End of year reminder: Flightpaths are bollocks, schools giving ‘working at’ 9-1 GCSE grades to KS3 kids are bullshitting

[noblegiraffe]

Basically that.

If your kid comes home with a report with a wanky flightpath on it, take it with a hefty pinch of salt. There’s no science or data behind it.

If your KS3 kid comes home with a report that says they are currently working at a GCSE grade 4 in Science (or worse a 4+, implying technical accuracy), then know that it is made up, no one knows what a grade 4 in science (or any subject really) looks like, and applying GCSE grades to kids who aren’t studying GCSE courses is just nonsense.

In maths by how questions they get right, turned into a percentage then into a grade

But that would depend on how difficult the questions are?

Back in Year 8 (whilst levels were still being used in some schools) dd got 84% on a science exam. Whilst that looked good it was because it was an old KS3 Sats Foundation Paper. (why the heck a girl of her ability was only being taught to Foundation Level with no extention work etc was another matter entirely)

A friend who is a secondary Science teacher gave me a higher level paper for her to sit and she got 55% on that one (mostly through stuff she'd learnt at her primary school).

Both results were deemed to be old NC Level 5.

But it seems to me that the collision will only occur if the school is not good at what it is supposed to be doing.
As DS is just finishing Year 10, his exams are based on the reality of the GCSE syllabus. I totally agree that there is a lot of flailing around, in some subjects more than others, and that includes what you might call an adjustment - he got 38% on his Geography mock paper, and nobody at all in his class passed. He has historically been predicted an 8. Yes huge adjustment. But which bit of it is right and which is wrong? Is this bunch of bright Year 10s all going to fail Geography? Possibly. Should they be failing Geography? Almost certainly not! Would they be failing Geography if they had been with the new system since Year 7, based on their inate ability, interest, and work? Answer: almost certainly not. So which predictor is the more accurate one? Well actually I think the earlier one is. It may be that the school will not be able to dig them out of the Geography hole (although we are hoping that after the exam results and marks and mark schemes come out for this year, which believe me we will all pore over, we will all work out what it is that these kids are doing wrong, and fix it, to the extent it needs fixing).

That is, the problem with Geography is not geographical knowledge, or ability, it is the strict mark schemes that accept only certain answers as the "right" kind of answer, and we need therefore to be getting out kids to churn out the "right" kind of answer, and at the moment they aren't sure what that is.
On the other hand, with subjects where the teachers feel a lot more clued in, there seems to be a much smaller gap. Last year in the top set in maths, about half of them got 9s, and the rest of them got 8s, except for one 7 (who was two marks off an 8). This year they are not expecting anything like that, because, according to DS, the year is not anywhere as mathematical, and they are therefore expecting at most a handful of 9s. On the other hand, DS's year 10 are very very mathematical. We have had a constant problem ever since Year 7 because there are really 37 DC who should be in the top set, but the room can at most accomodate 30, so there has been a revolving door of kids who in any other year would be comfortably top set. They have been predicting good results for that cohort in maths from the beginning, and they are still predicting good results. Not 9s, but 8/9s. Why should the assessment of the mathematical ability of the Year 7s be any different? If DS's year were Year 7 this year, why would a prediction of a full class of 8/9s be unreasonable?

AlexanderHamilton - why should it depend how difficult the questions are? It's not GCSEs, it's an internal school test. If I didn't get an A or a 9 in an internal school test for getting 100%, I would wonder why they set such a stupid test, given that there are no age related expectations and it's not a GCSE. I would wonder why they didn't set more sensible tests, if they were looking for more than they were asking for.

noblegiraffe my twins brought home their end of Y9 report yesterday, all of their subjects were given an expected 9-1 grade (expect IT which is BTEC). How can teachers give a predicted GCSE grade on all subjects when the current Y11 results are not out yet?! Are they worth paying any attention to? Tbh, i heaped loads of praise on my twins, they are starting to take more responsibility for their learning so am keen to encourage it in any way I can.

Forgot to say on some of their grades they were given a + or - what is that all about?! eg, one twin had a 4 other had 4+ okay I get the 4+ is clearly doing better but not yet a 5 but was is this all based on?? They did have two weeks worth of tests which were given some importance to the DC, would it be all about the results of those? Would they have sat some kind of mock paper? My twins did come with some of the lingo that DD used when she sat her mocks in Y11 eg “walking, talking mock”

I’m not overly concerned as I know a lot can happen between now and Y11, just interested to know how school have arrived at these predicted grades.

Would they have sat some kind of mock paper?

They may have sat a GCSE paper, but that would usually be a complete waste of time in Y9 as they wouldn’t have studied nearly enough of the course (if doing 3 year GCSE) to have a decent stab at a paper plus it would be time-consuming, kids can have 20-odd exams in the real thing. They either have sat an exam made up by the school, or a commercially produced exam. These exams may have had grade boundaries made up for them, but whoever has made them up has just had a guess, that may not even be educated.

We recently made up grade boundaries for a Y10 maths exam. They didn’t sit a full GCSE paper, just what they had been taught. We looked at the results and had a reckon about where the different groups should be at the end of Y11, then stuck a pin in the results at the points that would make the grades come out ‘about right’. Then we used these as predicted grades for their report, sticking in + and - according to where our gut instinct suggested kids could do better or had got lucky. There might be kids in my group who came out with a 7 but I had them mentally pegged as better than the other kids who got a 7 so I’d give them a 7+.
That’s for Y10, and for maths where we already have a set of results, and where the kids are set so we know what results different groups of kids should be coming out with, and I’ve got years of experience. Other subjects will be stabbing in the dark.

I could give you a cautionary tale about grade boundaries for new GCSEs - PIXL, a massive commercial company that lots of schools subscribe to for teaching support, set a Y10 exam for maths before the new GCSE had been sat. Thousands of pupils across the country sat the exam and we all typed their results into a database. PIXL then analysed the results and assigned grade boundaries to the exams to give schools an idea of the grades pupils were headed for. Schools were desperate for this information and it was thought that with thousands of results pooled, PIXL could use the pegging of grades to proportions of previous years getting C+ and A+ to assign accurate grade boundaries to the exam - a bit like the exam boards will be doing to the real GCSEs.
When PIXL released their grade boundaries, experienced maths teachers were rolling in the aisles. They were laughably wrong, way too low when applied to their classes. Unfortunately there’s a shortage of experienced maths teachers and some schools believed these grade boundaries and gave them to their pupils, used them for school data analysis etc. When the actual GCSE results came out, these schools were totally in the shit, way fewer kids passed maths than they expected based on the PIXL grade boundaries. What PIXL hadn’t taken into account was the profile of schools that sign up to PIXL do not match the national picture, they are more likely to be struggling comps than leafy grammars, so the proportions of grades shouldn’t match the national picture at all.

Basically, a massive commercial company which presumably hires well-qualified people spent weeks analysing thousands of pupil results and came up with grade boundaries that were a pile of rubbish.

So take any predictions for the new GCSEs with a massive pinch of salt, just in case!

Thanks noble my twins, especially one of them was disappointed with Maths predicted grade (4). Not going to relay any cautionary words of advice as first time I’ve seen him be bothered about his grades. His assessment was that he could have done better so hoping it will be a lever to work at his full potential rather than the typical lazy boy that he can be.

Agree with Noble.

Problem with banding of course is the students on the borders and also the issue of whether or not the bands are fixed or move.

Assigning grades or levels is utterly pointless and I’m glad schools are finally abandoning them.