Yr 12 predicted grades for UCAS

[chillie]

Hello, have any of your yr12 kids been told how and when their predicted grades for UCAS applications will be calculated/formed.
My daughters school has said they are not having any EOY exams nor are they using any marks from this term so the last letter grades she had are from February. Predicted grades will be communicated to the kids on the first day of next term. Where will they get these grades from, surely not February?

Dd has her predicted grades. She had online exams the last few weeks, but they've tested them regularly since the beginning of the year so the predicted grade is sort of an average of those grades.

We’re going to do exams when we get back, I think, and use those.

DS2 will have Centre Assessed Grades for AS levels.

DD had EOY exams. Grades based on those, as well as year to date performance. Those grades will be updated again at the end of September, depending on work completed over the summer, and any extra papers they complete over Summer. Top performers are expected to do a lot of reading, and practice papers over the summer, which will be marked when they return. They expect to go up another grade from now to final assessment.

They have been given “provisional predicted grades” to enable them to look at unis over the summer (obviously no open days but at least they can go online or maybe visit the towns where the unis are).

They always had “working at” grades on their reports anyway, so the predicted grades are generally one grade up from these. They have been having full online school throughout this term and it’s been hard work. Still all the homework expectations etc.

In September, they are having an exam week, following which, some predicted grades may be adjusted. However, it’s very late in the day for some, as they want all Oxbridge applications ready to go by the end of September.

We have current predicted grades and these will be updated/ firmed in September after Mocks

End of year exams were done online and predicted grades given based on those. Albeit they weren’t really ‘predicted’ grades, more like ‘working’ grades. They're re-testing on return in Sept. How much do grades usually change from ‘working’ to predicted? Are working grades actually more realistic and likely the ones obtained?

We have been given predicted grades. These were somewhat based on tests they had done during the year but mostly based on online exams (well most of them were print out, do the exam and then scan in within time, which was very stressful. DS found at the end of chemistry his hand was shaking so much he really struggled to hold the phone to photograph the paper, and he was technically a minute late in sending, but they seem to have not worried about that). We gather that the students have the opportunity to upgrade their predictions by taking more tests in September, but DS was happy with what he got. When we then spoke to the teachers at online parent/teacher, they seemed surprised that he wasn't trying to upgrade his predictions, so maybe a lot of students in his school are. Or maybe it is because somebody else he knows who got the same as he did as a raw mark in the chemistry got an A prediction, and DS only got an A, but we think that was based on the fact that earlier in the year he had struggled with chemistry, and only got Bs, and only got marks into the As in tests in January/Feb. A is all he really needs for the universities he wants to apply to, so he was happy with it, and mostly just relieved he got an A prediction in Biology, where he feels he was only just an A (essay in particular didn't go so well). Biology are apparently doing more tests in October (apparently they want to make sure they have lots of data on them, in case there is another corona closure over next years exams), but as he needs to have his UCAS in by October 15th, he understands that those won't count towards his UCAS predicted grades. A(maths)AA are just fine for everywhere except Cambridge, and he is not interested in Oxbridge, so he is happy. More worried about making sure that Biology is a solid A in the real thing.

www.ucas.com/advisers/managing-applications/predicted-grades-what-you-need-know

This is advice from UCAS to teachers about how to choose predicted grades. It should be reassuring to anyone who is worried.

The main points are that they aren't supposed to be what the student is most likely to get (as was the case for recent CAGs for Year13s in place of exams). Instead, it's an aspiration but achievable goal of what the student could achieve given they have another year to improve.

The aim is for the UCAS predicted grades to enable the student to get offers from universities that they will actually do well at, and not get offers from universities that they will find too hard or drop out of.

"students should be given the opportunity to discuss their predicted grades with [teachers]. It may be that [students] can demonstrate progress, and [teachers are] comfortable in changing their prediction."

Thanks @matwx However the sense I have got (as a mere parent) is that the school does not want to be seen to "overpredict", as that may impact on the chance of their pupils getting offers in future years.
If it was true that "it's an aspiration but achievable goal of what the student could achieve given they have another year to improve" - one would expect that a significant number of the predictions would be wrong, and in the vast majority of cases because they are lower - ie those who improved as hoped for would get their predicted grades, while a significant number wouldn't and would miss their predicted grades (and those that exceeded the predicted grades would be very rare beasts). Whereas my sense is that the predicted grades we have been given are more of a "working at" grade (with the caveat in the one case that it was only just, just, a working at grade, with a risk of slippage). If that were the case, then the school would be far more likely to be "right" about the grades at the end of the day, with the predicted grade being achieved, and are likely to have a significant number exceeding their predicted grades each year, as well as those who will not (because they did not continue working at the same level), which I believe is the reality.

Exams as soon as they go back in Sept.

