University 2020 :4: The wait for grades and better days ahead

[MillicentMartha]

New thread for us. Interesting times.

Old thread here

I am a teacher and a parent of a year 13 (& a 2nd year at Uni). So sat in both camps. Until OFQUAL publish rules nothing is certain. Even HTs won't know all of it as that will just relate to school students. Many people take exams that do not attend formal settings and these guidelines need to cover them too. And Unis have a day too. They promised the guidelines this week so fingers crossed. I'd like to start sorting out what I need to provide.

@Goodbyestranger is the emerging thinking outlined in your link including those subjects that have a significant amount of formally assessed work or is it a general methodology for exam based subjects only?

Thankyou for your input on these threads btw.

The ASCL document is helpful (thank you @goodbyestranger as I rubbish at linking things). But it does raise several questions. 5a in what SATS - English or maths ? And what about private schools who don't have SATS results ? And what about students not in school or retaking so no formal assessments all year ?
We have 280 year 11s so to rank them will be near impossible as so many are very similar ability. Going to be horrible. So looking forward to all this being sorted, both as a parent and a teacher. But not hopeful it's going to be seamless.

And they did originally say this week. We expected it yesterday.

And ASCL advice relies on KS4 data for KS5 results. But could be completely different students as so much movement at sixth form. What a mess ☹️

That's true @HugoSpritz . Was just reading the bit about using school performance to change grades for schools.

@HugoSpritz and I can see that is as fair as it can be. Just if they look at a schools KS4 data and only 10% got 8/9 but at 6th form they select so end up with a cohort where 60% got 8/9 how will this affect their results ? Will OFQUAL look at each individual student in the cohort. Also schools results do vary hugely year on year if big. Last year we got 1 A* at A level for a subject but the year before we got 18. How will that be factored in ? I have so many question and I like answers 😊

Maybe an average over the last 3 years? My DD (Yr11) is worried because the cohort immediately above her were famously sporty and arty, but not academic.

But we've changed A levels in last few years so can't go back more than 2/3 years as results changed massively with the linear exams. Maths last year was all over the place. V glad it's not me making the decisions.

GCSE data can only go back to this A level cohort as completely different grading structure before then. Think statistics will take over, which I hate as never like to think of my students as a statistic. Feeling v v sorry for my bottom set year 11s who were mostly on to pass. But statistically they now probably won't. Makes me sad but I have no better way.

It might be more difficult for the independent schools to drastically mark up grades because all the schools are very aware of where they are in the independent schools league tables and all keep a key eye on each other (regardless what they will claim). Also, the percentages of A/A/B etc grades seem to be more consistent according to how selective the school is. So somewhere like St Paul’s Girls, a good year at GCSE will be 99.5% 7-9 grades; a “bad” year will be 98%. You just know full well that this will be one if their “very good years”. The moderators won’t be able to prove otherwise. The school that one if mine goes too might get 80% A-A one year and maybe a few percent higher in a particularly good year, but again, this will be one of their very good years. And with something like up to 40% from such schools heading for Oxbridge, you can see how this will translate and which unis are going to be put under the most pressure to accept more students than they have capacity for.

At least this didn’t happen last year for GCSE students because that was the first year they used the new grade 9 across the board and nobody really knew how the old A* grade would divide between the new 8 and 9 grades. It would have been even more chaotic,

I’m still hoping they will factor in AS levels for those who took them. It’s a much more accurate predictor for my DS than GCSEs, although only a minority will have taken them in A level subjects. But it’s similar to private school pupils who didn’t do KS2 SATs compared to the majority of pupils who did for GCSEs.

That’s me being entirely selfish, of course.

@Solara First year group with 9s was the current year 13. So two years ago. Same cohort got brand new KS2 sats too.