League Tables using Grade 5 as a "pass" for GCSE?

[Boyskeepswinging]

Why do the league tables published today report on the percentage of children achieving Grade 5 in English and Maths?
I thought that most universities, colleges etc class a Grade 4 as a pass, not a 5?

It might be "simpler" but it is a very blunt instrument with which to measure how well a school does with the children it has. Which is surely the useful thing to know? There are all sorts of issues with P8, but I much prefer it to attainment measures, and it has mixed up our LA performance tables quite significantly.

And also what piggy said!

it has mixed up our LA performance tables quite significantly.

You mean schools are being ordered by Progress 8? That’s awful.

Really? You don't think a school should be ranked above on a difference of 0.01 when the confidence intervals are 0.5ish?? No, not the official ones. Just the "we are number # in the county". An extra layer of confusion for everyone.

Pick a measure. Don't rank schools.

it has mixed up our LA performance tables quite significantly.

You mean schools are being ordered by Progress 8? That’s awful.

Although it is useful when comparing selective and non-selective schools.

Thefallenmadonna, grades 1-3 are not level 2 passes which is what the students were entered for. They do give give you a level 1 qualification but lets stop with they are passes, they are fail from from the level 2 qualification they were entered for

A GCSE is a level 1/2 qualification. Grades 1-3 are passes at level 1. Grades 4-9 are passes at level 2.

That's why the IGCSEs were called level 1/2 certificates for use in England.

So perhaps people should stop with the suggestion that a grade 3 is not a GCSE pass?

Doesn't the point stand though, that if the government want to raise standards, the level required to be considered a 'pass' or whatever you want to call it must be higher?

Why on earth would that raise achievement? Do you imagine all these teachers and students aren't trying and just moving the goalposts will change the real outcome? You could equally well say that making 5% and everyone getting 9s raises achievement.

Raising the quality of teaching is what would raise achievement.

In fact the new scores have lowered achievement in the short term (as shown by the very low grade boundaries on last years exams) because the system to spend a lot of effort adapting to the changes (at a cost to teaching standards).

There is a good chance to think it will permanently lower standards for two reasons:

1. The new exams are geared to have harder questions and lower scores for passes, but research shows that this is demotivational and gets poorer outcomes. So those lower grade boundaries don't really represent the same achievement claimed- just the same number of kids.

1. The new baseline achievement for '50% get 4 or above' has been set at a time of unprecedented cuts when quality of teaching has suffered rapid decline- setting a very low standard. When, in 5 years or so, the government trumpets massive improvements in achievement it may simply be that actual achievement is simply returning to normal.

They do give give you a level 1 qualification but lets stop with they are passes, they are fail from from the level 2 qualification they were entered for

We need qualifications which meet the needs of all students. Writing off 50% of kids as having failed is ridiculous.

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Correction to my above post

You could equally well say that making 5% a pass and everyone getting 9s raises achievement.

I’m so tired of all this data driving schools. My son is dyslexic and failing on his eng Lang. Despite being 2 grades below a pass and 2 below his prediction based on ks2 SATs he is not deemed underperforming enough to warrant the extra intervention sessions.

I can well imagine they are focusing on the higher achievers who are underperforming rather than the ones who just need to pass to secure their post 16 options.

It was the same at primary - all the extra sessions were for kids on the 4/5, 5/6 boundary.

they are fail from from the level 2 qualification they were entered for

A GCSE is a L1/2 qualification not just L2

Yes, that was a nonsense statement! We don't 'enter' students for a Level 2 qualification. We enter them for GCSE!

There needs to be further clarification clearly as there is still confusion surrounding the grade boundaries.

My ds is in year 11 and he sat his GCSE English Lit last summer in year 10. He hated 2/3 set novels but revised so hard and memorised his 20 poems etc.
He has AS and anxiety and as he's always masked his troubles throughout school he was not given any extra time etc which could have made the difference to him ( and we've requested it for this year ) and he got a grade 4.

This may not sound like a big achievement but he had a nightmare of a day on one of the exams. He saw a huge spider ( a tarantula according to him ) next to his foot and couldn't settle and then when it was removed and he started the paper, he wrote so much detail that he didn't even finish half of the paper!
I was immensely proud of his grade 4 and think what he could have got if he had completed the exam, probably a 5 at least.

So many of his friends were predicted high grades and didn't even pass with a 4.
He's all too aware that the college he really wants ( one of the top 10 sixth form colleges in the U.K. ) wants grade 5's but they have said they are flexible to a point as his chosen A level subjects are the ones he's expected to get 7/8 in at GCSE.

I hope other colleges and schools are as flexible as it's wrong to write a 15yr old off for having a slightly "wrong" number.

I agree with donq that they can say whatever grade they want to raise standards.
It doesn't mean it's actually going to happen in reality. They need to improve the standard of teaching for that to happen, not just arbitrarily picking any old grade number in the hope it will magically raise standards.

That's true but using a 5 does show which schools are getting more to that higher level and which aren't. It might not be the right standard to measure schools against and it might not raise standards in itself, but it does provide factual information for parents. Looking at both the L4 and L5 and looking at those levels against prior attainment shows something about how successfully schools are moving students with those prior attainment levels on. It's still a blunt measure as these things always will be, but part of the purpose is information provision and there is increasingly more info provision.

For most people, rankings etc don't mean much because in reality they don't have much if any choice. Many will be able to choose between 1 or 2 secondaries. Bin my view, the more information available, the better, although I know people don't always access it or struggle to understand it.

