have worked so hard to meet usual gcse/a-level standards. They will probably achieve top grades but so will many others who may not have.

No, they won't be equal. Yes, some students will be massively disadvantaged.

Yes, the government could have come up with a better plan, especially if they'd actually considered this a possibility since September, instead of insisting everything would be fine...

Another issue of course would be sixth forms being oversubscribed and possibly some pupils getting accepted onto courses which are not suitable (if grades inflated) which is not good if they struggle at that stage- particularly if work has been missed...

No. There is no way of knowing whether two students who both achieve a 7 have actually reached the same standard. An external exam is the only way of doing that. Which is why we have exams in the first place, despite them being unfair on some students every single year!

Nooe it won't be fair. Just like last year. Dds school were very fair in their assessments and dd received some great grades but these have been severely devalued due to cook up with the algorithm
Totally screwed fir year 12 too as she is doing sciences and has had pretty much zero lab time even when in school.
Took sn exam in January but still doesn't know if she will receive a grade as no one knows and teaching suspended in the subject. Totally shit .

Nope and cock up

They could ask for random work samples from schools so they could moderate across schools, ie. compare the standards each school has set and then adjust if they need to. There are thousands of exam markers who are not working this summer who could be employed doing this. It's what used to happen in the days of coursework only GCSEs.

Surely they'll pick out a few of the students from each school and ask for evidence of the grade to make sure that there is no dramatic - significant over inflation within the school?

Took sn exam in January but still doesn't know if she will receive a grade as no one knows and teaching suspended in the subject.

They’re not teaching her at all? That’s dreadful.

My son is doing A level sciences and Maths and teaching has continued, obviously no science practicals.

Its a 1 year modular course so supposed to sit two exams in Jan and two in May. The May exams are presumably cancelled but no idea how they will come up with a grade if they haven'tcompleted any work for 2nd module . @IFoundMyselfInThisBar

No they won’t be. Even schools like mine, which were pretty cautious last year when we were expecting our grades to be moderated, will this time be very conscious of what other schools might do.

I can't speak for all schools and all teachers but there's such a thing as professional integrity. We know what we're doing. We know our students. We might not have the usual data but it's pretty obvious from week 1 in year 10/12 just which direction things are going. We have banged on and on and on at our students this year, telling them that they need to make every test, every homework count for something because the chances were we. their teachers, were going to have some input into their grades (despite what the Government might have said months ago).

I think you have to trust us. It will be like last year - more than average will get the pass grades because we can't predict who might have pulled their finger out at the last minute and who might have been affected by things like illness, death in the family, getting up late, missing the bus etc. so there will be 'benefit of the doubt'. But we are professionals and we know what it means if we get it wrong - Ofsted etc. will be down on us like a ton of bricks when it all goes back to normal.

My husband and I are teachers. We both teach the same subject at different schools.
Sometimes we moderate together and tend to grade very similarly. Occasionally we differ slightly.

When I’ve cross moderated on courses, the can be variation in what grades people award. Never have I ever seen someone more than a grade out though. So (I’m Wales)...one teacher might award an A, while the other awards a B.

This happens during normal times. When the exam board takes in coursework, they don’t take in and check an entire cohort, they sample maybe 10 pieces from the school. They is also some ‘allowance’ for marks to be out. As long as the teacher is within the allowance, the grades are never changed.

So in a normal year a 7 in one school may not be the same as a 7 in another. One teacher may have marked more generously and this will have fallen within the ‘acceptable’ range of the exam board.

This year will be no different.

There is a strong incentive to be generous this year.

No-one wants to err on the side of caution when a child is borderline but give the benefit of the doubt. No-one wants their schools results to be lower than those of other schools who might be extremely generous. Professional integrity works to a point, but when the checks and balances are very limited, people will be very generous and there will be serious grade inflation.

It’s unavoidable in this situation.

Schools might be told that if their grade are significantly out of kilter with previous years it’s more likely to trigger investigation....that would imply some use of an alogorithm still based on previous performance and so won’t be possible as they’ve insisted no algorithms.

In reality, the ability of government to check and moderate will be extremely small and schools know that.

In a normal year 15% of students hit their ucas predictions because they are extremely generous always. Unis will be hoping they haven’t significantly over -offered because the vast majority of students will be awarded their ucas predictions this year.

I’m trying to adopt the attitude that just as long as he gets onto the next stage educationally it doesn’t matter what anyone else got.
Also can’t help thinking schools with a 6th form will be more realistic with grades than schools without as over grading won’t be their problem.

This year's cohort' grades will be even more meaningless than last year's.
Colleges, Universities etc will know this and will assess in other ways.

@SansaSnark

No, they won't be equal. Yes, some students will be massively disadvantaged.

Yes, the government could have come up with a better plan, especially if they'd actually considered this a possibility since September, instead of insisting everything would be fine...

Exactly this. It was predictable from, oh, I don't know, about mid March last year so why didn't they start planning... a bit like they could have planned through May to August how to actually make schools safer rather than just popping out news stories that they were "safe".

I suspect with this at least part of the motivation is that people will blame teachers rather than the government if they're not happy with results.