School giving ridiculously low predicted A level grades

[basilmum]

Do teachers/schools benefit from giving pupils ridiculously low A level predicted grades for UCAS? My DD's school - a grammar - is predicting everyone really low grades (lower than their achieved grades at end of yr12 and start of yr13) and refusing to change them. They forced parents to sign a form saying that we would not attempt to challenge their grade decisions (legal advice please!). So these kids are now unable to apply to or secure offers from universities that they could reasonably aspire to and will probably actually get the grades for in the real exams next summer - no point in having the grades without the offers...So a lot of these kids are distraught and going to be forced to either go to a lesser uni or take a gap year so they can apply with their achieved grades next year. How does this benefit the school at all? My DD said another pupil overheard a teacher saying that he would get a pay rise if the pupils achieve a higher grade than what he has predicted them. A bonus for it looking like the pupils had progressed under his tutoring. Can this be true? It is beyond appalling if it is true. Ruining kids future opportunities for monetary gain...?

What did it say on your dc's report that they achieved in their exams and what have they been predicted?

The content in Y12 is less challenging than in Y13.

More importantly how is y13 going? What are assessments looking like now? That’s what the teachers should be using plus some tweaking!

So it's always been the case that grades achieved in Y12 can be higher than those predicted/ achieved in Y13. Nothing new there.

Crossed with TizerorFizz.

Any teacher that predicts much lower grades would find themselves putting much more time with the groups and have to offer After school sessions to try and close the gap.

Under predicting just creates more work.

If that is the case A or A star in end yr 12 exams and all September/October yr 13 assessments then they would be predicted an A or A star at my DCs grammar. It’s all evidence based.
If your dc is in that situation I’d definitely contact school.
What would result in a B prediction is a dc who has got B in most of assessments and exams. No amount of pleading he hadn’t really worked/he got 9 at gcse/he needs an A for medicine would shift that to an A.
Dd has peers in that group who simply didn’t grasp they needed to work in yr 12 for predictions in yr 13. I fully imagine they will get A grades because they are academically capable and parents have come down on them.

I was very taken aback by DS college use of some algorithm - it predicted BBBB in first few week well before any tests/exams or real feedback from teachers- but he was A* in all relevant and related GCSE (In Wales).

Subsequent tests - and its still fist term suggest A* A A and B ( though teacher been changed in that subject after some absences).

They seemed very wedded to their algorithm - which they didn't explain what it's basing it all on. DS said it's already demoralized some of his mates - he's trying to ignore it.

They also failed to amended DD1 predicted grades base on her AS level results (40% of final grade)- they should have gone down I think it contributed to a later pivot in location and course than ideal - though I do think she ended up on course suited to her.

Even there the course dropped the entrance requirement after an interview on post offer day and then when she failed to get those grades still accepted her.

DS is looking at computer science - it all high grades wanted - so no idea what to suggest as on one hand he in their better candidate schemes and getting load of push to apply to top courses/ universities other side his predicted grades don't reflect this. He's also not as willing to push as DD1 - he's more likely to want to go for a conservative will get in choice.

I think its a stupid system all round but for you I'd get in touch and ask what is going on and if there is any scope for changes - I don't see you have much to lose.

We are now late November. There must be y13 evidence for grades. Plus teachers know how much help Dc need in class. Are they getting everything readily or is it hard work?

CS is not right for everyone at a top uni either. There are other engineering snd science courses available.

That’s very odd for a grammar school.
My dc with A level physics, git an A but many of his friends hit an A*.

That would point towards a very bad organisation/teaching from the school pov where they have over inflated grades fir a few years and haven’t adjusted to the ‘new’ grading system

Btw @basilmum this would make me very uneasy too, but not just because of the predicted grades.

Id be looking at a tutor/someone external to make an evaluation of your dd level. It’s not normal for a grammar school to have no one with a A*, regardless of how they marked/reduced the grades/change in the grading system.
There is something else at okay there Imo.

I'd be looking at a tutor/someone external to make an evaluation of your dd level

Because the school is going to love some random tutor 'evaluating' a DC on much thinner evidence than the school has to hand and then the parent marching in waving the bit of paper with the 'evaluation' at them.

