Results Day 2017

[Groovee]

Eek it's only 18 days away!

Dd is convinced Nat5 maths will be another C. She's not too stressed about the highers results.

How's everyone else feeling about it?

I think it's ok if they mark after it's completed iyswim. I've read the guidance (last year though) and there is a fine line between "providing guidance" while they are doing it - and actually doing the assignment for them. I suspect what Mearns Castle is being accused of is taking too active a role in the doing the assignments.

We've just been doing some mental Maths - and iirc, the assignment is 30 or 40% of the final mark - so even one mark more for the assignment would make the difference for him between a B and an A.

They do re-mark the assignment - I'd misunderstood a comment by one of the earlier posters on this thread and was corrected.

Yes, I think from what I read there was a lot of "helpful" feedback being provided on the drafts. That's a bit different to a teacher offering their view on a submitted piece. Even if it seems they have interpreted it differently to the marker! Hopefully your DS can gain some marks on the assignment.

Thanks for replying. Same with DD's prelims! Her marks were poor and she assured us she'd do better in the actual exams. She did and got AABBB but one of the As was English which was unexpected! Happy with that but would be even happier if she could upgrade any of the others, which I had thought she'd be more likely to get an A for. I forgot that individual schools/councils would have different criteria for remarking.

Here are the mean marks for the Higher Physics, that may help?

Physics Higher Section 2 80 44.7 Section 1 - Objective Test 20 13.0 Assignment 20 11.7

It's not pasted well, but the average mark for the assingment was 11.7 out of 20.

The whole paper is out of 120.

so averages were:
13/20 in Section 1 Objective Test
44/80 in Section 2 and
11.7/20 in the assignment.

So something went seriously wrong if the SQA marker only gave it 10/20 while his teacher thought it was worth 19/20

He must have done (as he'd thought) well in the exam to be only 2 marks of an A having barely passed according to the SQA his assignment.

Similar to DS Indigo He got 98% in his Nat 5 maths so was expected an A @ Higher based on class work etc but got a B, he got a B in the prelim too but he wasn't fussed about that.

he missed a band 1 in physics nat 5 by a couple of marks, got an A in his prelim but only a B in the Higher.

He got As in Engineering, Computing and Graph Comm. He got a C in prelims for at least one of those.

Getting one more A would be good in terms of uni applications, also some ask for for Maths/Physics at A/B or B/A and he can't meet that criteria even though those are for engineering courses and he has an A for Engineering .

We are back on the same roundabout as far as getting his scores are concerned. I emailed and asked for them as they hadn't arrived yet when I was up at the school on Friday. Been told that DS has to go and ask for them from each principal teacher. He wont do this due to his anxiety issues that they aren't supporting so now I need to go back and tell them this and so it goes on and on.

I've already offered, in my free time, to pull together the scores for each pupil into a document so they can just hand them out - I love statistics!

Dd has gone to school to change to Business 🙄. Hope the queue isn't long as she'll get annoyed.

Last my friend's son got a no award for his higher English. His folio only got 11/30. But his teacher and his English tutor who are both SQA markers, were shocked as they said they reckoned it was between 20-25 marks.

DD was back today too. Despite being annoyed at her C after getting an A in the prelim etc she 'didn't have time' to go and find out her actual marks. This was despite being in school the whole day and only having one class!

Well, I asked DS2 to find out what his actual marks were and his English teacher told him she wasn't allowed to tell them and then something about them not being released by the SQA yet, so, not sure what was going on there, all sounds a bit dubious...

Having read the article about Mearns Castle it seems that the letter sent to parents was poorly constructed.
It made it sound like pupils were preparing drafts that would then be taken into the final write up. Which isn't allowed.

What is allowed is for pupils to write drafts, which can then be reviewed by the teacher for feedback - like a "practice" write up IYSWIM.

BUT they cannot take those drafts in to the final write up.

All they can take in is raw data, research notes and SQA candidate advice document.

I think Mearns Castle probably gave pupils feedback on drafts but did not make it clear that these drafts were not used in the final write up.
So the letter was misleading probably - which is what that school have said.
That's my take on it anyway!

By the way, I've been an SQA assignment marker but I would never ever tell one of my a pupils what I thought their assignment was worth - that's just asking for it to come back and bite you!

Oh, and the research notes which pupils can take into the final assignment write up can only be brief notes which they then expand on during the write up.

DH just talking about this wiggly It's like the flaming secret service. "Pupils need to go and ask the principal teacher for each subject to get the scores." Why don't they just give them to each of the subject teachers who can just walk round the class on the first day back and give pupils their marks? I mean it's their results, they sat the tests, why should the school know and not the actual child who has sat the test?

Anyway, think your school is lying being economical with the truth.

www.sqa.org.uk/sqa/48513.8316.html

DH and I were just talking.

No idea how it works in other schools but we (class teachers OR principal teachers) do tell pupils their component marks if they come and ask?

Maybe the schools asking pupils to go via the PT do this for specific reasons?

wigglybeezer - there's no way your DC school don't have the actual marks. They get the whole thing on the day the pupils do!

Maybe your school prefers it all to go through the PT and/or PCS too?

Ds says that his Physics teacher was surprised at the assignment mark - but then he had an argument with dh because he babbled the next bit and was cheeky when dh asked him to repeat it more slowly and clearly so I don't know any more than that

For his Advanced Higher we're going to get his cousin, who is HoD at another school more involved to ensure he is on track. Dh has lost confidence in his teacher but how would he know who is to blame if he won't talk to ds?

