Compute Science GCSE mess up

[fairyqueen]

Any computer science teachers out there got any words of wisdom for DD who has spent all term working on her controlled assessment? Just doesn’t seem fair to scrap it at this stage. Not fair to carry on either of course. www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/ofqual-says-marks-computing-coursework-should-end-after-widespread

Oops! Wrong thread!

Is this the result of the Edexcel computer science issue a few weeks ago?

No. It specifically says in the consultation as a footnote that that was down to the access levels being available to Exams Officers in schools not doing the EdExcel version having access to it and is not the reason for this Consulation and not down to student cheating or posting solutions doing the EdExcel task.

The examples of malpractice stated in the Consulation have all come from one exam board that I won’t mention but is the one most use. It does mean that all Exam Boards are affected by this decision as OFQUAL can’t be certain other exam boards haven’t also had leaks.

chantilly - not quite true at all. Just before Half Term, EdExcel changed tasks. The reason for this is that the task did not have a gold padlock on it to access but a silver one.m on the website to access with a username and password. This meant that Exams Officers in schools not doing EdExcel could download it as well. Not that there was any evidence any had.
Computer Science teachers for that exam board therefore kicked up a fuss about this (including me-spent most of my Half term talking to the Head of Assessment at Pearson. We do anything for our students!) and on the Thursday of that Half Term, they agreed those that already started could continue and have an inspection to check we complied with this, instead.

This current debacle came to light when it was found that some people were selling solutions online (abroad I might add) for another exam board and this escalated.

I have already had to help my students once. I am quite frankly exhausted to do it again but have completed the document for the Consulation and can only hope.

DD was informed today and the class/teacher are all quite relieved (which surprised me) that the consultation is going ahead and are hoping that the recommendations go ahead. The teacher was worried that the grade boundaries would be high with all the cheating and therefore this would have a negative result for all their class. Dd does not think anyone cheated in fact a few of the girls really struggled and I know DD had a few problems where she had made silly errors -
which she had to correct. Thankfully DD finishes her 20 hours tomorrow and they can therefore now concentrate on the theory aspect. DD did state that their controlled assessment was not foolproof and whilst controls had been put in place anyone could have still copied and pasted coding had they known there was information available on the internet... so whilst I was initially concerned because coding is DD's strong point - I am not relieved ..

Asked DD about this and it does not affect IGCSE.

DS is half way through the 20 hours and they are all really pissed off.

It does seem a bit rubbish that they will now be assessed solely through computing theory, with no practical coding at all!

Asked DD about this and it does not affect IGCSE.

The IGCSE doesn’t have any NEA or coursework of any kind so won’t be. Sadly, the qualification doesn’t count in the league tables, buckets/Progress 8 so generally state schools won’t offer it. I’d love to have been able to do the IGCSE!

DD was informed today and the class/teacher are all quite relieved (which surprised me)

There is the other side that the teacher now won’t have to fully mark them (up to 2 hours per candidate) so that might have something to do with it

kittyvoncatsington - Thanks for your information. However my child's school had started one Edexcel task and then had to start another one. Therefore Edexcel did not let every school that had started the original task carry on with it.

Thank you for your further explanation on why the current consultation is taking place.

As I said before - for those where they do best in the theory they will benefit. Those those, like Dd, who excel in the coding - hey are penalised. Hence no solution offers a fair result for all students.

Dd has absolutely no access to the internet so copy/paste would not be possible. They could only access their assessment work in class time and in class time they were supervised and the internet turned off. I assumed that was the rules. Looks like some schools ignored them.

They memorise a bunch of stuff they don't understand for MFL (or at least they used to for the old GCSE) so there's no reason to think that they couldn't memorise some programming stuff to reproduce in test conditions.

hantilly your school is wrong or you don’t have the full information. Let me find the statement from EdExcel as proof.

chantilly

Here it is: enews.pearson.com/rsps/m/2wHOk_SPvoffokIQJGkm5vSl4PF7UJaGZfkcxXP_ETM

It clearly states that anyone who had already started the first task, would be allowed to continue. They just had to complete a questionnaire, get their Headteacher to write a letter and then wait for the inspection date. Believe me, I have been living and breathing all this for a long time now!

Maybe your DD’s school preferred the newer task to the older one and wanted to do that instead?

DD was supervised in class all the time - teacher very strict and the internet was turned off - BUT apparently the loophole was via Itunes. I think who ever set the exams didnt do there homework properly!
Therefore the results will be worthless ...It will probably mean my DD will miss the grade 9 - although she does know that she has to work allot harder with the theory now and her class teacher thinks the theory questions will change in light of the above.

