2020 A Level Results and moderation

[ClarasZoo]

My son is awaiting the result of one A level this year. He is predicted an A and has had A exams/assessments throughout the year. Following on from the thread on the Scottish Highers disasters I am starting to worry about the results, both for him and for two family friends in the year above.

Can anyone who understands the system better than me please advise/reassure me?
So, the first example is a child who needs an A grade in one particular subject to go to the uni they want. That child is predicted an A/B. there are 5 pupils doing that subject at his school. Last year one got a B, two got Cs and two got Ds. the two years before were similar. This year, for some reason, it is a clever cohort of 6. 5 are predicted A stars and one A(friend's son). Based off previous years, there is only one B, 2 Cs and 2 Ds to hand out - can that be right? In that case, my friend's son is going to get a D, even though he should get an A/B. Please tell me this is not how it works, although looking at the press it does seem to be.
My other example is a girl who needs an A star in Italian A level. She is Italian so would breeze an A star. However, her school has never got more than a C in Italian. So will she get a C? That CAN"T be right?!
My son's grade is clearly also in doubt, if the school does not have sufficient to "hand out", isn't it?

@RufustheSniggeringReindeer sending a big hug. I feel the same and know DD should be fine but if they've marked down the whole year for some reason then she might not. Hate it's all done by statistics which can be manipulated so many ways.

I think its an incredibly difficult thing to get right and be fair

It would be impossible to be fair to this year, and by extension to last year, and next year. DD did GCSE's last year, and don't forget those were only the second year to do the new specs, so you could say they were at a disadvantage from the previous year, who got more leeway. She could've got all 9's, she didn't because she was one or two marks off pretty much everything. She is predicted three A*'s, will she get them next year? Who knows? She is someone who would probably benefit from a system like this year, as she tends to panic in exams, and goes to an indy school with reasonable results. Recent examinees have had a pretty rocky ride over the last couple of years, and I have no doubt the next couple will be the same, and the really sad thing is, that their results will probably never be viewed as completely valid.

@Baaaahhhhh thank you for illustrating my point. Your DD would probably benefit from this system as goes to a good indie with good results. Conversely the students this will massively adversely affect will be bright students at poorer comps. For them this is the worst system as they are being judged by their schools previous results, which is not fair.
Oh and the current year 13s were the first year group for the new GCSEs, that teachers had little warning of so taught for the first time on the hoof. There was no allowance made for this in grades - in fact the pass marks for maths last year were lower. That poor year group has had a v rough education.

In fairness to teachers even if they looked at historical grades and tried to work within those parameters unless they rounded up and down in all subjects and all grades as a whole school there was always going to be an overprediction of CAGs. There are over 30 A level subjects and 6 grades and over 3000 centres. Alot of the historical calculations will result in stating a school could allocate a fraction e.g 1.6 As so the school would probably allocate 2As if they have DC who they believe would achieve that grade... If this happens in a lot of subjects at all grade levels and if the odd school decides to allocate 2A*s because they have children working at this level when the calculation said 1.4 and they should have probably allocated just 1 on historical data then it's really not surprising to see the level of over predictions.

It also does open up the door for schools with a good historical average over the 3 years to sneak in an A grade instead of a B. We saw with the IB results one school do alot better than they should have done based on an historical average where there best results were 4 and 5 years ago.

Having a fair, free and fast appeal system is the only way to cater for a system that cannot possibly award the right grades to everyone.

as she tends to panic in exams

Same with ds1

Thanks mums good luck for Thursday!

God only knows what will happen in cases where schools do IGCSE as those results will be being moderated globally and notably against students in China and India and other countries where they might have still been required to sit exams.

@RufustheSniggeringReindeer you too. Fingers crossed it all goes well.
And @Frazzled6 very well put. That's what most schools have done - rounded up the 1.4 to2 because they believed that 2 students should have got those top grades. And added up this looks like a huge % (.6 x 15 subjects makes a 9% over prediction). In reality it is a few students but might effect some that should get the grades. I think using the kids individual GCSE results should have been a factor for A level. Easy to do as their candidate number doesn't change and an algorithm could have added this as a factor. But they chose not to for some reason.