Where I teach we ask pupils to obtain a letter from parents requesting component marks. Never really understood why - wasn't the case other places. Though it might be to allow some actual teaching to take place in the first week as finding grades is a bugger.

I never give pupils my (SQA marker too) predicted grades. All sorts of madness would ensue.

Ds' school asks that we write formally requesting re-marks but doesn't have an issue with giving out component marks I think, drawing on memories of last year because ds is not talking to us You do need to go and see the teacher though.

I don't think any of his other teachers gave him a "mark" for his portfolios/projects - maybe that's telling . I do know his English teacher was impressed with the work he'd done on his portfolio - but as far as it am aware, just advised him on some "surround" reading that would help him with his pieces. At the time of the parents' evening he was working on his creative essay and she said that we should really read the work he was doing as we'd be pleasantly surprised. He did eventually let me read it - only because he wanted me to see if he could shorten it as it was, iirc, 1065 words (I couldn't - in my view every word contributed to the story and atmosphere). He never showed either of us his persuasive/discursive essay (just described the topic and the main arguments). I have to say that I hope his creative essay was purely in his imagination, as it was a really dark story about a serial killer, with a twist that I didn't fully see coming.

Well, I have officially written and asked the school for the component scores and they've told me that DSs have to ask the PTs in each subject for them. I have to wait until DS1 gets back from DofE on Saturday to find out if he will actually do that or not...

DS2 might ask if he remembers and then will not write it down if he does ask and will forget what they were by the time he gets home....

I'm on a hiding to nothing... :o

I've just looked at DS1s Nat 5 scores from last year (stats bore) and think maybe I might have done him a disservice. His Art which he was disappointed with was only 2 points to get from a C to a B, that might have been worth going for a remark for though I suppose it means nothing in the grand scheme of things since he didn't take it at Higher.

he was also only 2 points from an upper A in Computing and Engineering, 3 points from an upper A in geography and 1 point from an upper A in Physics. he got an upper A in Maths. It makes his Bs in Maths and Physics at Higher all the harder to understand.

Thinking about this it may be that schools who ask pupils to see PTs or request parental letters in order to see actual marks are trying to avoid a clamour for marking reviews?

Because it costs the school money if the mark doesn't go up.

So by making it a bit more "difficult" to find out marks they may be hoping that some pupils won't ask for marks and request a review?

Sadly so many schools are strapped for cash (e.g. no money left for photocopying/jitters/textbooks etc.) that they are having to penny pinch.

For me it wasn't about marking reviews last year, I wanted to know the scores so that we knew whether it was a case of scraping through or being at the top end of the grades, it helped to make sure DS was doing the right subjects and also whether he was coping easily or if it was likely to be a struggle. However, I'm sure that's probably true Salmotrutta. Not sure how that works with GIRFEC though. Maybe if the schools were more proactive in actually promting pupils or parents where an important grade could be looked at again and then balancing that off by not engaging where the mark was of little ocnsequence - as in my examples above. There is no meed at Nat 5 to have upper As if you are studying Highers and going from a C to a B in Art really isn't that imortant.

However in the highers it could be pretty important that any chance of moving one of DS1s Bs to an A, or in his friends case (oxbridge applicant) moving his A to an upper A, should be explored.

If DS2s D in French has any chance of making it to a C that would be worth taking as it would also give him 5 Nat 5 passes at A-C, but the rest not so much - it's the Highers that are more important.

Oh I totally understand your pint Wax - indeed we all, as teachers and at a whole school level, would like to be hitting GIRFEC/HGIOS criteria all the time and at every level.
We'd all love to be at the point where every child is safe, happy achieving, nurtured etc. but we have constraints in terms of budget, time, staffing, resources.
My colleagues and I work very hard to do the very best for our pupils - we care deeply.
My suggestion about the cost of marking reviews was just that - a suggestion.

That wasn't meant to be a criticism Salmotrutta. What I meant was that if it was communicated that parents/pupils would be approached and advised where re-marks could be important, that it would maybe mean that less parents/pupils would be asking for re-marks and therefore reduce the amount of re-marks requested overall rather than increase it. At the moment it just seems that keen interested engaged parents will contact schools, find out scores and ask for re-marks but other children may not have anyone to advocate for them and miss out. It does mean some up front work though to identify key results. If schools/teachers don't have the time to do that then inevitably it falls to the parents and pupils to push for the information on an individual basis. I don't actually see why the SQA don't put the actual results on the info they send out and then if people are keen enough they will look up the grade boundaries themselves. The SQA clearly hold the results on a database, it wouldn't be difficult for that to be merged onto the info they send. At the moment 3 quarters of what they issue is completely meaningless and unintelligible anyway.

If I was taking a swipe at anyone, it was our Holyrood friends, not teachers and schools. Though sometimes they don't do themselves any favours either. I guess I am tired and frustrated at being at the same point last year where I had to explain that DS1 couldn't ask for his exam results from 7 different PTs many of whom he didn't know as he has anxiety issues and this can make him selectively mute, which they know, only to be promised help for him and to be still waiting for that a year later, and then when I ask for his results this year I get told again that he needs to go and ask for them. I feel like a fucking hamster going round in the same fucking wheel for something that would take someone literally 60 fucking seconds....and then to feel at the same time if I was one of the sports star parents or one whose child was applying to oxbridge, I'd be invited up for tea and cakes while the headmaster himself gathered the scores and presented them on a silver salver.

Anyway, rant over.