GCSE '18s (19) - New Beginnings?

[whistl]

Following on from the GCSE 2018 threads as our DC enter year 12.
This the first thread in our new home in further education

For those that did MIDYIS it may be interesting to look at how they turned out - DS s were way off but then he's not really your average case so not surprising.

ALIS also works out the likely grades based on the combination of subjects being taken together. So it is possible that even with 9s and 8s if your DC is taking 3 harder A levels compared to their friend then it may give an AAA rather than A A A*. This is combination with a lower grade gcse and the results of the ALIS testing works ut the probability of the grades in conjunction with each based on prior achievement over a range. Does that make sense?

ps. School says ALIS predictions are always on the low side.

DS woukd like to try for Oxford and got 98% in his gcse for the subjecr he wants to do but I suspect won't necessarily stand out as an obvious candidate but I will not discourage him. Last year 117 students out of 178 took the various BMATS/UKCAT Oxbridge test resulting in 49 Oxbridge places and 26 medicine so his chance is as good as any now his subjects
are his chosen favoured ones that he performs well in.

You've got it bpisock. They've calculated an average of all of her GCSE results and applied the average as a flat grade to all 3 subjects. I know that targets are pointless (as GCSEs proved), but the college has essentially told a student with a huge string of grade 8s and 9s that they only need to aim for grade As in their A levels because she doesn't have a natural aptitude for languages, but took Spanish GCSE regardless. If she had taken something like PE instead, where she could probably have got a top grade, she would have been set higher targets across the board. Ridiculous.

I have no idea about any of the other tests you're all talking about. I don't think she has done them, but she's playing tennis as usual so I can't ask.

I have spent about half an hour googling and I am still confused.
Some seem to say that they work out an average across all the grades and then say a person who gets an average of 6.5 would probably get a c in maths and b in geography based upon percentiles which is what your school are saying.
Others are saying that they measure raw talent in certain things e.g numeracy and verbal reasoning. Then apply that to the average grades and subjects -so if you scored highly in the numeracy test and had an average of 6.5 then you would get a higher prediction for maths than someone who has and average of 7 but scored poorly in the numeracy test. I am not expressing myself very well because my understanding is very hazy.

Perhaps there are 2 levels of ALIS? One being the 'blunt tool' and the other a more 'sophisticated tool'?

Asked DD if she has done any test or had any target grades. They haven't. Didn't think they would. It's not the schools
Style - even if they had targets they wouldn't share with us. She hasn't even had any grades as yet for any pieces of homemwork. She is working hard and taking her time understand the work. It definitely requires more time of independent study. Her health has not been great so she has been doing what she can to keep up. She feels good though when she gets the Maths. She said it is actually very therapeutic.

Do they use the best 8 GCSE results as a predictor, or the average of all of them.
Surely it would be a better representation to use the total score from the same sitting as it's harder to do 11 than 8, so adding up the 1-9 scores would reflect that?

The same sitting is important imho because the real challenge turned out to be simultaneously preparing for 10 at once. It would have been much easier to do GCSEs in batches or to regularly bank modular results, the way they used to.

Anyway DS is another who did ALIS tests to predict A levels (but we don't know the results yet).

Hi @whistl from what I read it looks like the average of all of them and I didn't see anything relating to a one sitting criteria. Having said that, I couldn't find a web site that explained everything in black and white. I think I kind of understand their logic if my interpretation of what they are doing is right (and that's a big IF).

I saw some graphs that showed the percentage of students who got an A, or a B, or C etc in History who had an average GCSE points of 6.5 (like a GPA in USA). It then had the same graph for students who might have an average of 6.5 but a 9 in history.

It then had a further table that applied the inherent aptitude test results over the top. Then a table that had grade probabilities based on a student with that profile taking combinations of subjects.

The thing I was looking at was pretty much raw data.

It's interesting because gcse results don't take take into account whether the student busted a gut to get the grades. Applying the aptitude results would (in part) Level this out. So a student who worked really hard but had no aptitude in a subject would show up and vice versa. If A Levels are harder and the student worked every hour under the sun to get their GCSE results then their A Level grades are going to be lower because there are no more hours in the day to maintain their grades. This would also deal with the subject plateauing issue. It could also show the probability of a student having done poorly at GCSEs, had the shock of their lives and then some, but not all, will pull their socks up. So some will still get an A but the majority don't. That can also be deduced from the table. What you can't tell is whether a particular student will fall into the category of pulling their socks up or not. So if there's a mismatch it will show that they could get an A if they try hard but will only get a D if they carry on with their current effort level. So I guess that's where the teacher moderation comes in?

