URGENT - if your DC are awaiting BTEC Tech results on Thursday please read

[cricketballs3]

Just to let you know that Pearson have made a very sudden change to the points calculations for the final grade awarded to the BTEC Tech L1/2 that are being certified Thursday.

This means that the previous points calculator that was published (and Pearson promised to not change for current cohorts) and all teachers/students worked to has suddenly changed. Your DC may have not undertaken the resit in June as they and their teacher had calculated that they had achieved their target grade and will now face a lower grade. This link show the letter that students are being given on Thursday.

There is a petition that is quickly gathering pace link is here that I implore all of you to sign as this affects thousands of students across the country

Wow, the L2M, L2D and L2D* are all huge jumps!

This sounds bonkers. So kids sat an exam in February and did coursework which was marked, they had all their results and a grade boundary calculator to tell them their final grade. Results day should have just been rubber-stamping that grade, but Edexcel have at the last minute changed the grade boundaries? And kids who could have resat in June to improve their grade but were happy with what they thought they have got have now missed out?

In addition, kids who thought they had good grades with their coursework and just had to do well in their June exam have now had the rug pulled from under them?

Is that right? I’m not familiar with BTEC.

I wonder if Pearson have made this decision in light of Ofqual’s decision to investigate grade boundaries for last year’s maths A-level (but there grades are to potentially go up, not down).

Sounds very dodgy. Hope it gets reviewed.

Fully accurate @noblegiraffe

This is appalling.

Apparently Pearson didn't expect so many high grades (basically students working hard) ASCL have issued a statement about this here

At last Ofqual have stepped in via TES

From that article, Ofqual haven’t said that the grade boundaries should change back though, merely that it was ‘regrettable’ that Edexcel had chosen to publish them in the spec, and then change them later.

They say that the decision to change them was appropriate.

God knows why Edexcel published them in advance though. You cannot have a qualification that decides whether pupils meet a particular published standard and limit the number of pupils who can meet that standard. It’s just obvious that would cause problems.

www.gov.uk/government/news/response-to-pearson-changes-to-btec-grading-criteria-2019

since the dawn of time voc ed qualifications have published their grading table, with all boards publishing a grading tool to allow students and teachers to monitor their progress towards their final grade and to allow them to understand what they need to do in order to achieve higher grades - as teachers we have just done as we have been trained to do via the boards and therefore advised our students as such. Students are also fully aware of the calculators and use them fully.

For example, on the final coursework units my students will not resubmit after they have used the calculator if it shows they can not get a higher grade overall - this is not new!

Apologies for my rant but this has affected thousands of students and teachers

gosh what a horrible thing for them to do. Noone in my family affected but I do hope it is all ironed out in the interests of the students. That is so unfair.

Appalling. Very unfair, those poor students.

Of course the grade boundaries should be honoured this year. If they think they need reviewing, they need to review them for next year. You can't do things retrospectively (although I know they do, like the computer science coursework debacle).

Just spoken to Ds and he says his btec was Cambridge National diploma - is that the same as this?

Seems he sat OCR not btec but the school called it btec so ignore my last post

since the dawn of time voc ed qualifications have published their grading table

Then it should have been obvious that there would be issues with this if Ofqual are now also imposing a statistical predictions model of assessment.

This is a massive fuck-up, it could have easily been anticipated, and it should not be rectified to the detriment of pupils.

However this isn’t the first time that mid-course changes have been made to the detriment of pupils in the interests of maintaining the academic validity of the qualification (see the recent computer science controlled assessment fiasco) so appeals on that basis are unlikely to be listened to.

The only hope that I can see is that Pearson printed in the spec that the grading table would not be changed for current cohorts and would only be amended for future cohorts. They have since changed this wording in their online documents, but it would be interesting to hear what the legal position is.

@noblegiraffe version 4 of the specs (that were still valid until Thursday) did have in writing that very point that whilst they reserve the right to change the grading points ghis would be done for new cohorts - this is the reason why there is such an uproar as to the unethical reaction to students performing better than they expected

This is immoral.

This is as much Ofqual's balls up as Pearson's. They should have been aware that Pearson were publishing points tables, and been aware of the potential consequences of that. This is a failure of regulation, and Ofqual's statement distancing itself is pretty poor.

This is awful.

There must be many students who stopped bashing away and decided not to have a final push, thinking they had ‘banked’ enough marks for the grade they were aiming for. This isn’t even ‘changing the goalposts’-It’s denying the goal once it’s been scored!

I know that prior results have a bit of an impact on grade boundaries (although not really sure of the nitty gritty) but are an entire cohort not allowed to do significantly better than their prior attainment suggests then ? Is their attainment always capped like this? -is that what this is saying?

Poor teachers and kids Penalised for doing well.

GCSE attainment has been capped like this for years, I’m not sure how BTECs have been regulated up till now.

Edexcel clearly thought that amending grade boundaries for future cohorts would be enough - confident enough to put it in their spec. But now they’re not, so what happened?

Given that Ofqual last week announced their investigation into last year’s maths A-Level grade boundaries and have shown that they are willing to overrule exam board assurances that they were valid and potentially change exam grades post-award, this has to have played some part in Edexcel’s last-minute decision.

They’ll have known for ages that the grade boundaries were an issue.

They’ll have known for ages that the grade boundaries were an issue

again, you are accurate in your assessment @noblegiraffe - after the deadline for external moderation passed a lot of centres were being called in for enhanced sampling and this showed that centres were working to the assessment rules (basically they were hoping that centres were cheating and this wasn't the case) and that the students' work was to the standards that had been reported so they have had a few months of knowing that there were going to be more higher grades than they anticipated.

It is also interesting to note that several schools had reported on the SM that the grades showing on edexcelonline were lower than was calculated for the last few weeks and when questioned Pearson said it was an error and this was to be sorted before results day

You could see pupils’ results before results day?

I can’t help but think that this thread would have more outraged replies if it were about GCSEs or A-levels. I saw it suggested on twitter that this was allowed to happen because BTECs are taken by other people’s children.

But it definitely feels like Ofqual values the qualifications above the children they are meant to serve. How can teachers have any faith in an exam system where the published rules can be changed at the last minute?

Kids could be losing college places over this. Teachers could be losing pay progression. It’s not a minor tweak.

You could see pupils’ results before results day?

for those who sat the external in February and decided to not resit - we enter the coursework grades as agreed by the external moderator and the final grade then shows about a week later once it is checked against the moderator's list (to make sure we are entering the agreed marks).

So for a large number of students, yes we see the grades before hand - this is why so many BTEC Level 3 students are able to have their university places confirmed early in August.

I do think that if this had been a traditional 'academic' qualification then it would have been all over the national press and there would also be a lot more anger on MN/SM but who cares about anything other than genius levels....

I think Heads are torn on it too. So Heads of schools that offer them see their P8 decreasing, and Heads of schools that don't see it as avoiding gaming the third bucket.