GCSE Grading & Class Rankings - News

[Flossiefoo]

Has anyone heard today or recently that teachers are to submit class rankings for each subject as opposed to submitting a grade they would expect a pupil to have achieved if siting the exam proper ?

I was under the impression that the class rankings were in addition to a grade submission to the examinations board.

Where did you hear this?

It is grade and ranking within that grade, per school. Isn't it?

Where have you heard they aren't submitting grades?
How on earth would that work for low entry subjects such as drama where a school's cohort could vary year by year?

This is what our school said:

“To make sure that grades are as fair as possible across schools and colleges, exam boards will put all centre assessment grades through a process of standardisation using a model being developed with Ofqual. We expect it will look at evidence such as the expected national outcomes for this year’s students, the prior attainment of students at each school and college (at cohort, not individual level), and the results of the school or college in recent years. It will not change the rank order of students within each centre; nor will it assume that the distribution of grades in each subject or centre should be the same. The process will also recognise the past performance of schools and colleges. However, if grading judgements in some schools and colleges appear to be more severe or generous than others, exam boards will adjust the grades of some or all of those students upwards or downwards accordingly.”

Make of that what you will.

Exactly. They submit grades and rank order.
Then the boards look and if they think a school has been over optimistic (or pessimistic) they move some people down or up a grade, with the pupil closest to the grade boundary changing first.

The rankings are the most important part - this will not be changed by the exam boards but the grades can be. Best not to worry too much about it for now - we are forbidden from telling students or parents their grade, rank, or any constituent part of the process until results day. Make sure your child keeps studying incase they need to resit - teachers won't be available to support them as much as they'd like in the autumn

Pestov - make sure your child keeps studying?? But what? How will they know what subjects they might have to resist? Dd has been doing no school work.

I'm guessing the two go together, no? So if a school usually gets ten 9 grades in history for example, that's likely to be in the top sets and teachers would then rank pupils in order from most to least likely to achieve a 9. If they can be no more than 10% on the last few years grades I think it was, then that would mean the 10th pupil on the list may not achieve a 9 or the 10th and the 11th might if they go up as a year. That was my understanding.

If a school had a higher number of high achievers that year, demonstrated by the KS2 SATs, i think they could get more than the usual number of 9s?

Yes, I think so but I remember reading it would be no more than 10% more or less increase/decrease based on the schools last 3 years performance. The Ofqual blog says teachers should:

First, to make a judgement about the grade that each student was most likely to have achieved, if they had taken their exams in summer 2020. To do this, they will take account of all available evidence including school and college records, mock exams, and non-exam assessment (NEA) that a student has done.
Second, to rank each student relative to others for who they also judge would have got the same grade. For example, if they judge that 8 students would have been most likely to achieve a grade B at A level or a grade 4 at GCSE, they should rank those 8 students from 1 (the most secure/most likely to achieve the grade) to 8 (the least secure/least likely).

Then it's all the standardisation procedure.

Students should still be doing a little work each day - keeping their finger in the pie. Any subjects where they have underachieved throughout Y11 should be a focus, and maths / English if likely to be a grade 5 or less in case of compulsory resits

I was under the impression that the class rankings were in addition to a grade submission to the examinations board

Not a teacher but I do have a child waiting for results and I thought the ranking within the class was what was going to be used for the grades. I'd thought they would then apply some kind fo statistical programme to the rankings.

Tbh it Is what it is so I'm not closely following all the details.

It's what LittleLebowski quoted from Ofqual in her second para at 20:42

Thought it might be useful to link to Ofqual's letter to students as at 15th May.
www.gov.uk/government/publications/awarding-qualifications-in-summer-2020/letter-to-students-summer-2020-grading

The rankings are the key thing. They will submit a grade and rankings within the grade but the ranking is key.

If Ofqal decide that according to their formulas, 20% in school X should get an A in a particular subject and the school has given 24% an A then the lowest ranked 4% given the A* by the school will go down to the A grade bracket. They will then be the top students in the A grade allocation.

It is absolutely the right way to do it. The ranking will be within the whole school year group and not just within a class.

