Pre-U results

[ShootsFruitsAndLeaves]

Anyone?

Essentially I am aware that there are multiple distinct classes of students some of whom might have been statistically favoured or disfavoured as a class.

My son has been given an M1 for his Further Maths, which is a disaster for him studying maths, and even though his mock was D3, and tbh I would have hoped he would have got D2.

I am not really clear what has happened, but it seems possible that schools with more optimistic results may have been rewarded for their dishonesty. Thing is the school was 96% D3/D2/D1 for further maths, last year, so I'm not sure what's going on here.

Also the extent to which there is overall grade inflation for Pre-U vs. A Level. (I'm going to ignore the Scottish debacle as it's probably not all that relevant compared to the large number of English students competing with A Level results)

so he's got a D1 in Maths and an M1 in further maths

I feel for your son. As Pre Us aren't regulated by Ofqual, the mock result fall back doesn't apply. Also there are no retakes.

Apparently they did mocks for everything except Further Maths in January

And then Further Maths was done in March as a covid mock under obviously very different circumstances.

That is VERY interesting about Pre U's. DS did two of them...

In the end he got D2, D2 and A so we are over the moon. I told him if his grades were worse than his mocks of A, A, A we would appeal. It's the devil in the detail isnt it that actually that wouldnt have applied to him!

It's the devil in the detail isn't it that actually that wouldn't have applied to him!

From my understanding I suspect a lot of people will find that when they try to appeal with mocks. I believe OFQUAL are making stipulations, such as the mock has to have been done under full exam conditions, and they have to have the original mock paper that was done, not just the marks.

So, for example, at my dd1's 6th form the mocks wouldn't have counted, as they did them in form, with their standard teacher and the classes took them over a couple of days so not all together.
How many students will have kept their mock papers? I doubt I would have-and if I had then there would quite likely be my corrections written over them which could well make them invalid.

I suspect when it comes to it, the number that can actually appeal over the mock result successfully, will make very little difference to grades overall.

An M1 in further maths and D1 in maths? That doesn't sound right; how frustrating for your son. Especially looking at the school's previous results for maths.
My DS sat 3 x pre-U's and has been marked down one grade in all of them. He was predicted D1 and 2 x D2's and has been awarded D2 and 2 x D3's. He's got into his first choice University but he is slightly disappointed.

He has been downgraded in history from a D2 to a D3 but his coursework worth 25% of the marks was assessed as a D2.

I'm certain he would have got his predicted grades or much closer to them had he sat the exams .

@suki2 Can I just ask , when you say a result was down graded, do you mean relative to Ucas predictions or CAGs?

I mean relative to Ucas predictions as we dont know the CAGs

What has happened with his track status on UCAS? I know a few of DC's friends who have got their offer despite all three grades being lower than asked for and predicted. It seems the unis are well aware of how this chaos is hampering good students and being a bit more flexible this year.

he is shown as unsuccessful for his main offer, successful for the insurance offer

How does he feel about the insurance?

I told DC, so long as they got into unis they wanted to go to, not to faff around with remarks but move forward. As soon as they have their degrees, no one cares about A levels.

There seems to have been a lot of potential for shenanigans.

I've been told they submitted a ranked list.

The school's results improved a lot between 2018 and 2019. 2020's are suspiciously identical.

Also there are lots of complications:

Pre-U Further Maths grades are similar to Pre-U Maths, for the country.

This is true every year, and makes no sense, because for A Level the A rates are MUCH higher, because only maths whizzes will take Further Maths, just as you'd expect higher A grades for say Music.

The result is that the school's grades for 2019 were overwhelmingly D1/D2 (A*/A) for Maths, but the much smaller and obviously more able group doing Further Maths got a lower % of D1/D2.

So in general if you get an A* in Maths A Level you'll probably get one in Further Maths A Level as well.

But that doesn't seem to be true for Pre-U.

Which is what it is and they signed up for that but they haven't set an exam to prove themselves and are materially disadvantaged relative to A Level students who will have been given higher grades overall.

