GCSE summer 2020 thread 6 - Carry on Corona Cohort, Further adventures aboard the Corona Charabanc.

[FoolsAssassin]

The summer of discovidtent for the Corona Cohort trudging on towards results day.
Ofqual have done them a little video to explain their results:

Please feel free to join us to see what twists the next bit has in store for us all.

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@ealingwestmum The scent of weed wafting from the Park Life teenagers on Wandsworth Common was eye watering this afternoon.

You’re so right Kingscote 😱 All the SW/West London parks have blurred into one. For DD Wandsworth is the least frequented due to the limited transport links to back home...one of my conditions of going out is that she can make a quick get away if it all becomes too much!

He’s doing A levels AnneofCleavage.

Just seen this about the results www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-53492283

@KingscoteStaff - Wimbledon Common is big enough to find a secluded spot. Bishops Park is also a favourite with Regents Park emerging as a contender. What is it with these teenagers and their parks?

Aww thanks all...I topped up an old CertEd with History and English modules to gain a BA (Hons). Was tough but worth it, hopefully starting funded Marketing Masters Sept.

@foolsAssassin looks like potentially good news fingers crossed.

Still waiting to find out what is happening on results day. I am not impressed that there was no communication before the end of term, but don't want to talk to DS about it too much as I don't want him over-invested in it in case results are disappointing. I know they will be fine for progression, just want the suspense of waiting for what the statistical model says over.

One interesting thing is how they might reconcile the facts that:

• in general boys are much more inclined to "up their game" at exam time, but still don't do as well as girls at GCSE;
• the govt education select committee wants to ensure that no particular group is disadvantaged by this year's approach;
• OFQUAL has said they will not change rankings

Did any teachers on here look at the gender split in their CAGs compared to normal?

I do still have concerns regarding the system in terms of equity. Is it really good enough that there will be no widening of gaps for disadvantaged groups? I do get that this is the most pragmatic solution but could more have been done at some level ? I.e impact assessments, unconscious bias training assessments? I know schools had enough to deal with the standardisation just seems so rigid.

I really can't find it now and I have looked but there was a study of unconscious bias don a few years back which then reported by gender and profession etc. Despite what the DfE and Ofqual have chosen to do in their presentation of teacher, teachers were right near the bottom of the league table (ie the best place) in terms of unconscious bias. It made the news at the time because the police were near/at the top.

Because there is so much impetus to improve the lot of boys, a lot of stats about girls are buried : they are way more likely to be informally excluded and have been shown recently to be far less ambitious at aged 15 than male counterparts of similar ability. Everyone in my school assumed boys were underperforming, agonised over their grades accordingly and then, not long before the grades were submitted the penny dropped that, in fact, year on year, the brighter girls were the underachievers in my school! As they often are in mixed sex , high performing comprehensives, apparently!

I do agree it's an imperfect system though and am not at ease with the rigid standardisation with no room for looking at circumstances affecting schools such as staffing crises. I think grammar and private schools (assuming consistent high results) are at an advantage and I think this will come out afterwards.

To answer your question monkey yes, we had to. Which is where the revelation about girls came from. I think teachers have been so 'trained' to assume (all) boys underachieve that they don't always spot if this is not true in their context.

It's also not, of course true nationally that it is all boys form all backgrounds who underachieve. We can see that in parliament!

Piggy, I don't think boys are generally at a disadvantage, I have just observed that for kids I know (mostly at comprehensives) the girls are more likely to work hard in the first 3/4 of the year, but the boys do some catch up at the end.

I agree that girls are often less confident than boys, and that part of the hard working thing is a reflection of their need to "do the right thing" whilst boys have the self-confidence to please themselves. At DS2's school there is a shocking lack of girls in set 1 maths (think it was 5/30) which I thought the school should be addressing. The lack of confidence impacts on exam performance as some girls are less able to move on from questions they can't do. At my niece's highly selective private school several girls sobbed/cried through one of the maths A level papers last year, one had to leave the room as she was disturbing the others. I am sure the emotion must have impacted on their ability to think straight. I don't think boys have that issue to the same extent.

