University 2020 :7: Results tombola, roll up, roll up, pick a prize!

[MillicentMartha]

Well, it’s been a crazy few days.

Old thread www.mumsnet.com/Talk/higher_education/3962422-University-2020-6-The-one-with-the-results-at-the-end?watched=1&msgid=99082625#99082625

@ThingDoer

Dd starting matric/enrolment process online this morning. Think she'll need to think about options too as Edinburgh gave a massive choice. Will she go for Arabic or Chinese?

Dd2 should have been in Arabic at Edinburgh 😬

@ThingDoer. My DD got the enrolment email too. She's thinking of Chinese too (or another language from scratch). My DSes would be looking for the easiest courses to pass.

I just have to query why students are appealing their grades if they have been accepted into their first or second choice at University. Frankly, once you have your degree, your A level grades become irrelevant.

I think it would be wise to ensure that your CV is as strong as it can be, and if an appeal for e.g. mock grades is likely to give a better grade profile I can't see why a student shouldn't do it (even if it is prioritised as a 'non-urgent appeal' to allow for students waiting on uni places.

What if a student drops out of a course after a year and wants to reapply to one with a higher entry requirement, but they didn't appeal their grades to get the higher result?

Also, I can imagine that if a student felt that they were a AAA student, and that could be confirmed through an appeal, then they wouldn't want to go through life with a record saying 'ABC student'?

If you give the right to appeal it has to be available to all.

this tweet sums it up for me:

I admire the optimism of those who say A-Levels don’t matter. In some cases that may be so. But, the fact is, when you’ve been to a state school in a disadvantaged area & you have no connections, “good” grades open doors. To downplay the impact of this shambles is to ignore that.

@slug I also take your point, but we are going to appeal 1 of DS's for a number of reasons:

• it's for the subject he wants to get a job in after his degree and we know that if an employer is faced with x number of candidates with the same degree, A'Level grades can matter
• what happens, if for whatever reason, DS doesn't complete his degree? (And the way the world is going atm, anything is possible)
• he believes he deserves it!

Dd is not going to uni this year

The school are appealing as 60% of the class were ‘downgraded’

But if they weren’t I definitely would

So what of the student mentioned above who has had one grade dropped and yet has been offered their first AND second choice on a highly competitive degree?

If students drop out, the assumption made by employers may be that they couldn't cope. It would confirm that the lower grade was appropriate. And for those who are wanting to go into professions where A levels count beyond University, how do you think employers deal with applicants from other countries where there is no equivalent to A levels? Do you really think A levels hold more sway than a carefully constructed application?

If they want to apply for their first choice a year later they will be in competition with the next cohort of students and taking a year then dropping out is not particularly attractive to university admissions teams.

Bear in mind that one of the reasons schools are so keen to get students to appeal is that it helps with their recruitment as well. I am very sure that the head of DD's 6th form that is in a very socially deprived are going to be crowing about her grades on all their advertising literature for the next few years. Though I don't think they will go as far as one school nearby that advertised their first ever Oxbridge placement with the student's face on the side of a bus.

DD is appealing as it now turns out that most of her bio class were downgraded. So bring it on! She’s waiting til next week as school have quite enough on.

My DD appealed last year. She was awardedAAB and got her first choice but she was A all the way and 1 or 2 marks off that. The appeal got her AAA and she was happy with that as it reflected her ability.So I agree, get what you can, it goes with you.

I don't know if anyone is interested in this but I will put it here anyway.

I agree priority should go to students who need the better grades right now.

Dd feels she is also defending her teacher and class but is in no rush.

Do parents have to pay for the appeals?

Dd is appealing because one grade cost her her firm choice. She is going to her insurance uni but doesn't feel she should have a crappy grade on her cv for the rest of her life when it was two grades lower than her mock or any test she has ever taken in that subject.

If she's 'clogging the system up' then I say that the onus is on the government to ensure that the appeals process can cope with expected demand, not on her to take the pressure off them.

@slug I think that appealing en masse shows the scale of what has been done to this cohort. If very few people appeal, the people responsible for the fiasco can say the angry reaction was a storm in a teacup, if schools appeal on behalf of half the students in the country it sends much more powerful message.

I do not really like the idea of CAGs being awarded across the board, because it devalues the high grades of those who would have got them in a normal year, discriminates against students in schools where approach to CAGs was most rigorous and would make it unfair for current Y12s who will be competing with some of the people taking gap years whilst this is resolved, but given where we are, CAGs are the fairest solution.

