TES; top grades fall dramatically at private schools

[Bougiebliss]

Yesterday’s TES

www.tes.com/magazine/news/secondary/levels-2022-top-grades-fall-private-schools?amp

Hmmmm… so what changed in their teaching over the last year?
This feels really distasteful not only for the hard working children in schools that didn’t inflate, but also for those children who got on to courses based on the inflated grades and are presumably struggling.
I can’t help feeling that if this was something local comps had done there would be more outrage.

To be fair, top grades have fallen pretty dramatically across the board - about 9% down on A and A* grades, I think the BBC said.

This article says a fall of 11% for private schools - not that different.

Most of the problem with teacher assessed grades being inflated did not come from teachers being unfair, it came from not being able to allow to children to mess up or just slip a few marks to below their predicted grade which thousands of children do every year.

I wonder if this is more likely to happen to private school children - the environment of their classes and mocks is often much smaller, more nurturing/mollycoddling (depending on how you look at it!) and I think the real exams might be more of a shock to the system and result in more slip ups than state school pupils might experience who might have more resilience. Just pondering of course but it would likely have been true for my daughter last year. She got excellent grades from her private school which I do believe she deserved but she has OCD and is very emotionally fragile. Her school gave her a huge amount of 1:1 support and adjustments to help her achieve as she did. I don't know that she would have done herself justice in public exams at all.

Nothing will have changed in their teaching, other than more of it being F2F than during the pandemic.

The increase in top grades during CAGs was quite marked, and although there are still more high grades in the private sector, its falling back.

One other possible factor is that this cohort did not sit GCSE. So unless at a grammar, state school pupils won't have take external exams before, whereas nearly all in the private sector will have sat entrance exams at 11 or 13 (and possibly faced 'weeding' exams at other times too. Exam stress can definitely affect performance, and in the absence of GCSEs it might been uneven in ways that have a disproportionate negative effect of state sector pupils

But state sector pupils who hadn't sat exams performed better compared to private schools in this set of exams than they did in teacher assessment.

We already know from years of studies that teacher assessment favours the better off and discriminates against disadvantaged pupils and certain ethnic minorities. That's why calls to scrap exams and replace them with teacher assessment are bonkers, this is just more evidence.

My niece has been a ‘victim’ of this. She didn’t sit GCSE’s at her private school, was given great grades which surprised /blew her family away, then predicted very high a levels so got a place for medicine - lo and behold she couldn’t live up to those predictions, lost her place yesterday, dreams shattered and now coming to terms with the fact that she might not be able to pursue the dream she has held for two years.

It was always the Government’s plan that this year would be a bridge between the 2019 grades and those of the last two years. The result of that is that grades are down across the board. Independent schools still have a significantly higher proportion of the top grades. FWIW my school fell into this category exactly. The narrative that schools were deliberately over inflating grades is also disingenuous. We were given guidelines by exam boards and govt and spent many many hours ensuring we gave students the fairest grades we could.

@Musmerian down across the board but not equally down across the board. Why are TES writing about this aspect of it?

The narrative that schools were deliberately over inflating grades is also disingenuous.

But it doesn't have to be deliberate. Many studies of teacher assessment show that teachers are biased towards certain groups of pupils and against others, even though they think they are being fair. So if private schools have more of the pupils that teacher assessment tends to favour, and fewer of those that it discriminates against (which they do), then they will be likely to have disproportionately benefited from the switch to teacher assessment over the past couple of years. This is certainly what it looks like from the data.

@Bougiebliss
Im very sorry your niece now hasn’t got her place at university. She will have done other tests, assessments and interviews to get the offer of a place and it seems harsh that after all of that, she cannot go. However teacher predictions have been notoriously wrong for years. Exams go wrong. That’s not new either. The topics were narrowed down for these A levels and it’s not sustainable to have such high numbers of A snd A* students. It devalues education. I do hope she can find an alternative rewarding career.

We are not upfront enough in the way we talk about this.

Teacher assessed grades were much higher in the private sector and grade inflation was a much bigger problem.

children who got on to courses based on the inflated grades and are presumably struggling.

Not necessarily. Some courses ask for high grades because they are VERY over-subscribed. They have to have some way of allocating places so use grades. Doesn't mean someone with slightly lower grades wouldn't be perfectly capable of completing the course.

There were several articles last year about how the grades in private schools were much higher than normal.

So its not really a surprise that the grades have gone down.

But its also worth remembering that even with the 'help' form the exam boards and government assurances that children would not be penalised due to issues that happened during covid, the dfe still came out and said that they would be restricting the top grades.

I also think that its wrong to label all top grades under tag as grade inflation.

However teacher predictions have been notoriously wrong for years.

We've got a system where Johnny needs to have UCAS predictions of, say AAB in order to get an offer from Redbrick Uni. On the day, Johnny only gets ABB. Redbrick Uni still accepts him even though he missed his offer, and even though they wouldn't have offered him a place if the school had predicted him ABB.

Of course the school will be under pressure to predict him AAB if they think there is the slightest chance he will achieve it, in order to get Johnny's foot in the door.

