DfE Data Cruncher predicts number of students who will get straight 9s

[noblegiraffe]

His guess is.... 2

Not 2%,

2 kids in the whole country will get all 9s in their GCSEs.

So that's the new challenge for the MN boaster.

Ofqual reckon 0 kids will manage it. They clearly haven't met any MNetters' kids.

twitter.com/timleunig/status/845699774754017280

What, because France has made some shit changes that means that shit changes are acceptable?

Just checked, I got my exam boards the wrong way around, AQA was the one with the easy papers and were going to be sued, not the other way around!

It's what happens when changes occur. Do you really think huge bureaucratic cultural shifts can occur entirely smoothly?

They are unlikely to happen entirely smoothly but you can certainly take steps to improve the chances of this happening. We already have a major teacher recruitment and retention crisis and a massive underfunding problem in real terms, so adding additional stress to students and teachers in this way doesn't help anyone, not even those top 3% in each subject who might now be accorded true recognition. It certainly doesn't improve the education system in the way it might if it were more thoughtfully implemented. Just because France makes a mess of change doesn't mean all countries need to.

Do you really think huge bureaucratic cultural shifts can occur entirely smoothly?

Yes of course they can occur smoothly! It just takes a bit of proper planning that's all, and a willingness to have pilots and learn from them. Like when O levels and CSEs were replaced. That was a very smooth and successful cultural shift.

Teacher recruitment and retention should, in theory, be improved by a more robust KS4 and GCSE syllabi. Trying to recruit and retain into a failed and outdated system before reforming it would be a guarantee of failure.

Yes, I'm not against change, but you're not going to improve things in the short term by not planning and consulting properly on the change. The next few years are the only chance for those cohorts who happen to find themselves in the middle of this so 'jam tomorrow' is unlikely to find much traction with them.

New GCSE Maths timeline:

There is too much content to cover in 2 years (see Michael Gove recommending that maths teaching time is increased) so many schools start teaching the new GCSE to Y9 in 2014, even though official first teaching is September 2015.

Jan 2015: Ofqual forced to step in over exam paper row www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-30951130 "Sue Pope, chairwoman of the Association of Teachers of Mathematics, has told the Times Educational Supplement that Ofqual handled the accreditation of the new maths GCSE in a "shocking" way.
She suggested that the accreditation or approval of the examination had happened too fast."

April 2015: Ofqual has to push back deadline for National Reference Tests as they can't find anyone who wants to run them justmaths.co.uk/2015/04/11/national-reference-tests-for-all/

May 2015: Exam papers are binned for being too hard and exam boards have to go back to the drawing board www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-32831905 "Russell Hobby, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said: "School leaders were rightly concerned that with half a term to go until the papers are in use there is less time available to consolidate teaching efforts.
"However, they will be reassured by the rigorous approach Ofqual has taken to addressing the concerns around the differences in difficulty between the different boards.
"Further reassurance comes from the intention to have revised materials available by the end of June. This exercise has had to be undertaken within a restricted time frame.""

30th June 2015: Revised sample assessment materials released www.gov.uk/government/news/revised-gcse-maths-sample-assessment-materials-being-published
For official first teaching from September, but remember many schools have already started.

September 2015: official start date for teaching new GCSE

April 2016: Consultation on how to award grade 9s, because the DfE suddenly realise that the top 20% model will unfairly penalise students who sit exams mainly taken by the most able (poorly though through! The focus had obviously been on Maths and English)

September 2016 (students affected are now in Y11): Results of grade 9 consultation are published, with the immediate effect that 3000 fewer grade 9s will be awarded in maths. Any top grade predictions based on the original model are now worthless, and this also affects grade 8 as the grade 9 boundary decides the grade 8 boundary. www.gov.uk/government/consultations/setting-the-grade-standards-of-new-gcses-in-england-2017-2018

November 2016: Many Y11s sit mocks for the new maths GCSE. Results are abysmal. Schools across the country desperately pool their results to try to establish grade boundaries because there has been no piloting of these exams so no one knows whether the poor results are expected nor not.

Students start the process of college applications. The funding requirements for resits state that students will need to resit maths if they get a 3 or below, however the government also clearly states that 5 is the 'good pass' and that in 2 years time the requirement for resits will be raised to a 4, so that only the 5 will count as a good pass. Colleges hold discussions about whether entry requirements should be set at a 4 or a 5. They have meetings about whether it's fair to allow students not to resit with a 4 when they will be disadvantaged in future years against those who will have to resit to get a 5. Some colleges decide to require resits for a 4.

December 2016: DfE announce another consultation, this time into how the grade 3 will be awarded on the higher tier: justmaths.co.uk/2016/12/11/grading-consultation-part-3-new-maths-gcse-9-1/. 7 months to go and it still hasn't been decided how the exams will actually be graded.

