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

can'tkeepawayforever out of interest how many DC have you previously had going through the GCSE system? I ask because that experience certainly informs a good deal of my view, and since your own teaching seems to be at the primary level.

It's a shame that the school is open about how imperfect it is but didn't choose to stop applying grades to pieces of work entirely - like I said earlier applying a grade to a piece of work reduces the effect of the written feedback. Unfortunately schools are all about the data these days and you can't put written feedback into a spreadsheet and plot it on a graph.

The trouble is that there is a lot of pressure on schools to adopt these schemes.

I am looking at this as the parent of a Y9 and a secondary school governor. In the latter role I recently attended LA training about preparing for Ofsted, the trainer was an inspector and she said that as governors we could well be asked (as an example) how much progress Y8 boys were making and how we knew that they were making that progress - if we couldn't show how we knew this by any way other than saying 'the head/teachers told us' then it was poor governance and we could be marked down for it. I like to think I have a reasonable grasp of what is happening in schools but I can't see without some kind of benchmarking tool I could answer that.

The school do try other ways to inform their judgements, they have moderation meetings with other schools, some teachers are exam markers but at the moment everyone is in the same 'grasping at straws' position so in a lot of ways the blind lead the blind.

not one I'd like to teach my DC in any event.

And I call BINGO.

I would have thought that the hallmark of a good teacher would be being good at teaching, enjoying their subject and like being in the classroom with the kids. Apparently it should be agreeing with all the shit the DfE churn out...

Wrong yet again noble. Our school is extremely focused on effective feedback. Coming up with some generalized truth about marks distracting from feedback doesn't hold true when the feedback is as effective as it is at our school. So many things you say are too general, including the 'all schools are all about data'. It's all so banal.

In reply to your latest post, open mindedness is essential to a good teacher.

how much progress Y8 boys were making

I know, and it's totally understandable given the obsession with progress and data, but it is very frustrating that these decisions come for accountability reasons and not for educational ones. One possible route would be to note these 'grades' internally but not share them with the students and parents given how inaccurate and subjective they are.

open mindedness is essential to a good teacher.

I think a good teacher should be critical and evidence-informed about educational issues because otherwise a huge amount of time ends up being wasted on shit like Learning Styles.

Noble, DD's work - like DS's in the past - is usually simply marked with narrative feedback, exactly as I do in primary for virtually all work. However there do seem to be some 'assessment' pieces - which I understand, as we do the same - and end of term / unit tests - again I understand this, as we do the same - which are given 1-9 grades.

DS's equivalents were marked with NC levels in KS3 and old A* to G grades in KS4.

Maybe it's just me, but i would ALWAYS prefer a teacher to say 'To the best of my current knowledge and professional judgement i believe this to be level blah, but this has y degree of uncertainty' rather than 'Of course it's a level blah, because we know best'.

Goodbye, as i have said before, as all of your children - and all of your experience - has been within the narrow bounds of a superselective school, where predicting grades is relatively easy because the spread is so narrow. I don't understand how this is relevant to full-spectrum comprehensive schools, nor why you should so criticise teachers who teach in such a school for being 'not proactive' because they cannot do the much harder job of grading children across the whole spectrum of grades?

can'tkeepawayforever it's quite funny how in order to sustain an argument you and noble keep distorting what I say, to the extent of imputing things to me which I haven't said and which are in contradiction to what I have actually said!

can'tkeepawayforever claims it's 'easy' to predict numerical grades in a superselective although at the same time it's 'bonkers' for the same superselective to assess on numerical grades in Y10, only a year away from the actual exams and where it begins in Y9. noble claims this method of assessment constitutes 'lies' and 'nonsense'.

I have already said that no-one is assuming a predicted grade means that grade is in the bag. When my older DC were predicted straight A* I didn't assume those were in the bag either, unless they worked relatively steadily and had fair conditions on the day. It's no different with my youngest DD.

I've also said that no reasonable person would expect a grade in an internal assessment to be absolutely precise at the moment, although given the amount of groundwork DD's teachers have done and their capacity to adapt to change (the school has had more than most in terms of curriculum change), I'm not going to dissolve in a pool of despair - I'll leave that to others!

Sorry, by 'it' I meant the GCSE curriculum (starts in Y9).

In order to recognize a 7, teachers would need to recognize grades further down. They also need to be able to award grades systematically, as the course progresses, so I'm not sure how much easier it is, just that the end spectrum should be narrower.

The problem there is that it's usually not teachers saying 'this is level blah within the bounds of blah' it's normally a single grade written on a report or piece of work without any caveats. Some parents don't know that there are caveats attached and treat it like science - I've spent enough years on MN responding to posts about this sort of thing to know, and I don't think it's the parents' fault, but the system.

