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

@HuaShan I absolutely agree , they put a huge effort into choosing the right people for Oxford and have a lot more data so it definitely makes sense. And frankly those who made it through the entrance ordeal deserve to be able to take up their places. Likewise a number of medical schools have been flexible . But I am struck by the big adverts on social media from said Oxford colleges which definitely major about how this will be their most socially diverse intake ever, why do they even feel the need to mention this.

@Witchend not sure I want to say this but predictions are currently that bigger % of GCSE results will be changed. No idea why yet. As a teacher Thursday was horrible. Some v weird results which we are appealing. My own DD did well and is off to become a vet. There was no plan B for her so v v v v grateful it worked out ok. But for some of her friends it's not been good news.

@KingscoteStaff

Talking to other parents of DS’s friendship group, Bristol are coming up as absolute stars - in 3 or 4 cases boys phoned with a missing grade and were signposted to alternative courses - so a French + Politics course has changed to Straight French, a Zoology has changed to Biology etc. Parents v. impressed.

I've heard the opposite of Bristol. One of DD's friends missed her grades and they were a straight no. No discussion or any other options given.

@mumsneedwine

I've a dd who is GCSE year, and so have a vested interest. Large comprehensive, but they were cautiously okay with their Alevels, slightly better than cags, but the 6th form is relatively small.
Dreading Thursday.

It doesn't make sense then to blame it on small cohorts, unless they increased the size of what was considered small.
Is that official that it's worse or rumours?

Small cohorts

[quote mumsneedwine]@Witchend not sure I want to say this but predictions are currently that bigger % of GCSE results will be changed. No idea why yet. As a teacher Thursday was horrible. Some v weird results which we are appealing. My own DD did well and is off to become a vet. There was no plan B for her so v v v v grateful it worked out ok. But for some of her friends it's not been good news. [/quote]
Thursday sounds like it will be awful

💐 for anyone involved

I invigilate and used to be a dinner lady at an infant school, although I have no children doing gcse Ive ‘known’ some of these children since they were 4

The last exam the Friday before lockdown i felt very tearful as i walked round, so did other invigilators. It just did not feel the same and we felt so sorry for them. If I’d have known what was coming We’d probably have been in floods...

[quote TheDrsDocMartens]Small cohorts

But I am struck by the big adverts on social media from said Oxford colleges which definitely major about how this will be their most socially diverse intake ever, why do they even feel the need to mention this.

Because there is still a prejudice that says Oxbridge are biased towards giving places to rich kids from private schools, when in fact they have put a lot of effort into encouraging students of all backgrounds to apply, and removing some of the barriers. While that prejudice persists it's ironically one of the things that discourages students from some schools from applying.

So I can understand Oxbridge wanting to highlight where they are succeeding in pushing the trend in the right direction.

Sorry I’ve been AWOL, I’m on my ‘summer holiday’ visiting DS1 in Manchester.

I can see how maintaining CAGs for smaller cohorts within the whole distribution envelope could have adversely affected bigger cohorts. Not sure it’s a private vs state thing. My DS goes to a comp sixth form. Only 8 or 9 doing some subjects despite a Y13 of 200.

I think the reasonable thing to have done could have been moderating the larger cohorts according to the algorithm separately to the small cohorts and to have then awarded the small cohorts outside the envelope and have swallowed the grade inflation that would have caused. As someone suggested earlier.

I’m not going to be on here much as we’re going to be fairly busy, but I hope posters DC old and new to the thread manage to get a place and a result they are content with.

Dadx3 of course you are right but it sort of detracts from the fact that regardless of background this was the right thing to do . The Oxford Entrance process is gruelling and as I say those who get offers deserve their places . The intake would have been diverse anyway because they made those offers in the first place.

Brunel is now making provisional offers based on mock results, subject to confirmation after appeals. I assume others will be doing the same.

And as time goes on and courses remain unfilled offers will get lower so it's worth ringing back. Universities want those places filled.

All this talk about mocks. I think I posted about it earlier but mocks in DDs school were marked by peers and not even looked at by the teacher. She was marked incorrectly as confirmed by her tutor but we never raised it with the school as just thought she would be okey in the real exams. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Also the mock maths paper used from 2018 was revised in class by one teacher the day before the mocks but not by the teacher in DDs class. So one class had been through the paper the day before.

