A level stresses....[history depression today and more to come...]

[DinkyDaisy]

My ds is usually quite calm and collected but his history paper today [a whopping 40% Russia paper ] depressed him. He is angry with himself. I screwed it up he texted me at work. Timing that he thought he had sorted through revision went a bit awry for starters.
He is trying to move on but it is hard. He took the night off from revision as the next exams are after half term.
I am sure he is not alone...
He is avoiding exam talk at school as a history post-mortem will finish him off I think.
He needs AAB for university choice and he is doubting himself now...
Good luck to all going through this!

You are mistaken, my daughter takes STEM subjects and has sat 2 A level papers this week; Physics yesterday and Further Maths today

She has a total of 13 A level exams across 4 A levels

A levels are a tough slog, so I hope everyone is getting on ok

what an odd comment. I have no obligation to be useful or supportive to you. I do think the unrealistic expectations caused by so many super high predicted grades puts extra pressure on them. I don’t give a monkeys whether you think that view is useful or supportive quite frankly.

You never know how you’ve done! This really is true

Unless you miss questions & run out of time…

Im not sure that high grade predictions puts any more pressure on kids. Surely if they HAVE to get certain grades for university the pressure is there whether it's an A or a C. That C prediction may require that particular child to work as hard as the one predicted an A.
Inflating predicted grades is a very bad idea, and surely will not reflect well on the school if children consistently fail to achieve them? So can't imagine a school would predict a slew of As and A stars unless they think it's very likely they will be achieved. After all, it's actual grades that go on record, not the predictions.

The AQA physics paper might have suited a few people (it sounded very mathematical), but general consensus is that it was hard. DS was meh about it - struggled with some questions but others were OK. He did FM to AS level so that will have helped. It sounds like the wording on some questions will have thrown some (the surgeon on the ship one made me think of the notorious maths Higher crocodile and zebra question).

Hopefully it will mean that the grade boundaries are shifted to reflect the difficulty though.

Oh god the surgeon on the ship ... I would just have said call an air ambulance helicopter. (In fact, I did, to Ds, who was unimpressed by my strategic thinking.)

Dd says the Hamlet question was more like a theatre studies question than Eng Lit - it asked them to compare stagings in different productions. Tough luck if you've only seen one... Luckily her class did Coriolanus and she described the question on that as 'basic'. Monstrously unfair.

And all her Physics friends hated the paper.

The Hamlet question was totally unclear on what it was all about- could have been about staging or all sorts of other things so I just don’t see how they will apply consistent marking across the responses and
then across other texts which had very basic questions which could have been easily revised for.

It's tricky on the plays isn't it. I know DS has seen umpteen versions of Measure for Measure but that won't be the case for all kids.

Agree with this. Predictions are overwhelmingly too generous (as multiple research has shown) and the fact is that most students don’t achieve their predicted grades. The trouble is so many apply based on their predicted grades - or even higher “aspirational” choices because they are told to “aim high”. We encouraged our DD to apply to a couple of unis that were way below her predicted grades of AAA and (following a bad history exam this week) she is grateful that she insured one at BBB

... and the fact is that most students don’t achieve their predicted grades. The trouble is so many apply based on their predicted grades - or even higher “aspirational” choices because they are told to “aim high”...

100% agree with this @Marianne24 - schools inflating predicted grades to get their pupils into "the competition" for high-ranking universities and courses, even though the typical offer is usually less.

Edinburgh, as one example, seem to have been calling applicants' bluff on some courses to a certain extent - there have been a number of examples of people moaning on TSR that they received offers for much higher grades than the typical offer on their website; but when questioned, they said the offer was the same as their predicted grades

@Marianne24 im really worried about this too. Daughter was predicted 3 x A star and I wonder if it was only so high as the college knew she was applying to Cambridge.
She was offered a place (which is obviously great) but the required grades are high. As a pp mentioned, we have been for the offer holder day and she’s in love with the place so it will be a crushing disappointment for her if she doesn’t make it.

