Predicted Grades for University Entry

[sunglasses123]

As we are hurtling towards the A Levels I was wondering what will happen if pupils cannot physically sit exams due to schools shutting/CV.

Something will need to be sorted and I am wondering whether they will literally will have to do it on predicted grades. The predicted grades were issued well before the CV issue and whilst its not ideal is there anything else reasonably universities can do.

The pupils cannot do the year again. My DS is a boarder and the school has some overseas pupils but he is UK based.

He has very good grades so he would be estactic if places were awarded using this method. I know not ideal of course but what else is there. He is doing Maths and the Sciences and aiming for Durham and Exeter. He has 5 offers.

There is at least some flexibility in that universities set their own entry requirements. This is affecting the whole sector, so I imagine we will see some whole scale lowering of grades (unconditional offers?) or collective action on how to approach this. Universities aren’t going to want an empty cohort.

Our GCSE students have been told it is likely they will get predicted grades. Some are delighted with this. Others less so, given the likelihood they would have gone up a grade or even two by May/June with a little more study and plenty of revision. Possibly it will be the same for A Levels?

We are in unchartered terrority here. DS has 3 A* as his predicted grades which I would really love him to achieve. If he is not able to sit the formal exams we will never know...

His Durham offer took ages to come through but at least Durham wont be hanging around if indeed they do go on predicted gradings

I wonder whether we will see a delay in the University year because of Covid 19.

This years finalists may not be able to sit finals in a May /June. Perhaps they will be put off until September.

A levels, GCSEs may also be delayed. Again they could be taken September/October

Future University courses could start in January.

And that could pave the way to students applying after they receive their results from 2022 onwards.

They'll be no one to mark them in Sept. Teachers do it and they have time in June/July as have no year 11 or 13s.

How will you decide which of the students are the ones who would go on to achieve their predicted grades and which are those that would not?

This isn’t ideal at all. People who think that they might do better than predicted grades etc but it’s the only thing we have at present.

It will get sorted one way or the other.

We are in a very unusual situation and there won’t be an ideal solution.

But how do universities deal with over-offering? A few courses would be 50% over numbers? Get loads to defer? Then what happens to next year’s children when loads of the places they would have had are full of deferrals from the year before?

People who think that they might do better than predicted grades etc but it’s the only thing we have at present.

Or they could just sit them... it's hardly the only option.