How were your DC's year 12 mocks?

[lifeturnsonadime]

What grades did they get and what will their predicted A Levels be? Do those match their planned universities?

Mocks results in and DD got A*, B, B. The A star in the subject she wants to study at Uni so that’s good.

No predicteds til October and application has to be with sch by 1 Nov, which is making visits v tough. I guess we have to assume there may be a few aspirational choices.

DD still waiting for most of her marks.

However , in the one subjects she's had back she got an Astar in paper 1 and a C in paper 2. She's been given a B overall for her exam and predicted an A for real thing. Predictions can't be easy for teachers!

Whether they get the place in the end will depend on their actual grades. Inflating predicted grades is not going to get them in.

It makes sense to be a little optimistic. Suppose you think that a student is 60% likely to get a B, and 40% likely to get an A. If you predict a B, then that may mean some universities don't make them an offer - which would be galling if they then get the A. There's a lot of sense, if predicting the A, in making sure the student knows that it could well be a B, so that they know to bear that in mind for their insurance choice.

Did I read somewhere that only 19% of students achieve their predicted grades? My worry is there will be lots of kids who felt they did not live up to their potential.

But there are kids who are on a clear upward trajectory.

My DS is one of them. He started at a D in a particular subject in October and every assessment increased and he actually got an A* in his mock. But if a teacher knows the child is working hard and improving it is, presumably, worth inflating the grade accordingly to give them the best chance at getting in to the right uni?

Clearly some won't make the grades but there are exceptions to the rule.

At dc1 school predictions were so high that majority (of the boys) did not get first or second choice and had to go through clearing

No, you read that they didn't achieve their UCAS grades, as mentioned upthread. This stat comes from the unis and is disingenuous. If they dislike the UCAS prediction system so much they could work with other stakeholders to move to post results admissions. But it's mainly the universities that are resisting this!

The thing is under the current system, kids aiming at competitive unis/courses need high UCAS predictions to compete with the other applicants rather than because of the demands of the actual course.

For example, to do History at Exeter the standard offer is 3 As, but the university doles out offers to those predicted 3 A*s first and works downwards, so could potentially run out of places before they get to the kids actually predicted 3 As.

That being so, a teacher faced with a solid A student might well predict them an A star for UCAS purposes to help them get the offer. Which is fine so long as the student understands this is what they’re doing. At DD’s school the kids get two predicted grades - one for UCAS, and one ‘actual’ one based on their current trajectory so they can plan accordingly.

It is also the case that universities inflate their offers beyond what they actually require, to make themselves seem more attractive to the type of people (lots on mumsnet) who believe that higher offer = higher quality course. There are courses on clearing at the moment from eg Exeter which required AAA if you applied in Oct 22, and made standard offers of AAA, which are now available on clearing to Uk applicants at BBC. Well, if they are willing to take students with bbC why not be honest about it and make it your standard offer? Exeter is by no means the only one.

And I note for that course for Oct 23 applications they have reduced their requirement to AAB, but that is still a long way from BBC.

so people are predicted higher to get offers from unis that don’t care if they miss their offer by 1, 2, 3 or even 4 grades.

DS’s end of year 12 exams were a bit patchy and he was disappointed. The result is he’s working over Summer and even wants to bring his books with him on holiday. He’s at a big sixth form college which gets great results but doesn’t suffer from ambitious parents kicking off if they’re not happy. I had a quick look at his papers and I’m no expert but i think the marking was a bit harsh. Quite right too because last time I checked universities don’t care what you got in your mocks.

I’d love to know which unis other than Exeter do this!!!!

That’s a wee bit disingenuous. It depends on how your school/college arrives at predicteds. Which is what unis look at and offer on.

DDs school for example is highly unlikely to predict any grade higher than one achieved in the mocks.

@Delphigirl, are university in clearing already? How does that work and how do you 'reapply'?

Not disingenuous at all @Sycamorethanever As I understand things much of the predicted grades are based on GCSEs.

For UCAS? That's really unusual.

For tracking and monitoring performance against statistical targets, yes.

Yes clearing opened on 5 July. I’m not sure what you mean about “reapplying”. But if you got an AAA offer in this course and firmed it, you can now relax knowing that you would have to get less than BBC for them not to take you. If you didn’t apply thinking your ABB predictions weren’t good enough, you could reject all your offers and grab one of these places.

I’m sure quite a lot do. I just happened to notice this one at Exeter as my Dd is applying for unis in Sept snd we noticed the standard offer went down ,,, so I thought I would look and see if it was in clearing.

Not ever heard of basing A level predictions on GCSE grades at either of my DCs schools. Or in fact any of the 10 odd my friends kids go to either.

No Idea how they’d do it for 2/3 of my DDs either as she didn’t do them for GCSE

Exeter is the only one I’ve seen that is actively showing grade drops in clearing this year.

AND…interestingly enough they don’t seem to be on uni guide so you can’t check and see what average grades and A levels current students got!

I think that is because there aren’t many who are so transparent about it. Most you have to phone up to find out, no?

Ah ok. I can see eg UoN have reduced a few less popular ones but not the majority online.

It's a statistical thing. It's not based on doing matching subjects but on the average grade achieved in a subject by students with the same GCSE grade profile . It's often nonsense but used as a stick to beat teachers with and also often shared with students. UCAS grades should be more closely matched to individuals.

Interesting - thanks for explanation.

@Sycamorethanever Really? The system they use is called ALPS and as I understand things is quite heavily reliant on GCSE grades. If your DC are privately educated maybe those schools don’t use that system?