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

[MillicentMartha]

New thread for us. Interesting times.

Old thread here

I’m not sure topic tests can be compared to an A-level exam though? Even mock exams - most pupils pull their grades up quite substantially between January and May. Also homework is a different matter to exam performance.
I’m sure they do know what grades they’re going to award and have since Year 12 go be honest, but it’s probably just extra proof as no student can claim that they didn’t take the tests seriously enough or didn’t give it their best shot for whatever reason (as some do re-mocks or other tests). They all know the score and it’s up to date info, not based on teacher impressions over the last term since the mocks.

Also for very borderline cases when a grade would have been dependent on performance / luck on the day, I guess it’s a chance for a student at the top of the A band to prove that they would have pulled it out the bag and got the A*, given the opportunity.

Haha agree hobbema. catsandcoffees it's bullshit, the school just wants your $ :)

Well they’re getting the $ regardless

If some schools have about 40 students who may have earned conditional Oxbridge places, for instance, those students will all be in with a very real shot at a string of A*, otherwise the school wouldn’t have agreed to give them references for this route and would have steered them elsewhere. So how on earth can you call it and say which ones wouldn’t have pulled it off in the day? So much comes down to luck and it’s largely luck that will weed those 40 conditional offers down to 30 confirmed offers.

Even if these internal exams aren’t accepted by exam boards, at least if the school get any frothing parents coming in asking why their child just missed their medical school place or whatever they can say, “Well these were your daughter’s results after 4 weeks of targeted revision. This is where she was at in late April. If she wants improve in this, by all means have another go in October.”

Also, I think more than anything, the school need to protect themselves against the potential wrath of the “Ivy League” brigade because every year, there’s about 30 who go this route and from what I hear, it’s a very arduous not to mention very expensive process. It’s not just the grades, it’s all the extra-curricular hoops they have to jump through for the US system, not to mention SATs. If a student has been predicted four A all the way through (which they will have been otherwise why bother applying somewhere like Harvard) and they have passed the SATs at the required scores, then they come out with three A and an A based on an assessment process that is not transparent, there will be families who will kick off massively. Fair enough, if the student drops a grade based on an exam - you can’t blame the school for what happens on a given day. But if you can blame the school, they will, as you can imagine. The school need to take steps to mitigate against this potential scenario.

The Ivy League don’t really care about A levels, though.

The teachers at my school have years of experience at predicting A level grades, from topic tests and mocks etc. In physics they are usually 90% correct. There’s always a few outliers who do surprisingly well (rare) or have a bad day (more common) though, it’s true.

Also, in this school, about half (I think) have been doing the IB which is more predictable because it’s mainly modular. These students are not required to do any extra exams when they go back. I think they must want a fair balance of evidence between the two cohorts.

Every single A level candidate in the country had the rug pulled from under them by this virus . Every scenario you describe, disappointing mocks, could do better on the day, rogue questions, lucky questions is the same for every candidate. It sucks but it’s the same for them all, or should be.

If that was my Dds school I would be very disappointed at the schools insensitive attitude... In my opinion its a poor show to put DC through so much stress at a time when the daily news is incredibly sad. It seems to be very unnecessarily and the school are covering their own backside at the expense of the Dcs mental health.

catsandcoffees they're charging full fees, there's your answer. The school can't use work set and submitted after 20th March. The grades have to be assessed on tracking done up to that date and not beyond and a top five independent has no excuse under the sun for not having really excellent tracking mechanisms. It never ceases to amaze me just how gullible some parents are.

I’m not saying it’s right or wrong. I’m just saying it’s what is happening. My dd is not in the the sixth form there , so it doesn’t affect us directly, but I was surprised to see this plan on one of their circulars, that’s all.

Yes I do think it’s a lot of stress to put the girls through, especially when the ones are not doing the same, by the look of it.

Goodbye - we have DC in three different independents. One is giving a 20% discount in next terms fees; one 15% and one no discount. It is what is is. Parents up and down the country are obviously still paying fees for schools that cannot open until Sept and, exams or no exams, they have no choice, it’s not about being gullible - what else are you supposed to do? Take your child out?

I do have a DS in year 12 in another school very similar to the one I’ve described above and I’ve no idea if the Year 13s are doing exams in that school or not because they have only communicated with that year.

He is in Year 12, as I say, and the exams he was supposed to be doing after Easter which go towards his predicted grades have obviously been cancelled, but they have been told to still revise this Easter as there will be some kind of online assessments starting on Monday. So he’s been working just as hard as he would otherwise.

The IB ones are not doing the same (sorry)

This is the circular I received from the school some weeks ago regarding next term, if you can make it out?