What was the thing which made you realise your bright girls were under-performing? Was it because if you rank the students on the work up to lock-down the girls do better than the boys?

A little late but congratulations @OrangeCinnamon1! Hope you enjoy your holiday. Exciting to have a master's to look forward to as well.

We have a niece who got the wonderful but painful 69.44 mark for her classification yesterday. She's still delighted of course but she was dragged down by just one 58% module really, which I think is frustrating for her as pretty much everything else was a first/high 2:1. Our other graduating niece got a first less than a week ago so it's been double (virtual/outdoor) celebrations in our family!

It was some statistical analysis of girls performance against KS2 and target grades over the last few years, monkey. When you look at raw grades, more girls were in top sets (especially in English) and more girls got 9s and 8s : but way fewer that 'should ' have done and a whole swathe of high achieving boys were statistically getting the grades they should have done or better : for a whole host of reasons, one of which may well be last minute cramming , another one anxiety and possibly also girls over performance at KS2 in English, which is quite a well documented, but trickily inconvenient, statistical fact!

It is definitely true though that I teach some very clever girls who are horrifically unambitious (although you could argue they target happiness more and don't equate that with money and career?) and I also, sadly , teach many who are very ambitious and are then regarded as a bit arrogant and thrusting. I think we al know this persist into adult years (can you sense the bitterness of a woman who works in a school with an entirely male SLT !!?!)

Gender is so complex!

Putney Common too....5 months of boredom and the drug dealers are the only ones making money at the moment. Very worrying.

I got basically 69% in everything in my degree! I was that person...

I did get one 2:2 in a module where the man gave firsts to his favourites (he was later sacked for impropriety so I haven't made that up!) and a first in the Romantics where imo, I just chatted shit for the entirety of a 24 hour exam (yes, that's a real thing...) Hysteria and exhaustion seemed to inspire....

'Unambitious' is an interesting concept isn't it. Should everyone be ambitious to earn lots of money? Should we automatically aim for the highest earning careers available to us? Obviously vocation and happiness have to come in somewhere too.

Dd has been debating this. Who knows what she'll end up getting in these exams, but she's likely to get some 9s in her best subjects, so presumably would be expected to aim for A/A* at A Level. She's debating whether to do something like mental health nursing or occupational therapy at university - but noticed that even the best unis were mainly asking for B/B/B for these courses. She wondered if that meant she was selling herself short. Should she be doing Psychology and aiming to be a Clinical Psychologist because you need higher grades and they're better paid? It's a dilemma!

It definitely is and is an argument used by some to put young people off a raft of creative and/ or Public sector professions!

Definitely when I was at school thete was a muted response to me saying I wanted to be a teacher ( from teachers!). They wondered why I didn't try the BBC or Law.

I do think it more likely that a boy would look down on a uni if its offer grades were lower, from my experience . There is definitely an ever growing awareness of Russell Group in both genders which does lead some to not actually look more widely. But most students career paths at 15 still stick to the jobs they have heard of! And sadly, most state schools don't have very good careers advisors.

Fwiw , I think your DDs career choices all sound great. I taught a girl this year who should have been getting all 6s and above in everything, higher even, who was settling for scraping 4s because she wants to be a nursery nurse. Fine enough, but why not aim to one day own a nursery and run for the highest results any way?I do teach a lot of girls who lack that intrinsic desire to show what they are made of.

So I don't sound too negative, I also teach a girl who wants to go to Oxford! And will!

Your DD sounds very mature Crazy. All absolutely pertinent questions; I don’t have the answer either, other than to say their challenge is very real, as both paths incur similar debts to achieve, and yet the earnings outcomes can be so different, irrespective of grade requirements. I hate the thought of our young people having to be reliant on their future partners/parents etc to maintain a financially independent life, but there is a fine balancing act given their rising cost of living vs ours at their age.