Offandaway - UK igcses are not moderated against international ones. They are entirely separate and indeed the UK igcses are often entirely different papers depending on which board.

Baahhh the entire point of introducing the 9-1 system was to split the 9s from the 8s as too many were getting A*s

Season - that’s interesting Thankyou. I wonder how they will moderate the IGCSEs then - especially as there is IGCSE Cambridge board and EdExcel? Are they normally moderated independently? What about AQA versus the (non- IGCSE) Edexcel or Cambridge boards as well? I wonder if different boards might moderate more hardly than others, or is there one moderation centre for everything? So complicated!

CAIE /CIE are the only one not subject to JCQ (Joint Council of Qualifications) so all the other exam boards will be moderated in exactly the same way using the same data. CAIE is not subject to JCQ but their way of moderating looks to be following the same data too.

If any of you use Facebook there's a good group on there called What I wish I knew about university.

Lots of help and advice if needed, some have got results from the Cambridge a level board today.

www.facebook.com/groups/488235648182391/?ref=share

Agree with freedadonkey. Lovely group.

This Facebook group is also very informative and up to date with the latest information. Its striving to improve the appeals process and make it free and fair.
www.facebook.com/groups/Alevel2020exams/?ref=share

www.theguardian.com/education/2020/aug/11/keir-starmer-england-must-alter-course-on-a-level-grades?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_News_Feed

Just seen the announcement that students can now use mock grades if they disagree with grades awarded on Thursday. They are making it up as they go along. There's no consistency between schools regarding mock exams and many schools cancelled them as planned for March.

I'm selfishly happy with this... DD exceeded her offer in her mocks.

DD did v well in one particular mock, which wasn’t last years exam papers, they were from year before and she happened to have gone through them at home for revision! Another mock the whole class didn’t do brilliantly as teacher included the section she hadn’t yet taught them.

My GCSE son was due to take his mocks the week after lockdown began so he would have none to help.

Absolute dog’s dinner of a “policy change”.

Fair, free appeals where staff can send in evidence of why they assigned that centre grade is needed here. Not nonsense like mocks.

This is incredible.

Many schools mark harshly to give kids a kick up the bum, include sections that haven't been taught yet, do one paper instead of three, do past papers that kids may or may not have done before.

Certainly there is no moderation or standardisation across schools, no appeal if you did badly because they're 'just mocks'.

At my sons school, they didn't even tell them when they were doing them - they were sprung on them as a genuine test to identify gaps in revision.

I feel so sorry for this cohort, utterly failed. My ds has been cheerful and stoic throughout, no complaints about anything all the way through, but was in tears last night. I'm pleased for the children who will benefit from this new triple lock, but it further disadvantages children like my ds.

This article just confirms what many have said on this thread (and other Higher Ed threads), but the obvious inference is that the Secretary of State for Education did not speak to a single educator before going ahead with his latest idea! Surely, even an on-the-ball civil servant, let alone the first headteacher he spoke to, would have pointed out the problems. It's clearly been cooked up by an incompetent politician.

www.theguardian.com/education/2020/aug/12/decision-a-level-gcse-appeals-rolling-disaster-say-teachers

Yes it’s ludicrous and it’s obvious they haven’t consulted with teachers / heads. Even if they had rustled up a last minute consultation group with 5 or 6 headteachers from anywhere, they would have heard the massive variations between how and when schools administer mocks and mark them.

All this has done is ushered in another dimension of inequality - between those schools that conducted formalised mocks; those that didn’t and those who did no mocks at all.

There is more sense spoken on one MN thread than the entire DforE. Total shambles.

To update.

My son (large sixth form) - got what he wanted/CAG.
Italian Girl - small cohort, private - got A*
Other boy (large comp) CAG was AAB. Got ABC, downgraded to due to algorithm.

Original UCAS grades AAA cags ( teacher assessments) dropped to AAA ( due to illness) moderated grades A AB.
Dgd got into Kings College London and also met insurance (Bristol) but was lucky with contextual offer.

Original was 3 A*

Dd was downgraded in her PE from CAG B to C

The college is appealing on behalf of the whole class as 18 out of 28 were downgraded

And i made a boob earlier...dd was given a CAG of B in PE and probably would only get B

She was Given a CAG of B in psychology but would probably have attained an A