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

a teacher should be able to know their pupils' capabilities so as to predict grades in the right ballpark

And normally we can. Except this is a totally new untested system which is different in content, exam style and grading to the previous one. It is, therefore, rather up in the air about how pupils will perform.

Student performance on this new system will be also partly determined by how up-to-date the teachers have kept with the changes. I know how well I've kept up-to-date, what I don't know is how well the rest of the teachers in the country have prepared their pupils.

On top of that, in terms of how capable the students will be of sitting the new A-level - no idea because Ofqual have yet to accredit all the specifications. First teaching September 2017.

sendsummer,

How can a teacher be able to say 'pass' when it is absolutely unknown what a pass looks like (and yes, that is how great the uncertainty is this year)?

A teacher can say - and has - 'in previous years, you are capable of a top grade, but this year that translates into 'well, you'll definitely pass, probably a good pass'".

For a child who last year a teacher would have said 'marginal pass', there is genuinely no way the teacher can provide any useful information, other than saying 'you probably won't be top or bottom of the cohort'.

So yes, in previous years, a teacher has been able to do exactly what you suggest.

This year, virtually all teachers of students other than at the extremes (e.g. top of a superselective), cannot offer any useful predictions.

Here's what's known about the new grading:

Roughly the same proportion of students will get a 1 or above as got a G or above last year.

Roughly the same proportion of students will get a 4 or above as got a C or above last year.

Roughly the same proportion of students will get a 7 or above as got an A or above last year.

Percentage of those achieving at least grade 7 who should be awarded grade 9 = 7% + 0.5 × (percentage of candidates awarded grade 7 or above).

The proportion of students sitting higher and foundation is unknown, and the proportion of the grades 4 and 5 which will be awarded on each paper is unknown.

Once the boundaries for 1, 4, 7 and 9 have been set, the other grades will be set between them at equal numeric intervals regardless of how many pupils each interval will contain.

Now go away and predict grades for your pupils without any knowledge of how the rest of the country is doing.

cantkeepaway this is going round in circles.
These unknown magic boundaries are not going to change the ability spread of the cohort, the variability of the teaching and an individual DC's temperament for exams.
If a DC in the past would have managed a top grade by drilling of past papers rather than problem solving they probably won't get a top grade this year. Other than that basing it on experience from previous years is sensible and nothing more can be done by this forensic analysis of what a 4 or 8 will be in absolute marks.

I agree we are going round in circles, and that clear explanations of where the problem lies just aren't making any impact.

I appreciate that this thread's concern has not been 'middle' DCs, but saying that there isn't an issue because top children will still be top children, and it doesn't matter at all whether a child falls the right or wrong side of a pass / fail border (or other arbitrary borders set by post-16 education providers for access to specific courses) is almost wilfully ignorant of how this is working out on the ground.

If a DC in the past would have managed a top grade by drilling of past papers rather than problem solving they probably won't get a top grade this year.

What do you call a top grade both last year and this year?

The long and the short of it is that students/teachers/parents are going to have to get used to a new culture where only exceptional students get the top grade in a subject and where a full hand of top grades becomes as rare as it was in the 1970s.

Focusing on the difficulty of the transition issues is a displacement activity that legitimises feelings of anticipated distress at no longer having so many top grades to ones name.

Wow, just how patronising can one person be?

Legitimate concerns = displacement activity

Our children are being asked to take exams for which they have not been properly prepared (no fault of the teachers, how do you teach when you don't know the syllabus orconoy hsve one proof copy textbook with lots of errors in it).

Interesting thread, and thanks to @noblegiraffe (especially for the timeline- I love a good timeline). My eldest ds starts secondary school this September so all this is some way off for us, but it's very interesting. And I don't for one moment believe that there won't be further, massively disruptive and politically driven, tinkering before he gets there. For him what is going to matter is not who gets 8s or 9s, but whether a 4 or a 5 is seen the way a C is now, and whether it's achievable for him.

Well said tiggy, thank you

As other posters have pointed out, everyone is aware of the transition issues. Students in this cohort only have to compete with students in this cohort. There is no requirement to benchmark past or future cohorts.

On the top-end grade predictions - if I was doing it, particularly at a superselective, I think I'd predict a very small number of 9s. Say students I perceived as being within the top 1% of ability on a national level, or if you have no idea about that, top 5% of who you'd previously have predicted an A. If only as a step along the way to managing expectations for the large number of students who've previously perceived themselves as straight A students who won't get top grade. If you only predict 7+ or 8s, the A* students may well cotton on you've capped predictions and still secretly expect a 9.

people will once again teach to the test

This is precisely what ought not to happen.

The culture of teaching to the test, of endless practice of formulaic past papers and obsessive attention to grade boundaries is a large part of what has gone wrong with GCSEs.

Students in this cohort only have to compete with students in this cohort

Well that's clearly not true. Of course they will be up against candidates of a different age at various points in the future.

GCSEs are very unimportant in the big scheme of things (lots of countries don't even have intermediate secondary school examinations) and everyone will know that the 2017 GCSE cohort were the guinea pigs.

Students in this cohort only have to compete with students in this cohort

Well I've never seen a job advert which specified 'Only those who were completed year 11 in 1995 need apply'

What a ridiculous thing to say.

i assume you conveniently forgot about all those kids who won't go to university...

GCSEs aren't intermediate school exams - they're school LEAVER exams for many many kids.

Don't be daft in 4 or 5 years most people won't remember which years were the guinea pig years!!!!

All GCSEs really do is filter students for the next stage. This year's cohort will compete among themselves, as they have always done, and everyone knows that this year's first cohort will have had extra issues to contend with. It really isn't a big deal!

Glad at least some people are reading the timeline, it took ages to write and I keep itching to add more to it like the Jan 2016 revelation that the GCSE pass rate would fall by 23% www.google.co.uk/amp/schoolsweek.co.uk/gcse-pass-rate-could-drop-23-under-new-reforms/amp/ which I'm sure is what led to the 4 being renamed a pass with only a few weeks to go.

This thread is about 9s. How many students will leave education having got 9s?

Thanks Teen bye the way, I always look out for your posts on threads! :)