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

No of course they are not my only qualifications. They are, however, the only qualifications I got before the age of 18.

BoboChic- I honestly don't understand the point you are making. Could you explain, please?

I think she's saying that back in the good old days of O-levels lack of qualifications wasn't necessarily an issue. How that applies to modern Britain is less clear.

Article from the Times photographed here:

twitter.com/mikercameron

I think she is also saying that for those children going smoothly on to post-16 education, without any selection at 16 (so e.g. an all-through 11-18 school, not in a mixed economy of FE colleges, 6th form colleges, comprehensive and selective schools with 6th forms), then once the next set of qualifications has been obtained, the 'taken at 16' qualifications gradually become less important (with the obvious exception of English and Maths, which I have been asked for at well over 40, despite having two postgraduate qualifications in other academic subjects).

However, that presupposes an ENORMOUS set of conditions - that the child stays in academic education, that there is no shift of institution (or conditions within the institution - Bobo would not have been allowed into the 6th form of any of our local comps with her qualifications), that further qualifications are obtained, than the field of employment is not one that has a formal requirement for GCSE / O-level English and Maths....

Will nobody think of the hairdressers?

Pah. I was going to post this in G&T but my three year old loves learning and has already got all 9s, is this normal or should I be proud? I'll be back for answers later but I need to go finish eating a chicken I cooked in February.

Quote from that article from the Times: It won't be through luck but toil and tears'

There may or may not be tears, but there will be toil and there will definitely be luck.

Is there a reason you feel the need to be facetious Paradise?

Can you not understand that for you, with your degree and or other higher qualification all is well, but when you haven't taken any qualification since you left school life isn't quite so easy.

Those of us who have degrees do live in the real world, in which we have neighbours, friends, family and colleagues without qualifications beyond GCSE or A level.

I know plenty of people who don't have the magic C in maths GCSE and nonetheless function fine, as they got qualifications in plumbing, hairdressing etc and the latter qualifications are what is relevant in getting them jobs.

And I have known people who have Masters and PhDs who needed to go and get the magic GCSE grade C or demonstrate an equivalent qualification because it was a requirement of a specific job they wanted to do. (Not teaching.)

I genuinely don't think it helps parents and pupils to focus on doom scenarios for the future of this year's GCSE cohort.

School leaders and classroom teachers who adopt doom scenarios are doing their pupils a disservice.

I asked my own Y10 DD what she and her peers are being told about the numerical grading system currently being used across all subjects at her school and her explanation suggests that it's based on a combination of sound common sense and science. Talk of 'lies' is completely absurd.

Anyhow, it's very different from the advice apparently given to a poster's DD upthread who said the numerical system is being used extremely loosely 'just to get pupils used to the idea' of numbers. If that really is what's being done then the school is being very patronizing to its teen age pupils, which is usually a mistake.

It's amazing that no matter how many people say 'nobody knows what an 8 or 9 looks like', goodbye persists in their belief that their school does.

Given that ofqual have just clarified their position on level 9s, its absolutely clear that no one marking mocks will have known what a 9 looks like. new ofqual info

See ofqual health warnings. Even they say you can't just take these results and apply them to exam boards or schools.

noble, it seems to me like you're expecting it to be a maths question with a definite correct answer. In the real world we're always estimating stuff from incomplete data (unless you're an accountant - but even then...). You do know more than nothing and you can make an estimate that is better than drawing lots. You know roughly what % of the population will get 8s or 9s. You know how your current students rank. You can make some broad assumptions about your cohort and teaching standards not being wildly different from previous years (and a superselective have their own large cohort of A* students, so this is easier for them than most). You have some idea how your previous cohorts rank nationally from subsequent A-level results and uni places achieved. You might even have some ideas about your current cohort in maths if you do national maths contests with them.

I also think it makes a lot of sense for goodbyestranger's school to make some stab at differentiating better A assignments in their marking whether they label them as 9 or A or Fishcakes. If you get 9s for some assignments and 8s for some, you know which direction to head. If you get flat As not so much. An A on a homework assignment never linked directly to an A on a GCSE anyway.

That table is interesting.

My understanding was that the new grades were designed to identify the high fliers better than the A* system.

Clearly, it will identify the top 3% in maths terms. But as grade 8 is anticipated to be achieved by a bigger percentage than achieved the old A, doesn't this mean that those just below the cut off, who would have been distinguished by the old A, who must be present in much greater numbers, are now less identifiable than previously?

May have expressed that badly, but what I am trying to get at is that the table seems to show that the new system singles out a few at the expense of a much larger number of high fliers who are now on the same mark as those who would have got an A under the old system.

goodbye may be surprised(!) to learn that I rather see her point here. If a superselective has say 90% of its cohort getting A stars in Maths (as Tiffin Girls does for example) then it seems logical for them to assume that those at the top of that cohort (say the top 20%) have a strong chance of getting a 9.

I still can't really see the point of a school giving an actual prediction of 9 to any individual though. Would seem more sensible to just give a prediction of 8/9 and say " You have a very good chance of getting an 8 and with a bit of luck on the day you may even get a 9". It is awful to think of students being disappointed at not getting a 9. I'm beginning to feel almost relieved that DD probably has only one even vaguely realistic chance of that magic number!

Agree HFPA.

Her school isn't just predicting 9s though, it is giving individual gcse grades for marks on internal science tests, so setting a grade boundary and saying 'this mark is an 8, this is a 9'.

I admit I find this whole world of predictions very odd. DD did a Maths test last term (Year 8) and the results paper said her score indicated she would get a 6 in GCSE and if she'd got one more mark that would have made her prediction a 7!! This seems completely absurd.

It would be nice to think it was true though - a 6 in Maths would be a great result for her.

and the results paper said her score indicated she would get a 6 in GCSE and if she'd got one more mark that would have made her prediction a 7!! This seems completely absurd.

This is completely absurd. This is what I have been criticising.

It is very different saying 'this student is probably going to get a grade 9 because they keep getting 100% in mock papers' or even 'we would have expected a student in this group achieving these scores to get an A last year so we expect them to get a 7' to saying 'This piece of work is of a grade 9/8/7/6 standard'.

The Ofqual thing is interesting in that they've been looking at the 2016 data and calculating grade boundaries. Given that they have all the data for all the students, the Ofqual prediction that 0 students would get all 9s is a clear indication of what would have happened last year.

This is completely absurd. This is what I have been criticising.

I'm always glad to be right!