I would imagine that not all schools do apply the same rigour to setting mocks, how they're sat (in proper exam conditions or not) and whether copies of the pupils' papers are kept on file. Something tells me that the schools advantaged by the use of the algorithm will also be the ones who gain on appeal.

As a teacher, I’m pretty surprised at how lax some of these mocks are!

At dc school they have ‘testing week’ twice a term and for example for the whole two years he was doing timed questions in class under exam conditions at least once a fortnight in one subject.

They know what exams are like they have done GCSE so it’s not like they have to practice finding their centre number or being in an exam hall . They did have mocks but they were more as a way of identifying weaknesses and some depts were more formal than others.

@MrsMcMuffins one of dd’s mocks definitely won’t count as valid - done in class over two lessons & peer marked. They hadn’t actually done their ‘proper’ mocks yet. That’s for the most unjustly allocated subject (two grades down) from a massive cohort with class sizes of over 25. The school have published their results for their highest achieving 30 students, it doesn’t come close to previous years.

@KingscoteStaff That's what he's doing, on Monday. Unfortunately requires a plane & overnight stay ... but there you go.

That’s why it’s not a solution to appeal with mocks for so many students. I get really annoyed regenerated this is put forward as a solution.

@Railingsohno

It's not so much being slack necessarily as space and time.
At my small school we'd have exams in full exam conditions twice a year, in our large hall that was really only used for assemblies. Teachers invigilated and we had a different timetable over the fortnight of the winter exams and for exam period in the summer.

At my dc's large comprehensive they need the sports hall and main hall just to get all the GCSE students in. They have outside invigilators and can't have the whole school doing exams at once, so only the exam years have changed timetables. Is it any surprise that they choose to do exams in a normal lesson with their normal teacher? It's simply a matter of logistics and finance.

I think NewModel is right in that it will again advantage the small schools who have the space to do proper mocks.

I wonder if they could have added to the algorithm that any grade that was 2 or more out from the CAG was then looked at individually (or maybe the cohort if it was large numbers for one group). They could have used the normal markers to help here, and I think they said it was only about 2%, so we're not talking about huge swathes.
Any mark that was 2 grades or more out, the school would have been asked for evidence for that specific pupil. Now they didn't have to say they were doing that-could have made out it was random checks.

It would have meant, I suspect that most of the two grades out would have been checked and probably gone to closer than the correct grade. They could have even done it in large cohorts that then means they look at all those above as well. It would have put a safety net in, and also on any small cohorts as a few people have mentioned where the average results have shot up by 2+ grades these would also have been looked at and modelled down if they weren't fair, and then people wouldn't be looking at them sideways if they were a fair representation.

@HuaShan

Peasebottom 22 not to dispute that financial decisions played some part, remember also that Oxford hold a lot of data on their offer holders from the admissions tests and multiple interviews that candidates undertake. I guess they can feel confident that their internal processes are robust.

@HuaShan - It has to be stressed that not all Oxford courses involved multiple interviews or admissions tests. DD only had two interviews, didn't submit any coursework and didn't sit an entrance exam. Not sure how robust the internal processes could be for that course.

Surely it would make more sense to be able to appeal on the basis of your CAG with mocks and other assessments used as evidence to back up the CAG? Or am I missing something?

@Piggywaspushed still trying to unpick the possibility of small cohorts getting all the higher grades. I don't know which boards do Film, DS1's school do it with Eduqas so I have looked at those (www.eduqas.co.uk/home/administration/results/results-statistics/)

In summary:
5,450 candidates were entered for 2020, or which 2.9%, or 158 students nationally were awarded A (2019=121 As),
There were 464 exam centres, so the average entry was 12 candidates.

This means that almost all centres would have been in the taper as the statistical approach was unsafe. It seems very possible that the smallest centres may well have taken a significant proportion of the 158 As before the alogorithm was applied to the others. If 50 As were given to centres with fewer than 5 candidates, that would have left 108 As between the remaining 414 exam centres, and they are likely to have gone to the schools who got As last year.

@Piggywaspushed my data did not attach:

No I just meant, cobbled together exams, marked by pupils (fair enough for tests but not for formal mocks). It will be interesting to see how they define the mocks that can be used. I don’t work in the English system btw.

Even ‘proper’ mocks aren’t done under exam conditions, they don’t have the space. The only difference is that they are full A level papers & marked by the teacher - still done in class time & sometimes over two lessons or a lesson & free period. They aren’t formally invigilated or anything like that.