Nothing more calculated to make the school dig their heels in.

Not a good plan.

I’d agree it’s unheard of not to have A star and A results at a grammar sixth form. They are taking the most academic pupils. Out of interest I’ve checked dc’s state grammar results 2023 and several got top grades in physics.

Dd was given predictions which matched her end of year 12 results and this proved to be very accurate. Wouldn't have been much point bumping them up to A* when A was most likely.

But @TizerorFizz @goodbyestranger the UCAS prediction grades need to be finalised by the end of September to meet the early application deadline, so not much info is available about Y13 at that time. It's not fair to base them on Y12 results for the early applicants and Y13 for the rest?

My dc was early entry but I understand the grades were all done at same time for all yr 13. There’s over 300 in yr most going to Uni so they have quite early internal timescales for personal statements etc.
They gave current working and predicted grades end yr 12, then had timed assessments Sept yr 13 then issued final predicted grades.
There was an appeal process very early yr 13 I think to catch those who had worked a lot over summer to improve.
This caught out the low effort yr 12 pupils who assumed they had time to make it good in yr 13 as deadline isn’t until Jan for ucas. But school system isn’t set up that way.

Schools have dealt with this for as long as there's been an early deadline. On the whole those applicants are the strongest, so there's less likely to be issues. But in any event, the teachers should be well able to form a judgment about the Y13 trajectory based on the entirety of Y12 and how a student has performed orally as well as on paper.

I'm not so sure that having a cohort at a grammar school which fails to achieve a single A* in Physics is unheard of. The quality of grammar school teaching and ability varies massively. There are some incredibly poor grammar schools out there. Also, even at a good or excellent grammar there can sometimes be a dud teacher who slips through the net (perhaps taken on in desperation if there's a lack of good applicants). Usually they will be moved on fast if mentoring doesn't help them improve, but sometimes that's not possible before they've already dented the grades of their pupils.

Arguably that's more likely in subjects which are the hardest to recruit for, such as Physics.

Remember also that whilst from reading mumsnet you’d think everyone gets As or A stars, actually the number of A stars is small and it’s a percentage of the cohort. So it’s dependent on how others do too. The vast majority of kids don’t get As or A stars.

Yes I also think it is very odd that no pupils achieved an A star in physics in last summer's A level cohort. I think the school is so poorly run, the SLT are so defensive, and lots of the teaching is poor, that they have been resting on the laurels of their grammar school kids being smart and hard-working, to get the results that the school then takes the glory for. My DD says that there is always a poster up every year with all the last yr13s photos and their uni destinations - but this year there is no poster! And nothing on their website about destinations either. What does that say?.....

Not all schools do this. Quite a few grammars near me do not. It’s not up
to anyone else to know what uni an individual Dc goes to. Schools often say x% to RG, Oxbridge etc but names aren’t necessarily broadcast around. They will publish general headline results though. In school data is obviously more detailed.

Smaller schools do tweak predictions after the end of Sept. Only around 64% of A grade predictions are accurate. Early decisions in y13 feeds into this inaccuracy. A later evaluation date might improve accuracy and this is the best accuracy rate. Below A grade it’s worse.

@goodbyestranger i didn’t mean for someone to evaluate the dd and then to talk to school about how wrong they are!

But rather than the dd needs to know what is her real level - if it is indeed a B or a C rather than the A she was expecting, then knowing that could help her fill all the gaps she has.
It won’t solve the issue with UCAS. But it will give her the opportunity to have the grades she wants/needs. So more choices, wether it’s this year (through clearance?) or next year.

That's the main problem I think - these kids have now not got the predicted grades to secure the offers from top unis, so they just won't have the chance to go to them, no matter what grades they get next summer in the real exams. Even if they were to miss the offers by a grade, lots of unis will still accept them on results day (not everywhere, but many places will) but obviously won't do that if they don't have that offer in the first place. Even if the kids achieve better than their predicted grades, not all these kids are able to take a gap year and I know some parents have already said they won't let them do so.

The school didn't publish anything about where the kids last year went - no what percentage went to RG or anything.