University 2020 :6: The one with the results at the end

[MillicentMartha]

Hopefully as the title suggests we will actually get up to results on this thread! Only 5 weeks to go.

Old thread www.mumsnet.com/Talk/higher_education/3918392-University-2020-5-Results-day-approaching-and-beyond?pg=40

It 'twas I who thought I dreamt the whole of 2020 and am definitely in need of psychoanalysis as I imagined schools were shut for months and months and that our DC could pick their A-level grades out of a tombola

My DD also hoping to study Psychology @Sostenueto.

I wouldn’t be any A level teacher tonight or tomorrow, or for the rest of the week either. What the hell were any members of the governing party with any responsibility for education doing over the past six months. Obviously Gavin Williamson is excluded from that judgement as he clearly wouldn’t pass year 2 Sats.

Great toobloodyhot Dgd wants to do neuroscience with cognitive psychology. Good luck to your dd! Dgd had great offers but had 3* predictions last October but has been really I'll with ITP blood aneamia fatigue syndrome and now anxiety because of all illness. She has not been to school since February and was in 14 week shielding because of immune suppresent drugs treatment. She is worried sick she won't make offer because of large cohort. But we are all worrying. We worry that it will be last straw for her.

The thing is that the system they chose meant they could have had results out early June and then the bun fight of appeals, resits, moving the goal posts would have had plenty of time to iron out the creases ahead of uni start dates. Now up against the wire it’s all futile. Maybe that was the strategy.

She will definately not do results as she is not in a financial position to take gap year either! It's now or never.

Resits.

The lack of brains in this Government is beyond painful. The mental health of our DC/dgc is very fragile over the last few months especially. It's like torture then more torture at the appalling reporting and scaremongering by the press, incoherent announcements from the government, stress of Covid lockdown shielding loss of family members due to Covid etc etc and now last minute stupid ideas. My Dgd didn't even get to say goodbye to anyone after 7 yrs at her school! She didn't see any of her friends till this month. This cohort double whammy with first to sit all their gcses new format too. I want to go punch Gavin Williamson shortly followed by Gove!

Mocks can only be used if the school is able to validate they were sat under actual exam conditions. Thankfully all ours were in exact same set up as real exams with external invigilators.

However, different departments took different approaches as to how they set papers, how they marked exams and so on so there isn't even "fairness" amongst cohort let alone across the country.

Let's face it enough people were not happy that mocks may feed into CAGS because of the variables and because some students don't try as hard or had other commitments that would all be out on hold for real thing etc.

(Fortunately for DS he did well and should be same/similar to cags ).

However the next carnage comes becauee unis have more than likely already entered decisions into UCAS. What are they supposed to do? Are they supposed to unreject those who didn't meet offers to allow mock grades to be submitted? This will have an impact on what is in clearing or not and how early?
It sounds like a knee jerk reaction and not very well thought through.

@Sostenueto

Great toobloodyhot Dgd wants to do neuroscience with cognitive psychology. Good luck to your dd! Dgd had great offers but had 3* predictions last October but has been really I'll with ITP blood aneamia fatigue syndrome and now anxiety because of all illness. She has not been to school since February and was in 14 week shielding because of immune suppresent drugs treatment. She is worried sick she won't make offer because of large cohort. But we are all worrying. We worry that it will be last straw for her.

Surely she should get special consideration @Sostenueto over a situation she had no control over? It's awful for all our DC but your Dgd really has had it tough. Good luck to her

Can’t sleep for thinking about it all.

I hoped it helped in NI that we still have AS so our kids have already got 40% of their final mark properly awarded last year.

Then I realised it doesn’t help all those who didn’t do as well as hoped and were resitting some of their papers. DD says almost all of her friends were resitting at least two papers and one was resitting everything.
Teachers here have to take resits into consideration, surely making it even harder for them.
Just thinking out loud!!

DDs mocks were never reviewed by her teachers in one of her subjects. Apparently he was too busy and let them peer review. She was marked down and when checked by her tutor later the marking was incorrectly done by another random student. We never raised it as an issue as never saw this coming just thought it very strange from the the teacher.

DD had an anxiety attack in Sociology mock, had to be removed from exam, teacher hastily wrote another paper for her to sit a week later.
Laughable to think that could end up as her grade.
I’m in a right tiz with it all, I think DD has lost interest though she’s more interested in picking up her first car 🤣

All of this is just ridiculous. DS mocks didn't even have complete papers or the same number of papers as the actual exams (as an example for DT the teacher realised during lockdown that they had never done a mock of one of the papers so set them an online one and gave them 2 days to complete it!) The other subjects with the teachers made up a mark scheme which actually had no basis in anything and put a score in the 90% range as a B, so where is the accuracy or standardisation in that?
Also, the question for me is what happens to the uni offers if they are supposed to hold them open until appeal, do they have to 'unreject' those they think may want to appeal as the uni's won't know anything about the mock grades.
What an absolute mess.

Can not believe this suggestion! Ds did seriously badly in mocks for several reasons, was In hospital the week before with a nut allergy, and didnt qualify for extra time or laptop at that point which he subsequently secured for the real things. Would be a disaster for him. Am not mentioning this to him!

Ds’s Christmas mocks weren’t good as he had flu for the first time ever in his life. School did second set, as they always do, in March. Ds sat last mock exams on 20th March, the last day in school, and he has never had the results for those but anecdotally those were good according to his teachers. His rather doom laden words way back in March were “if they base this on my first set of mocks, I’m f**cked”. We laughed at the time...

I am tempted to get very sweary! 24 hours until results and they find yet another bus to throw our students under

Luckily DS’s mocks , taken under exam conditions, exceed what he needs, if they should go down that route. But I am beyond cross on everyone’s behalf

And DS2 is in Y12 so will bear the fallout next year. And next week DD will go through the same shit show with GCSE. It’s a perfect storm in this house.

Another thread title suggestion:

University 2020 - the one with the LOTTERY results at the end

Or

A level bingo 2020!

A level phone a friend results

A level I've been to a psychic to channel my results

2020 what personal statement?

...

I am really speechless , I cannot believe the level of incompetence on display .

I am just so disappointed in this. It’s such a pathetic knee jerk reaction. Ill thought out. Again I bet it benefits the big schools and probably the girls who tend not to last minute. Not a level playing field at all. Are teachers now going to have to scrabble around to find these mocks? What a nightmare!

Minister now says pupils can pick 3 letters from their name for their grades.

More fresh Hell - as if this wasn’t enough of an utter shitshow already.

I keep waiting for someone with half a brain to swoop in and reverse this monumentally unfair and stupid decision.

Railing with a DD in a big school, I can assure you that she wasn't running around the house with a huge smile on her face last night. Proper mocks under exam conditions were due to be sat after lockdown started.

I think we can safely say that the entire year group across the country has been screwed. I really hope that this thread doesn't descend into blaming big schools/ small cohorts/ girls/ boys/ private/ comps/ grammars (delete as appropriate) this time tomorrow. I think the government has mucked this up, but the real problem is that CV19 decided to raise its ugly head now against all odds.

Phew @Sssloou, my son AlAbamA* will be pleased