A friend of DS1 was one of the 0.2% to get moved down by 3 grades – was a Y14 doing politics as he had a subject change between Y12 and Y13. Got an A for every exam and piece of coursework except for 1 B over the course of 2 years. “Awarded” a D. How???? It is a subject with some of their better results, in 2019 56% got A/A*, in 2017 40%, I can’t find the data for 2018. He got his first choice place at Sheffield, but should not have to live with a grade which in no way reflects his ability.

And moving people up by 3 grades is even odder – how can they have such little faith in teacher judgements? Moving results by 1 grade is inevitable if you are trying to avoid grade inflation, but this is bizarre.

I agree that onus is on gov/Ofqual to deal with the appeals.

No cost here but no idea if that is normal.

It is extra work for schools who I am sure can do without it!

... and appeals should be free, the boards have saved a lot of money by not having to mark papers, although we don't know how much they have wasted playing with their incompetent algorithm! I was also disappointed to see that people will have to pay for the autumn exams - if they are being treated as part of the summer exam process, there should not be another charge as the students have not yet sat the papers they paid for.

The "triple lock" should not only be available to those who can afford to pay.

@Newgirls I don't think schools want results which don't reflect the quality of their provision either. Most schools have all the data used for their CAGs, so unless the boards are very inflexible with what they want, they may want the opportunity to redress the errors.

Any teachers want to comment?

@ThingDoer and @ClerkMaxwell dd also off to Edinburgh(unconditional based on ly A levels), did registration forms earlier and says she can choose 2 options. Apparently they normally hold an options fair but presumably this will be virtual. We're waiting to hear about phased moving in dates as planning our holiday around it.

Can someone tell me what is happening at the moment for students who missed their first choices because they were downgraded, but had mock results which would mean they met their offer?

There has been radio silence from a number of our friends who I would have expected to see posting congrats etc if their DC had got into their uni. Are they waiting now for mocks-based appeals before places are confirmed? What's the timescale for that?

I don't want to ask/ put my foot in it or appear insensitive.

Can I ask if any of you with degrees put your A levels on your CV?

Let's be realistic. How many of these students who have been downgraded can honestly say they would have gained that grade in an exam? While I think the exam system disadvantages many people (especially girls) it's the case every year that a large number of students do not get their predicted grades when put to the test. More so in other years than in this year. And Mumsnet is full of stories every year of students who did not get the results they expected, had to go to their insurance university or go through clearing and actually coming out of the process happier in the long run with a degree that far better suited them.

Much of this is down to the highly competitive nature of the UK Higher Education market. When Cambridge rejected my DD after interview she was sad for about 15 minutes then ended up far happier with her alternative. Yes a Cambridge degree is far more prestigious and would probably have guaranteed her jobs and promotions, but was the degree a better fit for her? Probably not. Incidentally she did get the grades Cambridge were asking for when others she knows who were offered a place did not. But she's realised that this initial disappointment was a blessing in disguise.

Slug , you keep talking about and comparing results for ‘predicted grades’ but that is not the problem . It is the down grade from the Centre Assessed Grade which people are appealing against . The centre assessed grade should be an approximation if what the candidate would have got in the exam , this is what Ofqual asked schools to supply .

The UCAS predicted grade is a marketing grade it is not relevant to this discussion.

And yes I am 55 have two degrees from RG universities and a professional qualification and my A levels are still on my CV . I regularly interview and whilst the weighting of A levels decreases in line with years work experience I would still expect to see them on a CV . If they were wildly out with the type of grade I would expect to see I would probably ask why

The rules for mock based appeals have not yet been published they are expected sometime next week . Also as yet there is no definition of what constitutes a ‘valid mock’ .

Pease, agree on A Levels. I have also interviewed for jobs over 30 years and always looked at A level grades. The reason is simple; they are the highest level of education where National standardisation applies. With degrees, I really had little idea whether a 1st from Uni A is better or the same vs a 2:1 from Uni B. I've obviously got some idea of 'better' Unis (probably based on 20 year old prejudices!) but without loads of research (which no one has time for) I dont really KNOW (iyswim) Having said all that, and to hold out a little hope for all your DCs, once candidates have a couple of jobs on their CV then their employment record is by far the most important factor! You just need to get the employment history first (not easy I know)

As a teacher who changed jobs recently, I had to show my actual GCSE and A level certificates when I went for the job! I had to really go searching to find them!

I have got a degree, 2 post grad qualifications and a Masters but would still put A level grades on my CV. People still care.

But what happens where there is an acknowledgment that the mock set was extremely hard for the point when it was taken, such that most of the class achieved less than they had been achieving up until that point?

My daughter's chemistry class has had their marks slashed. So the "best class" for years, has come out from this with mediocre marks. Many have been downgraded by two grades. It's a disgrace.