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.

That’s because they are independently wealthy though? You can be a photographer or a musician if you have a trust. Know a few of those. Lots of very posh people go to agricultural college to learn how to manage their land or to meet other posh landed gentry types. Lots just aren’t that academic enough to get to Oxbridge Durham - the schools can’t work miracles!

Surely the universities can do the contextual offers more carefully so if you are on FSM for example?

Surely any contextual adjustment should be at an individual level and not just because they went to a school on a list. There are many other factors that have a significant bearing on outcomes, not least parents' education levels.

It’s a lazy assumption that all and/or only private schools inflated grades during the pandemic. Many didn’t. Their pass rates and grades this year were marginally higher than 2019, level through the pandemic at A-level,IB & GCSE and have been statistically consistent throughout the past 5 years. But that’s not newsworthy or divisive enough to report.
Neither does it address the problem of falling educational standards or offer any solutions to all those students who’ve been so badly let down during the pandemic. It’s a mess and no one seems brave enough to tackle the root causes of inequality and level the playing field.

Don’t think anyone is saying “all” private schools inflated but are you denying there’s an issue here?

I think it is a bit of a myth to say the DC who want to be artists or musicians, actors etc. all come from independently wealthy families or the DC are not academic enough. Tell that to the students at Ruskin School of Art, Slade, Durham, Manchester etc. My DC's friend who is off to agricultural college comes from a perfectly ordinary family, parents are an OT and teacher.

I think it a shame that certain jobs / professions are seen as off limit by some unless the family is independently wealthy. The creative industries, farming, sports should be for everybody.

amp.theguardian.com/education/2022/feb/06/labour-seeks-inquiry-into-huge-jump-in-top-grade-a-levels-at-private-schools

Well they should be and they used to be but sadly there’s been a real shift over the last 30 years lots of our top actors are incredibly privileged and it’s much harder to make it without family support.

The analysis of results didn't happen until February 22. It was too late for Ofqual to make significant changes this year.
The many independent schools ( and results show that it was the top independent schools) shot themselves in the foot in terms the long game. They announced publicly to
Ofqual and Universities that they cannot reliably assess student grades. At the State School I taught at we had to regularly enter current student performance and predicted grades throughout A levels. Senior staff wanted to see maintained evidence that we could reliably predict A Level outcomes.
Ofsted want to see this kind of Data.
The hugely inflated grades of 2021 for top independent schools announced to everyone that they cheated.

I thought Ofsted were not interested in internally generated data and spreadsheets. That was a massive workload issue.

They will want to see headlines.
They can do a ´deep dive' if they are concerned. Sixth forms are generally inspected separately to KS3 and 4

And to the poster who claimed it was the fault of poorly performing comps, look at the London Schools results. So many boroughs in really poor areas are producing exceptional results

Deep dives are into the curriculum, not into spreadsheets of data.

www.tes.com/magazine/archive/ofsted-inspections-wont-examine-internal-school-data

They will want to see evidence that schools know their students and that their grade predictions are accurate and not just plucked from thin air

The proportion of private school pupils achieving an A* grade at A-level reached 39.5 percent in 2021, compared with just 16.1 percent in 2019.

The Conservative Government promised 'levelling up'. Yet we have here
an example of top independent schools 'gaming' the system during a national crisis.
There are a lot of angry academics around particularly in university admissions. They are trying so hard to 'level' up through a variety of strategies and some previously well respected independent schools decide to cheat the system

How can admissions tutors ever trust these independent schools to provide them with accurate predicted grades in order to make offers.

This isn't Ofsted's job.

Of course it is. They want to see that students make appropriate levels of progress through school. I know an infant school which became a through school (KS1 and KS2) and some of the KS1 teachers had previously been giving unrealistic levels of achievement for their students at the end of KS1. it gave teachers in KS2 an impossible task to maintain the level of progress. i was one of the reasons the school went into RI

Schools have to show that they know their students and support them in making appropriate progress.

However, back to this topic. Many independent schools' gamed the system' during a national emergency and awarded their students inflated grades. How can these schools be trusted to accurately predict grades when admissions tutors are awarding provisional places.
It also questions their right to remain charities when they cheat so blatantly at such a difficult time

And remember most provisional university offers for this year were made before the report, review of 2021 results was published in Feb 2022

KS1 data is SATs data and reported.

Overinflated UCAS predictions are a problem for universities and generally the idea is that they will punish schools who do a shitty job.

It is definitely a concern that the exam boards didn’t pick up on the private schools who blatantly cheated as that was their job.

My department had a deep dive in the last half term and it involved a gruelling interview about my knowledge of my curriculum and vision but nothing about data. Books were scrutinised but this was to see if the department was following the scheme of learning. Nothing was mentioned about grades etc.

It’s outrageous. That they exploited a national emergency to benefit an already insanely over privileged cohort is actually sickening. They should be ashamed.

Those stats speak for themselves. It’s either incompetence or fraud. Their charitable status needs to be reopened in light of this. Wouldn’t this breach charitable rules?