Schools which historically get high %s with high achievement will get it again this year.....as they would have if exams had been sat.

Some students may end up with lower and some with higher grades than the school said, based on the number crunching to achieve parity across the whole cohort in the country, with previous years.

Most students do not achieve their UCAS predictions in exams and won't this year either. Most will still go onto uni and it will probably be a buyers market this year so lower grades than usual will be taken, and bearing in mind many Unis take students with less than their offer (even the good ones and even competitive courses) most students will be fine.

When might you lose out? If you have been right at the bottom through the whole course and that was a consistent under-performance in relation to your ability. We are not talking one poor essay or one poor mock exam. If you are ranked right at the bottom of the year group, whatever is the schools usual lowest grade, is probably what you will be given, unless the year group has shown itself more able than previous ones. Of course it's unusual for someone who has consistently been at the bottom of the year group for the whole of 18 months to suddenly pull it out of the bag in the exam, but it is a possibility and that student won't get a chance to do that this year. But they will be able to sit an exam in the autumn to show what they can do if they feel the grade they are given really doesn't reflect what they would have achieved. In the vast majority of cases, it will deliver something which is very accurate and similar to what the exams would have delivered.

@WombatChocolate caveat to that is that the cohort's past data will set the baseline not just previous years data in a school. So if this year 11 have higher base scores then higher GCSE results will be expected. It helps small schools whose % can vary widely year to year because of a few students.

The letter from Ofqual to students says that ideally the grades will be issued earlier than the original dates in August. I wonder if that will happen.

They initially said earlier but it is now very definitely the original results days of 13 August for A levels and 20 august for GCSEs.

Yes if a student knows that they have not performed well in any of their subjects and are not likely to get grades they hope for then they would be well advised to keep on touch of their studies to make taking the autumn exams easier for themselves.

Perhaps MN could amend the title to No News because there isn't any change at all.

My son isn't studying at all. He is borderline ASD and as far as he is concerned school ended that Friday.

Re sits will only happen if he takes them.next year. It's all so stressful. I kind of wish they got the grades sooner just to know but what can do? Nothing really. It's hard convincing kids with rigid ideas that maybe it might a good idea to keep up the studies. What will be. Will be.

That's what I thought too Season. Was quite surprised in the letter that they didn't actually give those dates to the question 'when will I get my results'. We have told Ds it will be the 20th August and don't expect them before then.

To be honest I wouldn't recommend studying for anything other than Eng and Maths unless they really need it for further studies.

English and maths will only be compulsory resit if you get below a grade 4.

Does anyone know when the Autumn exams will happen?

Lego Ds has ASD. He has not touched a piece of gcse work since the 18th March!

No one knows autumn dates yet.

Mumsneedwine, yes - I did mention that if the cohort within a school were considered more /less able than usual then adjustments would be made to reflect that.

I think it's a good system. Schools will end up with their usual spread of grades, adjusted for the ability of the cohort. Plus for anyone who feels the outcome is unfair or doesn't reflect what they would have done in an exam......they can still do the exam in the autumn to reflect their true ability.

I suspect few will go for the autumn exam in reality. Although some will be disappointed in results day (as they always are) most will get places at uni and move into the next stage. Not that many who are disappointed by their A Level results choose to resist and it will be similar this time too.

The system will deliver a fair result for the vast majority of results day and for the few who really feel not sitting the exam itself denied them the grade they were capable of but had failed to show their teachers through the whole course, they still have the chance to show that. It really is as good a situation as could be hoped for.

In reality, I'd think the grades this summer will actually be more reflective of student performance than they usually are. This system might have some flaws, but the exam system also has flaws in terms of the possibility of very niche/not quite clearly on the specification Qs and unreliable marking. After a year of exams, we always know that X amount of students gained a different mark through a re-mark, but we don't know how many more would have been adjusted if they were al re-marked or how many would have gained a different score if a Q was just very slightly re-worded or one small element of the exam adjusted to remove ambiguity etc.

What is also good is that the ranking information is not told to students or parents and the fact it isn't the school who determines the final grade.