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

[MillicentMartha]

New thread for us. Interesting times.

Old thread here

DS’s school have now confirmed that they won’t use any work done after 20th March to determine ranking apart from looking at the NEAs which had a due date of just after Easter.

@Ellmau. No, for reasons that aren't very clear, the schools often don't even predict these candidates the grades we think they will get, and which they need to get for a place. Often they're told there is no point in aiming at Oxbridge because they won't get three As -- and then do. So I'm not sure that they are ranked no 1...

I'm talking about small numbers (personal experience) but often they've applied to Oxford without discussing it very much with anyone, and seem to have a difficult relationship with their teachers. (One of my best students said she skipped half the classes in her last year of school because she wasn't learning anything. Which I believed from seeing her written work with the teacher's comments.)

@MillicentMartha we also had an email from dd's college saying that.

DS college are still expecting EPQ, NEA with a due date of 1st May and the mock exam for DT , so I would assume they intend to use these. Not sure how they will sort out the DT as for some of them it's going to be impossible for them to finish the project work

DS's school emailed to say that any work done after the 20th March would be treated with caution if it showed a significant change in performance. And they were very clear about four things:

1. There's no point asking what the recommended grades will be, because school won't tell you.
2. They will be assessing each subject independently
3. They will not be taking into account the offers that students have received from uni's
4. These grades will not be the same as predicted grades or challenge grades, which are "aspirational".

4. These grades will not be the same as predicted grades or challenge grades, which are "aspirational".

One hopes that there is scope for this one not to be set in stone? Surely not every year 13 has predicted grades above what they eventually achieve, or could realistically be expected to achieve from this point, with another few months of the course under their belt , so to speak?

I think that some colleges will look at predicted grades, just as a personal example, ds college will not 'over predict' even in usual circumstances and spends a lot of time matching the students to the right sort of uni for the grades they are likely to get.

MarchingFrogs any student comfortably on target for an A* can't by definition have an aspirational 'predicted'/ 'challenge' grade.

Yes, I was a bit dismayed to read this. It seems a bit disingenuous to say that predicted grades are "aspirational". Maybe the school have realised they have set themselves up to have a lot of disappointed students (and parents). All indications, reports, discussions back in the days of normality had led me to believe that they think DS will overshoot his offer. If they now back pedal on this and remove all the A*s so he misses his offer I will be very disappointed, to put it mildly. DS remains unconcerned.

It would be as wrong not to assign a high grade to a student whose documented work supports it (regardless of what they need to achieve to make their firm offer), as it would be to assign grades not thus supported, to a student who was predicted aspiratioally to make sure that they got an offer for a course / university that they wanted.

e.g. Student A ranks on all parameters below Student B, but Student A has to have an A to make her offer and Student B doesn't; it would look suspicious if we predicted more than x As, so we'll bump Student A up to the A* group, but shift Student B down to the As.

In other words, it's just plain wrong not to be honest at this stage. As (honest, not wrong, as) the grade achieved in the actual A level exams would have been.

And @goodbyestranger, no, of course they can't - but a student who was at A for most of year 12, say, but predicted an aspirational A, could perfectly reasonably up their game and demonstrate the likelihood of getting to the A, in the 7-odd months between prediction and exam. In this case, it would be wrong not to give the A* because of a blanket policy not to give the 'aspirational' grade predicted for UCAS. If nothing else, that policy shouts out that the school has been a little dishonest at the grade prediction stage, I'd have thought?

I think all aspirational targets, predicted grades, UCAS requirements etc etc have to be put to one side and completely removed from the current task - teachers have to think only about what that student would have been most likely to achieve based on all the evidence and their knowledge of that student. For some it might be at predicted grade, for some below, for some higher - depending on what has happened since those grades were predicted and on how they were set. This is a completely different exercise.

I agree Oratory. Ignore all other grades predicted/targeted etc and look at the evidence as objectively as possible. Which is I think what the PP’s school meant when they said they wouldn’t be giving the UCAS predicted grades. Not because they were too high or aspirational as such, more that they were 7 or more months out of date and not relevant to the task at hand. Which is to estimate using the data you have and your knowledge and experience as a teacher what grade a student should have got in the summer exams. I would say it’s just as accurate a measure as the lottery exams can sometimes be. What with students having a bad day or hay fever or inconsistent marking.

Problem is, my Ds has had a bad day, hay fever and inconsistent marking throughout his course, with tutors admitting they mark homework etc harshly, so we'll have to just wait and see, he's now on high dose antihistamines, which stopped the bad days at least!

Cross fingers for him, Light.

Light - if tutors mark harshly they will know that is what they do. So if on their harsh marking they give a B they will also know that this would in reality be an A so will consider this when calculating grades. That is why it is the teachers that know the pupils and the teachers who have taught them across the 2 years that will have input.

DD has only had her History teacher since September. He is a Newly Qualified one. So no experience before.

NQTs will be guided by more experienced teachers. An NQT should still be able to rank their students fairly accurately but might need some guidance where the grade boundaries should be.

aibu - the teachers who taught your DD in year 12 will also be feeding into her grades and rankings.

The Y12 teacher retired. DD has had a different teacher for History EVERY year from Y7-Y13! (12 & 13 at college).

Well that UCAS Facebook Q&A was a complete waste of time...

Why, what happened Kingscote?

Oh, thousands of questions scrolling down asking if the universities would accept the autumn exam results or if they had any data about international student numbers - all completely ignored as some UCAS bod wittered on about using this time to learn to cook a really good omelette...

I think we generally get better info from MN than from this kind of event. I’m glad you checked it out for us, though, Kingscote!

Mumsnet is my go-to for anything to do with education - there’s always really great advice here.

Mine too, especially in these crazy times.