I guess different schools and colleges (and probably teachers) interpret that advice differently then, which is frustrating. At the sixth form college I work at, the UCAS grade is optimistic and, yes, many students do not achieve their UCAS predicted grades, but it is supposed to give the student something to work towards. We often find that makes them work harder and improve more than if we told them they are going to get the same grade as they got in the most recent assessment. We also give students and parents "working at" grades throughout the year but that's not necessarily what we send to UCAS. Universities know that the UCAS predictions can be optimistic and they use it to help make a judgement of an applicant's potential. If a university isn't too picky, then it won't matter if a student misses their predictions a little bit. Universities that are more picky will have in place their own, more reliable measures of ability like admissions tests, interviews, work/portfolio submissions.

The recent news from Ofqual shows that, even when teachers are really trying hard to be as accurate as possible, they still over-predict A Level grades by 12%. I can't imagine the percentage for UCAS predictions.

It sounds like your son doesn't need to worry anyway :)

The recent news from Ofqual shows that, even when teachers are really trying hard to be as accurate as possible, they still over-predict A Level grades by 12%.

The cynic in me would ask, were all the teachers (and HODs etc) actually 'trying hard to be as accurate as possible? Is there really such a plethora of schools which have never had above a B in subjects this year having a whole clutch of dead cert A* students, for example (does the cohort prior attainment data support this?) or are the DC whose parents post on internet forums more likely to significantly over represent that senario? It would be interesting to see some further breakdown of the range of 'submitted vs expected' CAGs that produced the figures.

From my experience as a teacher, there are many teachers and HoDs that were consciously generous, which bothered me. Didn't seem fair to me. For my subject, we did all the analysis on our centre's expected grade distribution, and looked at differences in cohort average prior attainment, to ensure that we got the "correct" number of each grade allowed. I couldn't imagine doing it any other way. But I'm a maths & computer science teacher, and many colleagues didn't have the mathematical skill to do such analysis under pressure. Also, we weren't told before submitting grades how the standardisation would work at the finer level, so it was a bit of a "greed wins" kind of situation. Some teachers thought that if they weren't generous, then their students would lose out because they were being compared to students whose teachers had been generous. The thinking was like "well, if they're going to be standardised down anyway, maybe Ofqual will meet us in the middle and students will get higher grades than if we were completely accurate". I can also empathise with teachers who found it too difficult to predict any students would fail. I still did it myself, but some couldn't stand the idea of it. It is likely that all of these problems would be mostly sorted out at the head of centre level though. My school had to standardise down many teacher grades before they were submitted to exam boards because they were too generous. That's all part of the process. I'm just really glad that Ofqual are sticking to the rankings and putting significantly less weight on the CAGs. I could see that they were such a minefield of unreliability from the start.

Anyway, I guess my point before was more: if teachers were 100% clearly being told to be completely accurate in line with normal grade distributions, including predicting fails etc. and they were still 12% too generous, it doesn't bear thinking about how over-generous UCAS predicted grades are when, for those, teachers are encouraged to be aspirational.

As you can probably tell, I quite like talking about this!

My son was given predicted grades at end of first term (Decemberish) of BBB, which were not quite good enough for his degree choice. Last month he was given his UCAS predicted grades based on work since then, and now has been given an asapirational (yikes) CCC. His Sixth Form college has been useless since lockdown. No online lessons at all in 2 of his subjects and a few a month in his 3rd subject. He is lazy and finds it really hard to learn solely from a power point or worksheet. Remote learning doesn't suit him at all and he really needs face to face contact. I'm sure he is more than capable if he can get back on track and catch up at least some of the work he has missed. He has a habit of pulling it out of the bag when needed. He got a Level 1 in his Latin Mock GCSE and achieved a 6 in the real thing.
I'm trying to hire him some tutors but haven't had any luck yet as most only doing online lessons and I'm not sure what to do for the best. Do I try and lower his expectations or try and persuade his teachers to up their predictions to give him a chance of an offer?

@Edufl

Firstly, I'm sorry that your son's SFC hasn't been able to adapt well to delivering online lessons. As you say, hopefully he will be able to catch up once things become more face-to-face next month.

As frustrating as it might be, ultimately the decision of what to do needs to come from him. If he genuinely thinks that he can do better than CCC, I would definitely advise him to speak to his teachers about it. It is unlikely to help if you personally speak to his teachers about it though - won't fill them with much confidence about his determination to improve. If he genuinely thinks that CCC is a realistic aspirational target, then it might be more sensible to change his plans. Depending on what subject he's interested in, there are many university courses and alternative training programmes available with CCC. It's important that he doesn't receive offers for courses that he's unlikely to achieve the grades for - that can just lead to more disappointment down the line. So he should only push to get the predicted grades raised if he either thinks they're incorrect, or he's willing to put in the extra effort to improve.

Tutoring could be useful if you can find/afford some. Especially if he's 'lazy', it might help to have someone telling him what work to do directly.

Regardless, if his teachers won't budge and his habit of pulling it out at the end pays off this time too, then he'll be able to use UCAS Adjustment / Clearing to look for a higher grade-tariff offer on results day.

Hope this helps

Thanks Matwx

Yes, that really does help. I was going to arrange meetings with his teachers to discuss but you are quite right that it will be better coming from him.