‘What does the dramatic fall in GCSE grades tell us? That private schools were gaming the system’

[Bougiebliss]

Carrying on from the A level grades thread
this article was in the Guardian this afternoon, same in Telegraph but I don’t have a token.
it seems like GCSE inflation was more pronounced even than A levels in private school. Maybe some teachers can explain what happened and the difficulties - i did learn lots on the other thread but still left with a bad taste in my mouth about the whole business.

amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/25/gcse-grades-private-schools-inflate-

That's an excellent way of showing the data.
My personal thought is that independent schools had the time and resources to give students lots of chances to bump their grades up. This would benefit students who are hardworking/motivated but not naturally at the top of the ability range already, which can be a good description of many independent school students.
There are "capping out" problems here too; similar things apply to "value added" which tends to be low in selective schools as the intake is normally right at the top of the scale used.

@TheFallenMadonna that is a big white gap in the Indie schools results between 2021 and 2022 isn't it!

@PhotoDad but then they had the same opportunity to do this in 2022 - putting time and energy into students in small classes to make sure they got the best grades, but this clearly didn't have the same effect this year. It might be a small part of the reasoning but I suspect not enough to explain the full picture, I suspect that not all teachers were as upstanding as you.

Than, you for posting this because I'm sick of all the anecdotal evidence from parents of private school kids on here telling us that this is fake news. It isn't. Children in the comprehensive system are constantly being leap-frogged by children in the private sector. Contextual offers only help so much in redressing this imbalance. I pray for a government that prioritises children from low income backgrounds, maybe one day in my lifetime I will see that, but I'm pretty realistic about it.

Well I'm really hoping employers take no notice of teacher assessed grades - DS is at private school and they were extremely honest - they based it entirely what he had achieved up to that point, not potential, and couldn't consider coursework or any internal exams after the cut off date, in case they had to show evidence for grades. DS would have done much better had he done exams because he is someone who only knuckles down to learning anything in the last 8 weeks!

Thank god he sat A levels and got the grades he deserved because had it been teacher assessed he would definitely not have the grades he actually achieved from sitting the exams. Maybe some schools inflated grades but I am sure from experience not all schools. On the flip side it's a worry they will take all covid grades including this year's with a massive pinch of salt so all of it is a bit worthless.

Exactly they’ve shot themselves in the foot if they did cheat as they’ve devalued all their grades which is really unfair to those that would have got good grades through hard work. Durr.

FFT education datalab graphic.
The current "value added"-type measure in state schools is progress 8, which compares the grades of a student against those of all students with the same KS2 score. Lots of selective schools have positive P8.

Well, there is that, and thank you!

I can assure you that putting time and energy into small classes for regular short tests to show their best possible performance is much easier and more straightforward than doing the same to revise two years' worth of material before leaving them to their own devices during Study Leave.

My point is that there might well have been a lot of "gaming the system" in a way that but I suspect there wasn't much actual cheating. The students who would probably have got a B in an exam but can push that up to an A or an A when you give them lots of chances and remove exam stress benefitted more from the crazy TAG rules than those who would normally get an A or A anyway. I think that indies, on the whole, have lots more in the first category than highly selective grammars (a lot of indies aren't that academically selective).

So glad my DS was able to exams not TAGs. Not only did he do much better than he would have under TAGs but he’ll avoid all this speculation. I feel so sorry for the kids who went through all of this, were deprived of a chance to do the exams and are now having their grades devalued and picked over like this. There’s absolutely nothing the children could have done differently.

Interesting, I'll have to read up on Progress/Attainment 8! Thanks.

Private school bashing? There are some oddly blinkered parents on here.

Can you imagine if stats were published about sexual assault, and posters all over mn were saying "Not my Nigel, he's never raped anyone, I'm sick of all the man bashing on here"?

Yet as soon as quantitative evidence of unfair advantages provided by private schools - which, by the way, entirely exist to provide these type of life advantages to the children of the already-priviledged few able to afford them - people are desperately posting to point out why there isn't any unfairness that they ever see. 🤔

Argh, sorry, I fell victim to the "star means start/stop bold text" formatting.

NAPSALT

I saw CAGs/TAGs described as "nobody lost a coin toss for 2 years". I think there's a bit more to it if I'm completely honest, but a rubbish system will give rubbish results.

Yes quit it with the private school bashing.

My DDs private school received their best ever GCSE results this year. So how does that work? Doesn't fit your narrative so you seem to be ignoring these comments.

Private schools are not a homogeneous group you know.

So bloody tiresome.

@OverTheRubicon or if the data showed as clearly as this that comps in more deprived parts of Northern cities had massively inflated grades. Imagine the cries of ‘oh what naughty little cheaters’ then from middle England!

There will always be resentment and 🙄 at stellar results if you pay to advantage your child. If you choose private school you have to accept that.

So thrilled by Dd and her friends amazing results at the local state school. No hot housing for them. Some top teachers though can’t see how they could have been better.

I'm side-eyeing all schools that are announcing best ever exam results this year.

It's quite hard to read the exact numbers from the chart provided - but you can definitely read it different to the OP!

Private schools seem have gone from approximately 45% to 60% 7+ grades - i.e. an increase of one third / 33% .

Free schools seem have gone from 20% to 30% - i.e. an increase of one half / 50%.

The system is the problem. Not your child's school. 🙄

@Bougiebliss Thank you - that would be interesting.....I suspect that they just extrapolated from the little available data. They could have done a FOI request, but that couldn't have been done in time to collate with the 2022 reports to publish when they did.

National level data is readily available, broken down by school type. Here's 2021, for instance:
www.gov.uk/government/publications/analysis-of-results-a-levels-and-gcses-summer-2021/summer-2021-results-analysis-and-quality-assurance-a-level-and-gcse

Private schools exist for a number of reasons other than high grades (it's quite correct to say that some/many students in state schools get high grades, of course they do...I was one of them).

Specialist performing arts and sport; boarding; filling gaps in state provision where school building hasn't kept pace with population growth; SEN support (educational and also students with serious health conditions e.g. poorly controlled diabetes or asthma or a stable brain tumour can be supported in an environment with a nurse on site); preparation for specialist next stage (conservatoires, Common Entrance, US universities etc); high security for DC of diplomats, celebrities etc.

Plus quite a few privates pre-date the entire state school system, some by 500 years or so!

I prefer to live in a country where there are alternatives to state education. For one thing I'd really rather there are UK classical musicians in future. There used to be loads and fees were accessible to all (1980s). Now the govt has pretty much let it die off in their headlong pursuit of STEM. Music is a major export industry FFS

Its an odd one isn't it. Its as though they are admitting to have fallen asleep last year and not done what the government told them to do in inflating the students grades.

Totally agree. I work in a state comprehensive and remember asking a friend who works in a local private school if they had had many appeals on the TAGs and he said of course not, no one would appeal the grades that they gave. We were dealing with quite a few appeals at the time and I was quite shocked. We did two mocks under full
exam conditions and averaged out the two. We didn’t consistently give tests until we were happy with the result. Not through lack of time/ resources but because it wouldn’t reflect an accurate grade.