I agree that if colleges etc are accepting 4s for the next level of study (surely not for A Levels though??) then that is a key measure....and to be fair, it is included in all the government tables. And okay 'fail' for half the population might not be helpful, but isn't any different to it was for the last 25 years with GCSEs when for practical purposes a D was a called a fail, even though all grades of G and above were officially passes.

Isn't it okay to say a 'standard pass' is good enough for progress to certain next levels of study and a 'good pass' is needed for others. Of course lots of places specify requirements above a 5 for some courses, which also must be okay surely? It can't be that anyone can progress to any course just because they choose. They do have to be suitable and have a decent chance of success at it or it's a waste of everyone's time and money. And those levels set for progress to the next level will also be a bit if a blunt instrument, but something is needed, so it seems reasonable to say a 4 or certain number of 4s gets you onto X courses, 5s are needed for y courses and 7s or above needed for Z courses. There also need to be courses for those with below 4s and they will have requirements too.

And I agree that simply saying a higher standard is now required doesn't magically make it happen. I can see that setting the standard first and then trying to make it happen is used because without the measure there might not be a strong enough incentive to really push towards that higher level, because the lower level will still be acceptable. Of course, before and as you set the higher standard, more resources are needed to achieve it....land isn't this where it's all wrong, becaue those resources simply are dwindling not increasing, so it is an impossible ask. Although it might not help the students achieving lower grades and their discouraged teachers, perhaps these consequences of underfunding in terms of performance need to be highlighted in tables etc - not to berate the schools, but so people see the failures of government to resource the education and standards they are requiring?

Some very good points chocolate

The new exams are geared to have harder questions and lower scores for passes, but research shows that this is demotivational and gets poorer outcomes.

This is also very true. When revising with level 4/5 children last year they were completely demotivated when opening the sample papers and they couldn't answer many questions. The sheer difficulty of the papers caused the shutters to come down and say they couldn't do it. Low grade boundaries don't help them at the time.

chocolate 4s in maths and English is all that is required for any university in the UK . Obviously, in practice, the majority will have more. Don't get me started on sixth form entry requirements : that's the Wild West!

I agree that low grade boundaries don't really help anyone.

In my school we had far more 9s than expected. The students found the exams really hard and the timing difficult and the amount of content difficult. They were demoralised when preparing, but they got 9s due to low boundaries, not because they answered all the Qs to a high standard - you can see it in their scripts.

So now the Yr 11s do mocks using the papers from last year and we mark using mark schemes and use the boundaries given. Their mock grades (levels) are higher than last year's because we used higher boundaries last year, not knowing they would be so low. On one hand, they are encouraged by their decent mock results and some are a little complacent thinking quality answers/high scoring answers aren't required for top levels. We do warn them that the boundaries will rise this year as teachers become more familiar with the exam, so they know they still have to aim for the very best answers.

As a teacher it is galling to think that the content and marks schemes are not set at the right level and the 'right' amount of each grade will be issued just by adjusting the boundaries, because the top levels within each question simply can't be consistently achieved by bright candidates because there was too much content or the markscheme a require too much. How then do you teach it? Do you just aim for less than the top levels within the markscheme, knowing that they won't be needed to get the L8/9 or do you still keep pushing towards those even when they are v v difficult to achieve in the time and that is demoralising. And the whole argument works down through the Levels - so for someone hoping for a L4 do you just cover a tiny part of the content or all of it at a low level, knowing the boundaries will get a L4 for not much, whilst trying to explain to the students that they will have to see a paper with lots of stuff on it that they can't do?

It's not right that students should have to see and sit exams with stuff which isn't achieveablenin the time or covers an amount of content which isn't covetable, even if they know theoretically that they can still get the grade they are aiming for. Asking them to look at the paper and make judgements about if to leave bits out/what standard will 'do' for the question they are answering, is adding another hoop to jump through and one which only has its standard set after everyone has sat the exam anyway.

Such a mess. Confusing.

I suppose a lot of this will be ironed out over time but it's hard for those kids caught up in the first few years.

Piggy, with reference to Colleges being the 'wild west' in terms of requirements, are you saying you think all should set a requirement of a 4 for all post-GCSE courses, or that different requirements should be set for different courses? Do you think all places should have to have the same requirements too?

And the thing about a 4 is maths and English for Unis - I guess they are saying this standard is the bare minimum acceptable for university study, recognising most going to Uni have far in excess of that - but do you actually think that those with only a 4 in those subjects are suitable for Uni - do you think it's an acceptable standard for higher education, which is obviously beyond the level of further education? Does the fact that that's what Unis are listing as their minimum requirement make it the right level?

When revising with level 4/5 children last year they were completely demotivated when opening the sample papers and they couldn't answer many questions. The sheer difficulty of the papers caused the shutters to come down and say they couldn't do it. Low grade boundaries don't help them at the time.

To a large extent this was the stated goal of Gove's policy. He wanted state schools to teach the way independent schools do. He felt the fact that many good state schools had closed the achievement gap with very exclusive schools by focusing on skills teaching represented a lowering of standards. The exams have moved towards much more recall of facts and less skills testing (varying a lot by subject) to achieve this.

wombat, I mean there are no rules so every sixth form set its own standard,arbitrarily.

I think if one had a 4 in maths, but wanted to study, for the sake of argument, Fine Art at university,a 4 would be fine. In fact, if one wanted to study English , I can't see why it would matter whether you had a 4 or 5 in maths!