I think this is quite a non story tbh. I have friends working across the state and independent sectors and of those I know, more in the state sector inflated grades than in the independent (because the indies were worried about getting a bad reputation if they weren't seen to be rigorous). Of course there are exceptions!
It's the top grades that have fallen, not the B/C kind of grades so by definition any school with a higher proportion of top grades will be hit much harder. A lot of independents are academically selective, so they (and state grammars) will have a bigger drop this year.
Independent school pupils were also at a major advantage during covid because schools just went online instantly, there were no worries about pupils not having the tech as the schools could fund it for their bursary pupils, so it isn't surprising they did better the last couple of years. It isn't fair of course but it doesn't mean the teachers were faking the grades - just that covid had less impact on more privileged demographics.
On predictions, UCAS predictions are frequently overpredictions. As NobleGiraffe says, schools are pressured to predict inflated grades for UCAS. Everywhere I've worked has had their actual predicted grades separate and they are not the same as the UCAS ones.

Agree with @Musmerian that it is disingenuous to label all high grades as inflation. Last year, my daughter's private school went to quite some length to be fair, objective and follow the guidelines. Numerous teachers assessed each child's work to reach as fair a grade as possible using the guidelines issued. I know this because my brother is an A level teacher of STEM subjects at this school. He evaluated the work of both the students he taught and those he did not, with other teachers cross-evaluating his students. The Department heads then reviewed with the teachers to challenge the grades allocated such to ensure the grade proposed was fully justified etc.. Hours upon hours were spent on this by every department with the aim of being fair and objective. I don't buy the notion that multiple assessments could all carry the same bias particularly when guidelines were quite detailed.. perhaps other private schools took a different approach.

This years A level results are marked higher than the teacher assessed grades last year by quite a margin. As I understand it this years cohort are a bright year group overall, but even so it suggests they were conservative with assessed grades..

Teacher assessed grades given last year were massively inflated.

I know that when I moved to teach in the private sector I was shocked to hear that I wasn't held accountable for over predicting A-level results for students' UCAS applications. Had I done this regularly in either my previous school or my current (both comprehensives), I'd have had to have a serious discussion with my line manager.

As it didn't matter to me, but mattered enormously to the students, hell yeah I overpredicted. If I knew that by predicting students a B, when I suspected they were more likely to get a C, but that the university would let them in anyway- then, yes, I'd predict the B. I guarantee this is something that happens in a lot of private schools. They are answerable to the parents, who expect value for their money- they are not answerable to OfSTED. Senior managers are going to be looking to impress parents more than holding staff accountable.

It's the top grades that have fallen, not the B/C kind of grades

They've all fallen. The press only care about the top ones because of uni entry.

They were much higher than grades assigned based on one-off high-stakes exams, graded on a nationally applied bell curve, yes. But you are comparing two different systems of assessment.

Do you have any evidence to actually support that?

Obviously, children learning in independent schools were going to do better under Covid and teacher assessments because the standard of online lesson delivery, during Covid was probably much higher and consistent. If parents are paying for education, they expect a full 9 am - 4 pm day of well-structured lessons, or could threaten to withhold fees, and probably look in on some lessons, just to check they are happy with the quality of the lessons and getting their money's worth. I should imagine that parents who send their kids to private school, are, in the main, more confident of themselves, when critiquing and assessing the education being offered, because highly-paid jobs, which supply the dosh for school fees, tend to require degrees, MAs and high level of academic training to get into, ergo private school punters are confident about demanding homework/ additional resources and individual support. That is the case for the small handful of independent students that I know.

Also, parents of kids in independent schools appear to have to deliver much of the explaining and supporting themselves, even in non-Covid times, from what I've seen among family members. Private school kids seem to get pages and pages of homework and holiday work which they are expected to complete, and parents expected to support their kids to finish, with a lot of pressure for this to happen. I expect the parents may have had to act as educators, also, during lockdown.

Some kids learning in the state sector may not have had access to computers, and, generally, some parents may have been less able to create a peaceful and supportive environment, if resources are stretched.

As pp said, last year TAGs were based on the best possible outcome and this year you had the kids having a bad exam. Teachers were encouraged to teach it, test it and overall this made a portfolio. So whilst students didn't know what question was coming up, their revision was a lot more focused e.g. we revise literary techniques in book A, assessed essay will be something to do with literary techniques, and obviously with everyone submitting different work, you couldn't weight it the same, so everything was equal in weighting. So if I student messed up 1 essay, you could give them more opportunities to even the weighting out. This year, my A* student had a panic attack during an exam worth 80%, so even though the other exam she absolutely smashed, she still only came out with a C. You just can't compare the two years of exams.

Obviously, children learning in independent schools were going to do better under Covid and teacher assessments because the standard of online lesson delivery

That doesn't hold up as an argument because they did less well under the 2022 exam system despite that cohort having their education massively disrupted due to covid and a large chunk of their Y12 being online.

You forgot to include the following paragraph:

Despite the fall, independent schools still received the highest proportion of A grades*

Private schools did do exams. They did a lot of assessments in exam conditions. So why anyone says they haven't done formal exams I didn't know. All the children in the last 2 years sat some sort of exam under strict exam conditions.
Private schools spoonfeed exam questions. They teach them what to write and how to write it to get the maximum marks/grades. If you think they don't...you don't work at a prestigious Private school.

I'm not even sure why this is news tbh. It was abundantly evident last year that some independent schools over-inflated the CAGs. Surely it was inevitable that there would be a disproportionate drop in those grades when we returned to external exams again this year? I would have been astonished to see anything other than this.