I also saw a presentation slide on interpreting the results- one made me raise an eyebrow. It had a spike in the raw Maths aptitude test and then an annotation that said "Asian? EFL?" which would also tie in with the personal information form.

All a bit big brother!!

Mind you I would be fascinated to see DDs data but that's from the perspective of nosiness 😀

bpisok you are a minefield of interesting information

DS hasn't been given predicted grades yet and neither has he had any of those tests mentioned up thread and even if the school do do them which I doubt we wouldn't be given the results. However, I think on this thread we are all more than capable of pretty accurately predicting our own DC's grades, as we know how they are coping with the demands of their courses, how much effort is being put in ect. I reckon if you predicted now what you thought they would get wrote it down and then looked at it in just under two years time you would be a lot closer than a lot of these predicted grades which are currently coming out.........

OMG bpisok can we be friends?! That analysis is exactly how my mind works (and I drive DH mad with it)!!

True Bluebelle in most cases but there are some unknowns, my DS for example (bright but dyslexic). His GCSEs were way above targets and predictions (including mine) and I don't know whether he will now fly doing subjects he enjoys and 'gets' and has learnt more about how he learns and how to work - or whether its was just sheer hard work and his difficulties will still impact in 6th form. Interestingly I would have thought the ALIS/MIDYIS would give him high targets seeing as it was Ed psych tests that suggested he was bright (99th percentile on some non verbal reasoning type tests) but his gcse targets based on the Durham data were low. I guess maybe brought down by SATS result and low English elements in the test.. His reading was still poor when they did them (start of year 9 I think) even though they are not time limited and I remember him saying he was in there about half an hour after everyone else. I await the ALIS targets with interest

I think the targets fall down as they are very much using averages and composite data which perhaps work for most DC but not those with spikey profiles.

Oratory there is always an exception to every rule

Do the targets actually matter? Remember last year how predicted GCSE grades seemed to count, but they've been nothing more than an interesting footnote since 23/8 .

Is it the same for A level predictions or is it different this time because universities won't even consider you for a conditional offer unless the predicted grades are high enough?

whistl it is way too early to be worrying about predicted grades, no school/college can give meaningful predictions based on 2 weeks work out of a 2 year course, probably why all these tests are used so they have a mechanism to come up with a grade.......what really matters will be next summer when teachers actually start saying what they will predict which are generally based on the summer mocks, along with how your DC has performed over the year.

Absolutely agree that the probabilities don't matter with the exception of where a student changes school and the teachers have no insight into the strengths, weaknesses and work ethic of the students. Let's assume a student did absolutely no work at gcse level and then in May panicked so their gcse results weren't as good as they could be. If you didn't have an aptitude test and the teacher relied on exam grades alone then it would be wrong because the student could have seen it as a wake up call and decide to apply themselves throughout A Levels. Getting a grade 9 in a subject could be by very hardwork where as many subjects at A Level require the ability in infer and theorise (which tends to be innate as opposed to learnt)

DDs school is tiny, many have been there since they were aged 4 so the teachers know them very well academically and as individual personalities. I would trust their judgment above a probability assessment based on a broad survey sample and a set of algorithms. And to be fair their GCSE predictions were roughly correct (you can never predict the nuances of specific questions nor an individuals performance on the day). Whatever probabilities we get back we can take with a pinch of salt unless we have conformist children who act in same way as the majority.
.....and thinking back to the information we shared during the GCSE period I am not sure many of ours are from this mould 😀

Teachers's deep, personal knowledge of a student combined with extensive experience of seeing hundreds of other students go through their A levels should put the teacher in question in an optimal position to accurately predict future grades.
However, what if the teacher has only been in teaching for 5 years and teaches a subject that only has 10 or so students do it at A level each year? Add to that the fact that NQTs don't usually teach A level classes, so the teacher's knowledge maybe only extends over 3 years. Then, what you actually have is the opinion of a witness who has got to know 30 students at the start of year 12 well enough to profile them and recorded their outcomes 2 years later.
The reality in that case, is the best the teacher can offer is that s/he has seen perhaps 5 students in total who vaguely profiled like your DC at the start of year 12 and their median outcome was ...

Such analysis would be interesting to consider, but extrapolating that to your DC and calling it an expectation, isn't going to be very reliable as an indicator by itself.

Obviously, its completely different if the teacher has been teaching A level for 20 years and every year sends 15 into the exam hall.

whistl don't forget the teachers will have the benefit that these A levels have been going for at least 3 years so they will have the benefit of past papers with published grade boundaries to guide them, hence why next years summer exams will give a far better idea of predicted grade........