Thanks both, she is very mature. She's also quite sensitive and suffers with anxiety, so I'm also not sure a high powered, competitive job would be for her.

But I agree @ealingwestmum that salary is important, to a certain extent. Thankfully it's not my decision to make!

It could be great to be so completely in your comfort zone academically so that you can focus on other things in life. Also, getting all 8/9 grades does not necessarily translate to A/A at A levels. DS's GF got excellent GCSEs, all A/A, but struggled at A level and got ACD. She wanted to do medicine and decided to do a Biomedical Science degree , which she is supposed to be starting in September, and apply for medicine as a graduate, but has recently come to realise that it would suit her better to do child nursing. She is trying to switch but she has enough points for adult nursing and not enough for child nursing.

If she had started by being more open minded about various healthcare roles, she would have had an easier time adjusting her expectations. She could still do medicine as a nursing graduate if she wants to.

As Piggy said about the girl who wants to be a nursery nurse, a mental health nurse who is strongest in his/her cohort has a good chance of getting the senior roles later on - I have a nurse friend who is a nurse practitioner who runs her own clinics and is well paid.

@ealingwestmum actually for nursing there is a lot of public funding support - in Wales you do not pay fees if you are willing to work for the Welsh NHS for a few years when you graduate, and the govt give a £5k-£8k annual bursary to all nursing students (£5k available to all, extra £3k dependent on family income) so nurses do not have to graduate with much debt.

That’s really interesting Monkey and good to hear. I know other public sector roles do incentivise by means of sign on/bursaries etc so I’m sure some of the training costs can be offset if they are retained in the profession for a while. Lots of research for DD to start...

Another potential aspiring teacher here Piggy, but she doesn’t want to enter the profession immediately. She tends to say ‘dunno’ when asked just to bat off all the negativity

Interesting points @Monkey2001. I know 8s and 9s at GCSE don't guarantee A/A* - I've had a few friends' children who've 'slipped' down to Bs at A Level, which are obviously still very good grades. Actually I'm glad dd is considering a wide range of caring professions, so that if A Levels are a step up for her, she can have realistic choices. And if her mental health takes a dive during the next two years, that will be particularly helpful.

I believe the NHS bursary is also available for occupational therapy - as is the Welsh offer of free tuition if you agree to work there, although I'm not sure whether it's been agreed for 2022 yet. It helps that dd is obsessed with Wales and is already keen on studying in Cardiff.

@crazycrofter that sounds great, it can be really difficult to focus in on what to do, so thinking healthcare in Cardiff could help!

I think the main reason the GF's grades slipped is that she is probably a high functioning dyslexic and was managing well at GCSE by hard work, but at A level the language issues seem to be more difficult to work around. I have known a couple of very bright girls with strong Biology knowledge who were not able to translate that into A level grades. That will not be an issue for most people, just saying that the correlation is not as high as you might expect. There is a report somewhere which is a bit out of date, but illustrates the point - I will see if I can find it again.

People who follow the OFQUAL statistical process may be interested in looking at the slide of an OFQUAL symposium which they have published - www.gov.uk/government/publications/awarding-qualifications-in-summer-2020 "Summer Symposium 2020 slide pack".

The A level results will need more moderation than GCSEs if grade inflation is going to be avoided. For A levels the proposed CAGs would see 13.8% of candidates getting A* compared to 7.8% last year, 37.8% A compared to 25.5% last year.

GCSEs less of a problem at the top end as CAGs for 7-9 are 31.6 compared to 24.7 last year and they have said that they will allow an extra 2%. More of a problem around the 3/4 boundary (not surprising that schools do not want their students to fail) as the CAGs have 82.4% of people getting 4-9 compared to 72.7% last year

Thanks @Monkey2001
I have been looking at DS’s school results from last year & percentage breakdown. So it’ll be interesting to see a comparison to this years.