This was my point. They are told they will get top marks, they can then tell if an exam goes badly that they probably haven't got the very top marks (even though they might still get a decent grade) and that can then really affect them. Friend's DD has a Cambridge offer which requires straight A stars. The pressure of that is immense and the reality is that only a very small number of students can get A stars. Its more obvious to them when they've missed the A stars than with other grades since if you don't finish a question for example then you have in all likelihood missed the A star.

Please don't blame the schools entirely for these high predictions. The instruction's from UCAS are that predictions should be best case grades.

These grades for UCAS (which the actually not robust RG research was based on) are often entirely different from school's internal tracking/mock grades etc.. This came up a lot in the year of TAGs that some students and parents believed UCAS grades were the same as the TAG grade submitted. UCAS grades are meant to be generous.

On another note, I think the OP started this thread looking for support and tea and sympathy/empathy not for the usual MN debate on children's misguided/hapless/ or otherwise aspirations.

That's interesting re UCAS and best grades @Piggywaspushed.

Any ideas behind their motivation for this - I'd naively assumed they'd prefer accurate predictions so there's less churn come results day.

UCAS predictions are also made months and months ahead of A levels, so it's no wonder they're not always accurate. I don't think it's necessarily bad that they should be aspirational, as long as the students understand that. Maybe they should be called target grades or something instead of predicted.

I think they think students will be motivated to work to achieve them @lastdayatschool

Such a lot depends on the students' approach to exams - I think it's fair enough to ask teachers to predict potential but hard for them to foresee who will start revising when, whose revision will be effective, who will sleep badly the night before, who will be ill, whose stamina will hold up the best, who will have a crisis in their personal life, who will forget to turn over the last page of the question paper etc etc.

It's not new - always been the way. I think because UCAS grades are done earl and supposed to acknowledge progress will be made. Schools should make this clear - but some don't.

Trouble is schools have ...deep breath.. indicator grades, target grades, predicted grades, indicative grades, current grades, UCAS grades.... it's a minefield of jargon.

In my school, we always called UCAS grades exactly that.

Thanks @Piggywaspushed - every day is a learning day 🙂

Not sure why this has turned into a whole discussion about how kids now shouldn’t believe that they can do as well as they have been told they might be able to! This thread was supposed to be there to support parents of young people who are doing their best to achieve their dreams, who have been severely affected by COVID, who have never sat exams before… who are constantly being told that somehow they now need to accept their grades will have 2019 grade boundaries etc etc etc.. Can we not just have some empathy for young people who are doing their very very very best and want to be able to go to the university they have worked so hard to get offers from….

I absolutely empathise with DC sitting A-levels - they’ve all had a tough time as I know from my DD. However, a bit of realism is always good too - students need a plan B and a plan C! Until we went through this with DS in 2019, I had literally no idea that predicted grades were MEANT to be generous/aspirational because the school didn’t make that clear! Learnt our lesson and DS had to go through clearing in the end. Anyway, apologies if I derailed the thread a bit by commenting on a PP. on the plus side, the sun is shining and it is half term - I will be encouraging DD to relax as well as revise!

”Not sure why this has turned into a whole discussion about how kids now shouldn’t believe that they can do as well as they have been told they might be able to!”

The key word there is ‘might’. I too did not know that they are best case scenario grades and wish I had. As someone else said, they should be called target grades not predicted!

I see. I did not grow up in this country so this is my first experience with A levels.
In talking about this with my daughter, she said one of her friends is predicted and A for a subject she's never actually got an A in so far! Not even in her mocks. I don't understand the reasoning behind this at all. I was going on my daughter's experience- the grades she's been predicted she has achieved in mocks and other exams. I thought that's what teachers based them on.

And I don't think this has derailed the thread - the OP was talking about the grades her son needs and the pressure he feels. Seems natural for it to go into how and why predicted grades (and uni offers) are arrived at.