I suppose what's nagging at me is that DS got straight 9s where his dysgraphia didn't have an effect, but 7s and a 6 where it did. There was a clear difference between the two sets of results with all the dysgraphia-affected ones at the lower end and the non-dysgraphia ones at the upper end.
Back in 2013 (and 2014 and 2015), I asked the SENCO and the English / history teachers what difference DS's dysgraphia was likely to make. I was repeatedly told that with the appropriate accommodations in place (eg typing) then it should make no difference. the teachers continued to say this right up until the end of year 11.
Unfortunately, they were wrong. So I am asking myself, were they deliberately giving misleading answers or were they giving an opinion on something they had no special insight on? I think it was probably a bit of both, but more the latter than the former. Most of the teachers i was asking were under 30. They had limited experience and had probably only got to know one or two other twice exceptional students and then went onto observe their GCSE outcomes.
I'd like to think that they took note of what happened to DS but I suspect that no one looked at the overall result, so they each thought their own subject was just an anomaly.

Anyway, all that is a long way of saying, to use past observations to predict the future, you need a lot of them, and if your DC is in anyway unusual, then its highly unlikely that any individual teacher would have sufficient experience to do better than a computer program with 1000s of data points.

Well hopefully the fact your DS has taken the subjects that he got 9's in the dysgraphia shouldn't impinge on his ability to reach his full potential in those A levels, whilst you couldn't guarantee the same could be said if for example he had taken History......going by his GCSE results.

BlueBelle123 - I agree. For DS1, the time when it mattered how well the school could predict GCSEs is over, but, I'm finding that it has left me sceptical (to put it mildly) of teachers's ability to predict.
I find that with DS2, my trust has gone in the school's ability to look after him.

Really, my main point was just that one person (one teacher) cannot have gained enough experience to predict results as accurately as a database populated with 1000s of data points and underpinned by good tests.

Agreed, nothing beats an experienced teacher that has put hundreds of DC through A Level that also has extensive knowledge of our DC.

DD is def in a privileged position in that regard.....they know all her little quirks and her odd ways (eg a report said DD "had made an outstanding, albeit idiosyncratic, start to the year" hahaha)

One of her History teacher only teaches A Level (she's mainly the school history archivist). She has been teaching the English Civil War since it first came onto the A Level syllabus in the 80s and it was also her PhD subject.....so I am def going to trust her judgement.

I think the personal form asked about dyslexia/dysgraphia/ADHD etc etc. But it cant be particularly helpful unless they have the PsychEd report. As for whistl being told adjustments would mean that DSs dysgraphia would not impact....there's some things that accommodation can't Level the playing field for.

If you read some words to DD that she has never heard and gave her 20% more time than anyone else to write them down on paper it would make zero difference to her results. You could give 1000% more time and it would make no difference - they would still be wrong. If they are words she has spelt before and she is allowed to type (she learns the keystrokes rather than the spelling) she will probably get the words down faster than anybody else but is still entitled to 20% extra time!!!!

....there's some things that accommodation can't Level the playing field for.
That's obviously true. So, why deny it over and over again? Why not just acknowledge it? When they kept saying it, I sort of half believed them (after all, they are the experts, and I am not). If they had been truthful, I would have sought ways to get DS help.

The things is, DS2 has dysgraphia as well, and I bet if I went to the SENCO or the English teacher now, they would say the exact same things to me now that they have been saying since 2013 (when DS1 went to secondary school). I'm struggling for words here.. I find that lack of care about doing a good job, of not trying to be accurate or truthful, of falsely claiming expertise... distasteful.

Ahhhh @whistl, that where you have been going wrong.......believing them. Don't get me wrong, I would never think they are intentionally lying and do believe they have the best interest of our DC at heart but it's more that they have read the text book and that's what it says.

If you think about it though there's no such thing as a level playing field. In literally anything. Some people are more attractive. Some are naturally good at maths. Some have a way with words. Some can sing. Some are all rounders. Some people are rich and have access to things that poorer folk don't. Some kids have terrible home live. Some kids are lucky enough to have the mums on this thread as parents 😀

The way I look at it is my DD is lucky that she is so bright but unlucky that's she's dyslexic. But what she does with these attributes is down to her.
Some kids could go to Oxbridge and end up as a call centre temp or doing a job they hate, others could fail everything and end up as MD of a multinational having worked their way up from the post room.

All our DC are doing at the moment is opening doors, and as the saying goes 'when one door shuts another one opens'. So it probably doesn't matter if they get low grades in some subjects unless it's the subject they wish to pursue. If it is the subject they wish to pursue perhaps it's an indicator that another subject might be a better choice.

Wow, I am clearly in a philosophical mood