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

[MillicentMartha]

New thread for us. Interesting times.

Old thread here

I have tried student finance but in Northern Ireland it says closed and new forms not available yet. I wish it would soon open as I hate forms like that and don’t want to be rushed. Hoping there’s no evidence required that will be hard to get.

Also saw AS mentioned earlier. I’m another who hopes AS results play a part. Dd got A A A at AS and needs ABB for her firmed offer. She’s quite unconcerned about the whole thing but I’m a dreadful worrier.

What the Cambridge advice linked above dies t cover is that, if you decide to sit exams in the “November 2020 series,” are you effectively committing to taking a gap year or not? Or will unis be asked to take students in January, in which case, these students have missed the first term?

The Cambridge advice is for indies only, in effect.

Any student resitting in 2020 would have to take a gap year.

Guidance from Ofqual is out!

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachmentdata/file/877930/Summerr2020gradessforGCSEEASAAlevelEPQQAEAinnmaths--guidanceforrheadsoff_centres.pdf

Very, very, very few maintained schools use CIE Hugo.

As expected from OFQUAL. Now off to rank 187 students with 3 teachers to choose which of the 17 grades I think they could have achieved. And then brutally rank them.
A levels will be easy in comparison to GCSEs.

Good luck mumsneedwine. !!! And everyone else doing similar

this answers my previous question:
Students who feel that their grades from the summer do not reflect their ability will have the opportunity to take their exams in the autumn series or in summer 2021. If they choose to do this, both grades will stand.

And was in the ofqual doc

Thanks to #sandy for the link. Interesting things from my point of view:
Students studying on their own or home schooled may not be graded unless their assessment centre is confident it can grade them (and rank them)
Year 10s and below not currently expected to get graded although this is to be consulted on. This is because not getting their results won’t stop them progressing.

It seems as fair as possible. Schools/centres will rank their pupils by subject and the boards can adjust those grades up or down by comparing to statistical models of how the whole cohort (and school) should have performed. I hope they’ve got their best mathematicians on it!

So DS's offer is 3 As. He is confident that he will get A or A star in 2.

For the third, he's worried.

He got a B in the mock (not enough revision and an unlucky selection of essay topics).
Last year's cohort in this subject did not do brilliantly - a new syllabus which was still bedding in. 2 years above did do well, though.
He is in a very high achieving class - when they are ordered, he won't be towards the top.

So, since the teachers are not allowed to tell the students the grades they're entering, I guess he will need to carry on revising all the way through the summer to be ready for a potential exam in September.

I don't think anyone will be surprisedby the guidance, since so much info had emerged already both within and beyond schools.

A clear warning against the lower evidential value of work completed after 20th March so schools will need to be very careful about factoring this in for an upward lift if they don't want to increase the risk of an individual or whole cohort being moderated down (possibly further than a more reasonable first instance assessment).

Safest thing to do will be to draw a line at the 20th and not include any later work in the evidence bundle.

Kingscote, DS has a similar issue with CS. It’s a high achieving group, he was really hoping he’d get an A in the summer. But he’s not top of the ranking and the school have never got an A before. He’s hoping he’ll get A*AB and that that will meet his AAA offer.

Is the B in his degree subject? DS asked at every open day and offer holder day if they would accept A*AB and they all informally said yes, so long as the B wasn’t in his degree subject.

You may well be right, goodbye but I’m not sure you’ll be able to influence the nation’s schools from MN!

Agree that GCSEs will be far harder to assess.

And yes, lets hope the computers don't have an off day doing this stuff....

And the evidence bundle doesn’t have to be submitted unless the boards call for it at a later date. My school doesn’t have the originals of mock papers for instance, only the results of them. The first year we didn’t scan them all in, typical!

I'm no influencer manque Millicent! It's just common sense.

No, the evidence bundles have to be put together in case called for though. That's the obvious danger of later work.

Ok, here's my next 'What if...?' question.

If a university have made an offer of (let's say) 3 As for October 2020 and the student gets a Teacher Assessment of AAB, but then takes the September exam and lifts the B to an A, will the University be contractually bound to accept that student, albeit in October 2021?

I'm going to go harsh and say the offer fails because the conditions haven't been fulfilled.

Can someone explain the ranking to me? Is it:
Bookwork A 1
Classwork A 2
Mock B 3
NEA Astar 1
Other assessments A 3

Then the exam board award a grade.

Or is it an overall ranking? Eg 'A grade' 16th ranked student out of 18 in this banding.

Olympic
It will be
Alfie. A* rank 1
Bertie. A* rank 2
Charlie. A* rank 3
Doris. A rank 1
Ethan. A rank 2

Frank. A rank 3
George. A rank 4
Hattie. B rank 1

If Ofqual think the school has been too harsh they could bump Doris up to an A*, or too generous and they could bump Charlie down to an A or George down to a B.