At parents' evening, if a parent wants to know how relatively well their child is doing, I don't say 'their current work is a level 4b, or a grade C', I will always say something like 'this student is currently working at a high level and we would expect someone who continued working at this level to get a grade A*/A at GCSE (old money)' or 'this student is working at the sort of level which would lead to a pass or better at GCSE' or 'this student is finding maths difficult and if they continue at this current pace will struggle to pass GCSE'.

Parents seem to understand and value that far more than 'they are currently working at a -insert made up grade here-'

noble I think you underestimate other schools and teachers and parents as well. Do you share good practice at all?

goodbye I think you underestimate how much time I spend on here picking apart what other schools have said to parents and advising them about what is actually going on.

DD's school had a meeting to discuss the new assessment system which I understood about 80% of (thanks to posters like noble) but frankly would have found fairly confusing without that. Even so, the system in practice is not exactly how I envisaged it at that meeting.

Actually her last science test I asked her how X and Y did. And knowing she got same mark as X but a bit less than Y probably told me more about how she'd done than the actual mark!

If intelligent and engaged parents don't fully understand the assessment reporting system, then what hope for the rest of the parents? If a reporting system requires specialist knowledge that can't be easily communicated to interpret, then it is a failure.

"Do you share good practice at all?"

You're asking if noblegiraffe shares good practice????????????

Fuck me, goodbyestranger, you're a piece of work, aren't you!

Actually her last science test I asked her how X and Y did. And knowing she got same mark as X but a bit less than Y probably told me more about how she'd done than the actual mark!

I completely agree HPFA. If my DC had 49% in a test, the top mark could be 55% or 90%. That top mark and the median plus ideally the mean is much more informative to gauge how my DC is doing in the context of what the pupils achieve at the school in previous years. In fact one private school I know did just that for end of year exams. Obviously the mean will be different in a top stream of selective than top stream of a comprehensive

If the teacher says, 'I am sorry but we have n't much of a clue how to prepare for this exam but we will continue to stretch and test the DCs as best we can so they can really understand the material they might face' that is also fine if the school's record is good and the same teachers have shown their worth in previous years.

DCs, at least those aiming for high grades, do look at feedback as well as marks since they are usually wanting to improve said marks.

I must admit I'm completely stumped by it all. Dd's school has abandoned graded work, so her last piece of English work was marked "Good". Good? Good for her? Good compared with her classmates? Good but could do better? Good but could do much better?

Also how will universities select students with the new grades and no AS Levels? Will Oxbridge be asking for all 9s (or secretly culling non-9 people?) or will the entrance exam become the be all and end all (back as it was in my day - 1980s)?

Re the Level 9, I was speaking with Maths teacher who was telling me that some of the questions now ask you to explain your answer, so even those who will consistently be hitting the right answer to the tune of 100% may not adequately explain their reasoning and thus lose marks. They are predicting very few 9s.

I can't understand schools predicting all 9s when they have no clue. Do they want a mass depression to break out?!

This may be utterly irrelevant. My DS did Pre U not A level. No-one expects to get 3 x D1 ( D1 better than A , D2 A D3 A - I say this because the thread started at the upper end of achievement ) However , whilst Pre U had not been taken up widely ( and it is 6th form , not compulsory schooling) it appears that a full hand of top marks is no longer expected , nor a massive disappointment if it does not happen. Of course I can see for the first entrants (and their parents) it's a bit nail baiting.

Apologies for shouting:

UNIVERSITIES, FOR THE VAST MAJORITY OF COURSES, DO NOT, AND NEVER HAVE, LOOKED AT GCSE GRADES. THEY LOOK AT PREDICTED A LEVEL GRADES. THE DEMISE OF AS AND INTRODUCTION OF 9-1 GCSES WILL NOT CHANGE THAT!!!

Entrance exams to Oxford et al already exist - BMAT, UKCAT, HAT, LNAT, STEP etc.

Yes, droning back to the 80s only one person in my year (an incredibly selective girls' grammar) got all As. No one was particularly bothered by their results as long as they were adequate. Same with A Levels - it wasn't 3A*s or bust. People applied to Oxbridge with a quite duff hand of results and got in.

I think I know about entrance exams, ds having already got in

But predicted A Levels = rubbish. Then everyone would be predicted A*s in order to give them a chance. At the moment there is an unknown weight given to entrance exams, but surely there will have to be more emphasis, and perhaps they will be introduced at other popular universities for popular courses (not obviously for recruiting institutions).