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

Ah, so actually you agree with noble - it is the change, and the poor management of the change that is the issue?

Had the A*-G system stayed (and had it remained stable throughout its lifespan - because although it is longstanding, universal and reasonably transparent, various fiddlings to do with coursework / no coursework has been disruptive) then actually that would have been far preferable?

In fact, the A-G - without the A* - system of universal GCSEs (as opposed to CSE + O level) must be 30+ years old, as it came in just as i was leaving school.

i do think that some of the accretions - GCSE 'equivalents', for example - did devalue the GCSE 'currency', but the old GCSEs would satisfy the list of requirements that you say the french system benefits from?

Breaking news: a guy from one of the exam boards has predicted 'hundreds' of pupils will get straight 9s.

www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/exclusive-major-exam-board-predicts-hundreds-will-get-straight-grade

This graphic was with the full article - chances of a full sweep of 9s look far higher if you're a girl.

Someone was asking about English teachers upthread, there's a quote here: "“It is confusing,” says Sarah Jennings, an English teacher at Lady Lumley’s School in Pickering, Yorkshire. “We are just constantly trying to push our students into achieving the best for them, based on where we think the grades will fall. We would say this would have been an ‘old money’ C, but where that falls on the new course, we don’t know.”"

Also:

"Ofqual has warned schools against trying to predict the grade-boundary marks for the new GCSEs, saying it would only be a “best guess”. So for many teachers, results day will be their first sight of what the new grades look like."

Some indication that English A-level entries will drop even more than maths this year because of the new GCSEs

schoolsweek.co.uk/english-a-level-applications-drop-35-due-to-new-harder-gcses/

can'tkeepawayforever I'm not such a dimwit that I make assumptions about this sort of thing. It's an absolutely explicit link, fully explained to the students.

But you say they are using a full range of 1-9 grades, on a group of students who should get 7-9s (if the selection worked properly, and the school is doing its job)?

They're marking as they think appropriate for the Y10s. You know, kids don't usually start off GCSE courses at the level they'd hope and expect to get when they actually take them....

This is heavy going.

And noble, your original breaking news of two kids getting a full house is now supplanted, less than a fortnight later, with new breaking news that the first guy has underestimated massively. So that first breaking news was worth the angst wasn't it.

Are teachers from Lady Lumley's especially authoritative? If not, I'm not quite sure why you've bothered to quote.

So..

Your school's teachers have been grading Year 10s, since September, in all subjects, on what their current work might get if they presented exactly the same work in a GCSE exam that happens at the end of Y11, but for which even sample papers have not yet been created?

How do they know whether this work might even appear in a GCSE paper - ie that the question type that they have asked, or the task that they have completed is markable in that way? Let alone the marking criteria all the way down to 1?

I'm sorry, I had assumed that you were only talking about Y11s being marked on mock or internal exams in English and Maths for the upcoming GCSEs, which they should get between 7s and 9s in.

i genuinely hadn't realised that you were talking about Y10. I shall cease to engage at this point, because that is straightforwardly bonkers.

That's fine obviously but as it happens it's not in the least bonkers to me or to the teachers. They're not completely at sea and without guidance, haven't adopted the Doomsday scenario and may well be more proactive than the more vocal teachers on these threads. I can't work out if you're overthinking this or underthinking it but anyway, you're clearly not on the same page. I guess it doesn't matter!

And noble, your original breaking news of two kids getting a full house is now supplanted, less than a fortnight later, with new breaking news that the first guy has underestimated massively. So that first breaking news was worth the angst wasn't it.

To be fair, no-one actually knows and this is all just guesswork. I'd prefer it was just a few to being hundreds because if it is hundreds we'll probably get lumbered with a Grade 10!!

Some indication that English A-level entries will drop even more than maths

I understand children may drop A-levels after they've entered them e.g. their AS result is rubbish, or they don't get that far. Or they stay the course and get a quite dismal result.

There's obviously no good way to know, but I wonder what proportion of the children apparently deterred from an A-level course (because the nuGCSE is more difficult) are in that category i.e. is it putting off credible contenders or not-so credible contenders?