If I were you I might have deleted the school's name! Is it really a top five school? I wouldn't have said so tbh.

On the question of fees, if I could afford to pay for a Y13 for next term then I would, simply on principle, but I prefer the approach of those schools reducing fees to those insisting on the full whack, and I'd have far more confidence in the financial security of the former too.

I've just flicked up their results out of curiosity and agree that they're good, but more than 20% of grades were B or below so I think grading won't be as hair splitting as you think, esp in eg Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Maths and French, which are all fairly weak.

It look at the “Best Schools” or the Times tables for top performing independent schools for GCSE or A-level, it is second only to St Paul’s Girls, which is down the road from it. Last year, I think it achieved 97% 9-7 at GCSE, the year before 98%. It’s only SPGS that gets 99% some years. It is the joint top-performing school in the world for IB and the Times Independent School of the Year. It is far from being a hot house - quite the opposite and they know the students very well indeed. It’s not a massive school. That page was from a public weekly newsletter, so no secret.

Anyway, the point I was simply trying to make is that it is not the case that all schools have simply stopped and are not looking at work beyond March. This school will not be the only one, I’m sure.

In the square mile where this school is, there is also St Paul’s Boys and the Girls school, Latymer Upper plus many more independents which are fairly similar schools in more respects than not, and even here, it wouldn’t surprise me if they’re all doing different things - ie further testing or not.

My point was more that you've identified the school your DD is at, not that the communication was private.

The point about only 77% A*/A at A level stands obviously.

In the context of hair splitting I mean.

But whether it’s 77% or 50%, the fact is that with the exception of a few outliers at either end, for most of these students, it could have gone either way on the day (ie A* or A), The differences between these pupils will be wafer thin.

To be honest, it won’t be too bad in this school as about half do the IB anyway, so it reduces the hair-splitting for the A-level candidates, I guess.

However, I have another DC in a school where the sixth form is much larger with about 220 in a year group (I think). This school is all A-level (no IB) and also achieves over 75% A-A in a given year. So that translates into maybe 160 pupils for whom teachers have to decide who would have got the A and who would have got the A. Obviously, all schools have to decide between grade boundaries, whether it’s A*/A or C/D, but I would think it’s more difficult to rank students when you have higher numbers of students clustered around a particular grade boundary.

Exams aren’t perfect either obviously, and I’ve seen in these type of schools that many very able pupils get overwhelmed with anxiety in the last few months and this is often why some end up with the B or C grades (not that this is exactly a disaster in the normal scheme of life, but still it’s how they perceive things relatively). But at least the school or individual teachers cannot be held to account and that was my point really.

Is the timetable current... Eg if you looked at Dds school timetable it would show yr13 would be sitting Synoptic tests from next Monday but they are no longer running the tests...

Forgive me but it is simply not the case that it’s harder or more important to get grade accuracy if you’re at a high achieving fee paying school or a super selective academy. Whether you have an Ivy League/Oxbridge/whatever place hinging on your results its just as important for the process to be as fair as possible to everyone. Yes the traditional examination system was less than perfect with anomalies and rogue outcomes but it was the fairest way of doing it ( Edexcel maths notwithstanding!). A bit like democracy, its not ideal but better than the alternatives. Every child sitting A levels will have something really important to them riding on the result. I’m sure you do see that ? What also is so wrong with school/teachers being held to account? If they are doing things correctly they have no case to answer to sharp elbowed parents who dont like the outcome.

hobbema - but that’s exactly what I said?

If you have say 75% of the cohort of a school clustered around a particular grade boundary, then decisions will obviously be more difficult as to who gets what grade, whether this be C/D or A*A, the same applies. Some schools have narrower cohorts ability-wise than others. Some schools have much larger cohorts too obviously. I wouldn’t want to be in the position of effectively deciding who gets their uni place or not.

What if a school had solid data from GCSEs/ASs that a certain pupil invariably arsed up high stakes exams, but had excellent A level coursework/classwork so far?

Would they be honour bound to predict that they would almost certainly have underperformed in the summer exams?

A whole 160? If you look at the stats for the larger state sixth forms such as Hills Road and Peter Symonds, they typically have around 700 - 800 raking A level maths and 500 - 600 taking each science with around 50% usually achieving an A or A. Try ranking those within each grade, when many don't have the luxury of parents able to fund a gap year or take the exams in the autumn. Presumably most indie students have been in the same school for 5-7 years, whereas the sixth form colleges have only had the opportunity to get to know their students for less than 5 terms. However, a Millicent* says, they will still have info available to make fair predictions. I also suspect the flurry of activity is more about proving their fees are justified rather than protecting their year 13's futures, Ivy League, Oxbridge or otherwise.