Hulababy

Sorry I wasn't clear, I was meaning in lessons not the assessments.

For coding there is no need for students to have access to the internet. It can actually be done (in theory) without ever touching a computer.

charlmum

The theory questions can’t change sadly as they were written a year ago. The Consulation document also makes reference to this. What it may well do (ray of hope?!) is change the grade boundaries more favourably. They did this with the difficulty of Maths last year where 28% was a grade 5 so i’m keeping fingers crossed!

Besides, there is a two hour problem solving paper that is full of questions to write coded algorithmic answers to, so their skills won’t be entirely wasted.

My Ds who is doing CS, says that coding is only 8% of the 20% coursework. I think there is a bit of a misconception regarding the qualification that it involves a lot of coding when in actual fact it doesn't.

I think DD's teacher stated that the problem solving paper would have more weighting if that makes sense?

Dd did state that there was allot of write up involved so I guess the cheats would struggle unless this was also readily available...I know they had a discussion yesterday on how easily it would be to cheat in these type of exams ... a few girls had struggled but would never cheat because it achieves nothing....she did say she hadnt fully completed the whole coding the last part apparently was two part and she has only finished 1/2 of this and just has to finish a little but of her write up today ...she could have finished all of it but they been given initial guidance to take care on the write up.

In terms of marking she said 90% of the papers are marked by the teacher and two sent off for validation ?

DS2 got the highest mark in the class in the practice task, so was hoping to get a high mark in the NEA too. He is also v.strong in exams. It's unlikely that the decision will affect his grade either way (he is hoping for an 8).

However, I think it's unfair and unfortunate to change the assessment weighting when pupils are already 2/3 of the way through the course.

In terms of marking she said 90% of the papers are marked by the teacher and two sent off for validation ?

Oh how I wish that was true! I also teach this but am with AQA. The sample size is 20 for all exam boards. So if you only have a class of 20 or less, all of them will have to be sent off to be validated. If you have a class size of more than that, then they will issue you with the 20 names they want, after you have sent off your results. Obviously though, this is probably a moot point and likely we won't have to send anything off. This debacle has caused a huge amount of damage to this already niche subject

I've read the Consultation and responded (by the way, so can parents, so send your response too on the link on the first page!) and their only options state that the two exams would be worth 50% each, if the NEA was to not count, so it's only fingers crossed at this stage that one paper would have more weighting over another.

kittyvoncatsington - Thank you for the useful link to the Pearson letter of 24th October above and the other information you have shared. I had not heard about that letter as my DC's school carried on with the new task, so I'm sorry for my mistake in my message on Wednesday evening, caused by my lack of knowledge of the full story!

Sashh - that's what's Dd has had, no internet access at all during the assessments.

I know coding can be done off computer - I do some off computer coding with my infant classes before we go on iPads and computers. And obviously pseudo code does appear in one of the test papers.

But a gcse qualification in computer science should, IMO, always include a proper assessment of whether students can actually code, test and debug for real - on a computer or coding enabled device. It's ridiculous for it not too really.

Bluebell - but the rest of the controlled assessment is linked to that coding - planning, pseudo code, the coding itself, testing, debug, write up and conclusion etc. But I would count all of that as coding personally, not just the bit sat in front of a computer typing python or whatever.

Dd has now finished all of her controlled assessment. She was likely to get a very high mark from what we could gather as it was completed and fully written up, and after extensive testing was working after she had debugged a couple of small issues she'd found. Some of her friends in class still haven't quite finished - think they have 2 or 3 lessons remaining.but we're getting towards the end.

DD's class's task was a password generator and checker.
I think many of our local schools were doing a task which involved a quiz.

I just reread what I wrote earlier and must have been in cloud cuckoo land - obviously the teacher marks all the papers not just 90%...DD is in a fairly small CS class - I think there is probably 14 of them in total. Not sure why DD thought only two would be submitted for validation.

DD's task involved writing a quiz (OCR) ...she should have completed all the 20 hours today but have not seen her to check how she got on - they went off to Winter Wonderland this afternoon to mix with the sixth form - I think they used Ipads to do their assessment because they use them for all lessons (they have their own Ipads allocated by the school)

Should be interesting to see what happens - ordered the OCR revision guide for her today because we are away over New Year so at least she can do some work whilst we are travelling before mocks in January.