Not any more piqueaboo - AS results no longer forms part of the final A level grade so there isn't that natural cull.

Yes, but I'm wondering how much of the drop in A-level entries is essentially the same 'natural cull' advanced to Y11.

because that is straightforwardly bonkers.

Yep!

Or, alternatively, and certainly in my view and that of plenty of other real life people, including senior professionals: Nope!

The main point with the latest news about straight 9s is that Ofqual have said 0, the DfE have said 2 and a researcher from an exam board has said hundreds. What does that tell us about this huge and immensely disruptive change to the grading system that was apparently put in to better differentiate between top candidates?
No one actually knows how it is going to pan out, and the people introducing the changes haven't actually properly researched and modelled the effects.

It wasn't the DfE who announced that the headline pass rate for maths and English would fall by about 23% either, I think Education Datalab did that number crunching. A year later, probably because of that figure, the DfE have changed the whole idea of a pass grade so they don't have to face the music when the headlines hit about a huge drop in the pass rate.

This is not a well-implemented or thought-out change.

Lots of schools do stupid things, goodbye. Arguments appealing to authority don't work against arguments using logic.

noble I give you that, except that the school in question is a very successful one, on any measure, so very probably not adopting a 'stupid' approach. It seems very reasoned, as explained to stakeholders.

As for appeals to authority, you keep telling everyone you're a teacher! Also, your arguments seem defeatist, not logical - possibly the antithesis of logical in fact.

The thing is that DD (Year 9) has pieces of work and tests marked using the 1-9 coding, as I mentioned way upthread. I could, as a parent, be making the same assumptions that you are - that these have genuine meaning in relation to eventual GCSE results.

However, she - and we - are entirely clear that these are simply being used as relative marks - that 9 is better than 8 (9 always represents full marks or maybe a single dropped mark), that 5 is average, that 1 is very poor. I am sure that, as she gets closer to actual GCSEs (remembering that she is the second year of full-spectrum 9-1 exams, 3rd for English and Maths) the match between these numerical 'relative' marks and likely 'absolute' marks will become closer. However i am claiming no magical predictive powers for her current teachers, just that they have made a decision to move in their marking approach from old NC levels in KS3 / GCSE alphabetical marks in KS4 to a 1-9 internal scheme which they will refine to come closer to the 'actual' 1-9 scheme as this becomes embedded with further information.

Saying just how successful the school is (trying to make your authority even more of an authority) doesn't do anything to defeat the reasoning put forward by can't.

Everyone knows I'm a teacher, sure, but I actually present reasons (including timelines!) for my positions instead of just saying 'My DC's school does this and the school is great therefore this must be great'.

they have made a decision to move in their marking approach from old NC levels in KS3 / GCSE alphabetical marks in KS4 to a 1-9 internal scheme

Lots of problems with this, by the way. www.andallthat.co.uk/blog/creating-flight-paths-to-replace-levels-year-7-11-the-impact-of-the-new-gcse-grade-descriptors
With levels being scrapped and not replaced, schools were left with empty spreadsheets and grabbed the first thing to hand that looked like levels to replace them, however inappropriate.

Yes, I know - and they are open about this, and the problem of using any 'interim' approach. They are very clear about how imperfect it is - but also how inappropriate it would be to use old NC level descriptors OR old GCSE grades.

It's a bit like in primary, where my school have moved to the Working Towards / Expected / Greater Depth (for each year) marking system for assessments in KS2 but are absolutely open about the fact that we are constantly refining this in the light of further information and experience of the end KS2 assessments.

My confidence doesn't stem purely from the fact that the school is successful noble and can'tkeepawayforever, nor do I ascribe the teaching staff magical powers. But I'm not especially interested in going round in the same circles again and again. What the staff are doing makes complete sense to me from every angle, and I'm happy with that. You're dead against everything going on in education so you're not. That's fine, but perhaps don't insist that other people can't think for themselves and come up with a different conclusion culled from an alternative experience and approach. That's not the hallmark of a good teacher - not one I'd like to teach my DC in any event.