Next thing that happened is that for some subjects (not Maths), the school did both A Level & Pre-U. This was true for Chemistry. DS' worst subject was predicted to be Chemistry. But because the A Level & Pre-U cohort are not considered as one, the context from last year is 'school of Chemistry geniuses', without realising that they've filtered out the A Level students and with them all the people who might get low grades (C/D/E equivalent).

So DS' predicted Chemistry (which he didn't need for this university place) is UPGRADED because he was in the 'elite of the elite' cohort by choosing Pre-U.

Meanwhile he's better at Physics but this is a unified cohort at his school. Here last year someone got a U. Bear in mind that across the whole school for a subject they wouldn't expect a U, or even the next two grades up from that (P2/P3), or maybe even a P1 either.

And because that happened last year, they have to give one out this year.

Even though that's probably a 1 in 1000 event that just happened to happen last year, and they don't have even 100 Physics students.

So I'm told some poor bugger got downgraded from an M3 to a U. Because if there was a U last year, gotta have one this year.

Anyway fortunately this wasn't DS, because he was ranked high enough.

So it looks like he was ranked by his school in the lower reaches for Further Maths. He was predicted a D2 (A*). But that doesn't matter. His rank says he gets an M1 (A/B), because that's what that rank would have got last year.

Now here's where the shenanigans come in. I have no idea if schools did this or not, but they would be dumb not to.

School has how ever many students it wants to get into University. Each has different requirements. So the Physics degree students might need an A* or A, so you'd rank them higher. Meanwhile let's say you have candidates for Oxford to study maths. You're going to rank them top for maths out of your cohort because that means they get their grades and get the place.

And then perhaps other students don't need such good grades for their unis. So why waste a high rank on them?

Of course it can backfire. And then you can blame the government/ofqual/China/whatever.

If They have indeed "fiddled" the rankings to ensure Oxbridge students or students going on to study that degree get the better grades and you can evidence this then you can appeal on the grounds of malpractice.

I would also like to point out that for some students UCAS predictions are merely aspirational grades rather than a true prediction. Ask the school to provide you with the Centre assessed grades as a starting point.

I'm not saying that they have. I'm saying that it would make sense to do so, generally, and it might be possible to do so in ways that would maximally advantage the school and its students, by 'min-maxing'.

The problem really seems to be with Pre U Further Maths which does not seem to be graded fairly, historically, in that the grade distribution is the same or worth as normal maths.

The problem in that context is even if it's hard, they did sign up for it. And obviously if you sit an unreasonably hard exam and don't get the grade you want, well that's tough, and you can blame yourself and possibly the school for choosing to send its students down that path rather than doing A Levels

But if you DIDN'T sit said exam then it's much more difficult .

The thing that piques me I suppose is that I did further maths a level many years ago with no teaching time (my college only did maths, no further maths), and got an A very easily. And DS is definitely better at maths than me!

I found out more information from the school.

Firstly Pre-U's are an unfair advantage generally and they should be shut down ASAP (though this is happening).

There was massive, massive grade inflation moving from Maths A Level to Pre U. This could be said to reflect that Pre U Maths is much easier. However the contrary argument would be that Pre U is 'more challenging', and if you've taught this more demanding material then you should be rightly awarded a higher mark.

However, the grade boundaries for A Level Maths 2019 were:

72.3% A*
55% A
44.7% B

and for Pre-U

73.75% D1/D2 (A*)
63% D3 (upper A)
56.25% M1 (A/B)
49% M2 (B)

So they are similar in the marks needed.

The old A Level Maths spec required around 88.7% to get A* in Core (Pure) 3/4, and around 80-82% for an A, and around 70.2% for a B.

So it looks like Pre U is more challenging than old A Level Maths in terms of 'difficulty of scoring marks'

However, in 2017 (old syllabus) A Level Maths A rate was 17.9%, and in 2019 16.5%. Whereas from what I've seen A Level -> Pre U delivered around a doubling of A->D1/D2 rate.

Oh and DS school seem to have been conservative generally with their predictions, in that his CAG's were only 1/4 grade higher on average across his subjects. Obviously some schools will have delivered much bigger boosts.