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

@Campervan69 wow!

Sorry, seen it was a friend of your son. Sentiment stands. What a fucking useless shambles.

@Witchend

This is interesting - one of the colleges at Oxford have decided to accept all they offered to, regardless of grades given. Presumably it is too late for most to follow suit?

Problem is most unis tend to over-offer. Oxford tends to much less which gives them that flexibility. As a college they'd probably be dealing with fewer students to consider too, so they may have looked at the results when they got them and realised that pretty much all had got within a grade and so there wasn't any real drops.

Birmingham, for example, was full and refusing insurance offers who had made the grades (which they're not allowed to do) in some courses yesterday. It was causing a certain amount of stress.

Interested in what you are saying about Birmingham @Witchend. How do you know this? So sorry to hear these stories of disappointment and unfair treatment

I would be interested in how the “universities advised to be lenient/flexible” is working out in practice.

My DS missed his firm offer by 1 grade (offer AAB, assessed ABB). It’s a well known RG university. Place not awarded on track, which showed insurance. Firm would not take calls yesterday morning so he emailed them as advised by school (using their proper channels). Heard precisely nothing as of now. He’s good with his insurance, but its a bit crap if a university in difficult times cannot even engage with an offer holder

@Campervan69 just wow!

@TawnyPippit same problem here, all over their website about how caring they are and how flexible, rejected ds in track, wouldn't listen when he rang and told them grades are being appealed as he was downgraded by 2 grades on everything, nothing at all from them

@lightuptheroom - we can’t even get a conversation or response. They may have a policy of saying they only respond to successfully appealed grades. Or they may say - close, but the dropped grade was in your degree subject so no can do. All understandable. But when there is literally no engagement (and lots of people seem to be getting accepted on several dropped grades) its a bit irksome.

TawnyPipit we had a similar experience: missed first choice Russell Group University by one grade ABB not AAB following moderation down from CAGs of AAA. I track showed rejected and place at insurance given. We tried for nearly an hour to get through to first choice, calling relevant department, main admissions office, university enquiries number etc but either no answer or a message saying this mailbox is full. So much for universities being open to flexibility!

Just been on the website of local private school. For the A levels where the number of students was 5 or less (so the CAG automatically applied with no moderation) no student got less than an A and more than 60% got an A*. The school always gets good results but this is remarkable even for the school.

And before anyone gets arsey

No problem with private schools

I don’t think it’s cheating or it’s because it’s a private school. I think it just shows the unfairness of moderating some but not all A levels.
The reason I picked the school was they were displaying the data. I haven’t yet found a state school which has set out the data showing the size of the cohort and the grades.

I didnt say its because its private...at all

But it suggests that the CAG score was all A and A*

No one fucking up at all? No Bs?

Handy

But yeah you’re right about the unfairness of not moderating all A levels

But at least those children are ok...and im not being snarky I’m honestly pleased for those children that have either not had their grades amended or have lucked in

How is that cheating? Do you think teachers have put in artificially inflated scores because they know they won’t be moderated? You must have a low opinion of teachers’ professionalism.

I can understand you’re angry but it’s not helpful to lash out at other schools/teachers. Aim your anger at the government/exam board.

Actually railing you are right

I have every faith that the teachers are acting with the utmost professionalism

Cheating was the wrong word for me to use

Ive reported my original post

And im not pissed off with schools or teachers

It’s certainly not their fault its such a shambles

The whole thing is a disgrace.....

It looks very much like RG universities are being inflexible with their grade requirements and a lot of pupils from socially deprived backgrounds and average schools are missing out on well deserved places.

Ex polys are being a lot more generous but these were the institutions at most financial risk when this crisis broke. I remember the media articles fearing that there would be an exodus from these institutions to more prestigious ones as more places would be available through deferral and smaller numbers of foreign students.......a lot has changed!

I worry students are taking up insurance and clearing places as an understandable knee jerk reaction to this bizarre grading mechanism. I just hope there are many many successful appeals.

@RufustheSniggeringReindeer I totally get it. It’s hard not to feel angry .

[quote Railingsohno]@RufustheSniggeringReindeer I totally get it. It’s hard not to feel angry .[/quote]
Thank you 🙂

been trotting round blaming the exam board and should have continued with that rather than going off piste

My A level child has done ok overall...so certainly not annoyed on her behalf

Its just the utter balls up of this entire situation...so frustrating!

fabtab 💐

@Gymntonic
Dd1 was messaging someone whom it had happened to, and they knew other people who it had also happened to.
It should get sorted out one way or another, as they are bound to accept them if they have the grades. However if they don't have space, then I don't know what they will actually do-maybe offer them a gap year.
Apparently one of the people gave up and went into clearing, but apparently Birmingham was being very awkward so it sounds like that was a sensible move. TSR was helping the group to try and help, but it wasn't ended by the end of yesterday and dd hasn't heard from them today, which hopefully means it's sorted.

There are some interesting results for subjects with small centres.
For example music:
5,698 entries (2019=5,848)
10.8% A* (2019 4.5%)

I think that it has gone up a lot because a lot of schools, both state and private, only put a few candidates in, so they got their CAGs. This meant that for the schools with over 15 entries, there would have been a lot of pressure to keep the grades down. One local school with 7 candidates pretty much got their CAGs, including an A* and an A even though last year they got nothing over a C. Another school which is known to be much stronger for music got worse results because there were 16 candidates.

I think this may also be what happened to DS1's friend whose A in politics was moderated to a D. Of 12,846 taking the exam with Excel, 1,012 or 7.9% for an A, 14,090 students in 2019, 994 or 7.1% got As. If a significant chunk of top grades went to the small cohorts, and they were restricting the grade inflation, that would explain the ludicrous results at DS's school.

Monkey. I think you may have hit the nail on the head there. It would certainly explain things like the Whitley bay results shown upthread, in fact it's the only explanation I can think of. If true that's utterly scandalous. Dont think the public v private debate is helpful, its unlikely to have been the aim, just an unintended consequence and is distracting from the real scandal here, which bears repeating. If true, this would mean that, rather than blunt statistical moderation to give large cohorts similar results to last year (adjusted for their previous performance) which is what we were told was happening; what we actually have is a system KNOWINGLY GIVING LARGER COHORTS WORSE RESULTS THAN THEY WOULD HAVE ACHIEVED ON AVERAGE in order to keep overall grade inflation to a (presumably arbitrary capped) level because smaller cohorts couldn't (quite rightly) use statistical moderation and had higher scores due to optimistic CAGs (which in and of themselves are probably inevitable and rather than "cheating" are in most cases a combination of rounding up, human nature, impossibility of predicting the ill/absent students and lack of faith in the Govt that they will do what they said). IF TRUE then whoever's made that decision should be sacked, and possibly prosecuted.