Jan 2016: Edexcel release the analysis of the data they collected from the November mocks. The national mean mark for both Foundation and Higher papers was 30%. The mode on one higher paper was 11/240. Edexcel suggest that 25% of students who have been entered for higher should switch to foundation. Schools are frantically scouring the data for information about which paper to enter borderline students for. This is critical for their success. www.mumsnet.com/Talk/secondary/2861574-This-years-GCSE-maths?

28th March 2016: (last week, the day before Brexit). The government announces that the GCSE pass grade will be lowered to a 4. www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/new-gcse-pass-lowered-grade-5-4-dfe-u-turn Resits will never be required for a student with a 4, which is now called a 'standard pass'. 5 is renamed a 'strong pass' as opposed to a 'good pass'. This is a HUGE change, with 7 weeks to go to the exams.
In further news on the SAME day, compulsory GCSE resits are scrapped. feweek.co.uk/2017/03/28/exclusive-dfe-will-scrap-forced-resits-for-gcse-english-and-maths/ Colleges are thrown into turmoil as they are now forced to consider scrapping their GCSE resit classes and replacing with functional skills.

If anyone can look at that lot and think 'good job, well done, current Y11 should consider themselves lucky', then quite frankly you're an idiot.

Sorry, the mode for one of the higher papers was 11/80, not 11/240!

It's worth remembering that the lack of grade boundary information also means that schools are giving students completely different grades for the same results in their mock. There have been threads on here where one school would give a grade 4 and another would give a grade 6 for the same mark. Those sorts of grade differences would obviously affect college application choices.

The obsession with grade boundaries is so very unhealthy. No such thing exists in the French system and - shock horror - it doesn't matter at all!

The thing is, Bobo, such a thing does exist in the English system and it does matter so quite frankly your contributions to this debate are worthless.

Sorry- are you saying that the French system is not obsessed by results?

Say it how it is Noble

So perhaps instead of rushing through a shift from one set of grades with boundaries to another set of different grades with different boundaries, the DfE could have looked at other systems around the world (BAC, US SAT, whatever the Singaporean school leaving certificate is) and thought: "We are feeling brave and courageous. We want to improve our children's education. Let us bravely propose, with sufficient planning, a wholesale change in the way we grade exams." But they didn't. So we don't have a numerical ranking or a percentile system.

Unfortunately grade boundaries matter in this country because of how the system is designed. It may be a crap system, but it's the system our children and teachers are dealing with. So it's all very well not caring about a grade boundary until it makes the difference between your being accepted on a college course of not or your being allowed to do your choice of A-levels or not.

And once again, the focus is on the high ability kids. It really matters very little whether you get a 7, an 8 or a 9.

It matters very much whether you get a 3, a 4 or a 5.

Say it how it is Noble

my patience is rather wearing thin, you might be able to tell.

Another thing to remember about schools predicting 9s is that loads of teachers seem unaware of the fact that how they will be awarded has changed (refer to timeline, September 2016) and are still quoting the top 20% rule.

I'm not surprised Noble, people are being too abstract here. This is happening here and now to actual children whose confidence is being completely rocked because their results are being created on shifting sand. It's not some sort of theoretical discussion, this whole shitshow is creating enormous stress for students.

And anyone (Bobo!) suggesting that teachers are criticising the changes through fear of change, must be completely unaware of the huge number of changes that teachers have dealt with in terms of exam structure in recent years. Which version am I enamoured with? Linear, modular, with coursework, without coursework, foundation intermediate and higher or foundation and higher?

Teachers should be allowed to criticise bad and poorly implemented changes. We are the ones teaching it after all.

I'm not surprised Noble, people are being too abstract here.

I agree. In a few years time when the dust has settled and the creases have been ironed out, things will be fine. That doesn't make what is happening here and now acceptable.

user is right, the numbers of university entries will not change for this cohort. Their grades may be slightly lower than future years because inevitably the teachers will be back in their comfort zone of practising for the exam.

Noble I also sympathise with the lack of time to adjust to a new syllabus and the muddle about what the pass grade is.

However you and some of the other posters seem to have developed a touch of the Stockholm syndrome for the flawed system of the old style exams despite the stress they created of overly high academic expectations of a significant number of students for A levels and beyond because they achieved As or above at GCSE through exam practice rather than subject knowledge.

However you and some of the other posters seem to have developed a touch of the Stockholm syndrome for the flawed system of the old style exams

Perhaps you could point to any posts I've made where I've said that we should have stuck with the old system?

Their grades may be slightly lower than future years

Someone who hasn't read Ofqual's report into the Sawtooth effect and the efforts that are being made to counter this.

OhYouBadBadKitten well I'm capable of 'saying it how it is' from the perspective of most parents that I know in the Y10 cohort at our school facing the first full year of the new grading system and I can say very confidently that no-one seems to be fussing much at all. MN has become increasingly hysterical about any new educational change imposed by the government. People really are going over the top, not just in terms of numbers of threads but also in the strong language used. There are opportunities here, not just things to rail against. I had another guinea pig in the first year of the A level A* and all the same things were said then, but it's been fine.