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Connect with other parents whose children are starting secondary school on this forum.

Original poster

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

961 replies

FoolsAssassin · 16/06/2020 21:06

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.

Thread 5
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Thread 1 year 10

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Piggywaspushed · 06/08/2020 20:56

I so hope this boy gets his mark improved !

www.tes.com/news/young-artist-goes-viral-after-thanking-sqa-c-mark

clary · 06/08/2020 21:28

Wow Piggy didn't realise students could ask you what mark you gave and where you were in the class!

Not sure how that helps, and what if they ask, having got a 6 and thinking you will gave given them an 8, only to find you gave them a 6?

I did some assessing this summer fir HE students and was told I can't under any circumstances tell them what grade I gave. Tbh I'm tempted to stick with that if they ask. It seems pretty reasonable.

Piggywaspushed · 06/08/2020 21:33

Schools are supposed to have a policy about this. I ma hoping it is done via an exams officer to make it impersonal.

clary · 06/08/2020 22:33

Ah I am not a teacher in school any more, I tutor, hence the HE students.

They have my email tho - I would be really dismayed if any of them emailed me asking what mark I gave them. Not that I have any doubt or concern at all about the validity and accuracy of any of my marks, I totally stand by them, but still, I wouldn't fancy the confrontation.

YY if it is done anonymously in school that's better. But still, what if they came back to you as a 6th form student and were not happy?

Shimy · 06/08/2020 22:46

I don’t envy teachers this yr. They’ve all been put in a more than awkward and very difficult situation. DS got a 3 in French mocks as he thought French will be his collateral damage in order to concentrate study on all the others. He was planning on doing crash studyfor the real French exam and performed really well in the Oral just before lockdown. I’d be interested to see what he gets in that! DS made the teacher very angry during the course of the yr and the feeling was mutual so we’ll see what the 20th brings.

Wheresthebeach · 06/08/2020 23:31

I'm so relieved that there is an appeal process. Seems much fairer, and that at least you're able to have a conversation if the marks aren't what you'd hoped for.

Shame it took the controversy over the Scottish results to make them put this in place.

Monkey2001 · 06/08/2020 23:37

The appeal climb down is interesting. They have not changed the rules, just widened the interpretation of unusual cohorts. Helpful though.

Piggywaspushed · 07/08/2020 06:48

I am hoping this conceivably covers arrested, disgraced and sacked teachers in their 'fire, flood or famine' clause since the music dept at DS's school haven't had a decent set of results in a few years...!

To be fair they had to include that because they should have learnt that lesson from Grenfell and it is a normal grounds for special consideration and appeal anyway.

Piggywaspushed · 07/08/2020 06:49

It is certainly not a prospect I am savouring clary !

Decorhate · 07/08/2020 08:43

I’ve just seen this article. How can they have mislead teachers & pupils?

www.tes.com/news/GCSE-results-2020-teacher-grades-ignored

Piggywaspushed · 07/08/2020 08:54

If you read on it says 15 entries is a 'large entry'. Goodness.

Original poster
FoolsAssassin · 07/08/2020 08:55

Thanks for posting that Decorhate. What a complete shambles is all I can say.

DS’s school will be in a decent position to appeal I think as have had change of Head 4 terms ago and a lot of other changes in SLT since plus have retained a large number of those who would usually have gone to Grammar in previous years.

Sounds like his new place may well have a very very busy time on results day sorting this all out as inevitably some people are going to miss their grades by the sound of it.

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SeasonFinale · 07/08/2020 08:56

Clary - your students can force you to disclose this information in law as a subject access request. You can't simply refuse to give this.

Schools were not allowed to disclose centre assessed grades and ranks prior to submission. Legally they have to provide them if a subject access request is made but depending on the wording of the requests these may be quite time consuming. Also they have a month to respond or 40 days from results day if request is made before results day. So a SAR will mean you would miss cut off dates for appeals and Autumn exam entry dates so it would be more sensible to have a conversation with the school rather than steam in on a formal basis!

Piggywaspushed · 07/08/2020 09:02

We'll have to see how it all works out but - genuinely- that was a huge waste of teachers' time when much of the UK was moaning about why they weren't doing live lessons!

They might as well just have done it for us really!

The irony is , in said 'large entries' the rank ordering (given it could be across 400 students) is the hard bit. That's the bit that could be 'wrong'. The grades being wrong is a more subjective measure...

Original poster
FoolsAssassin · 07/08/2020 09:12

I know Piggy, I remember reading the bit about the ranking being hard part. Feel very pissed off on teachers’ behalf and for children - as you say, it took a lot of time at a very difficult time.

OP posts:
Alsoplayspiccolo · 07/08/2020 09:32

It all sounds like a holy nightmare for teachers and pupils.
What happened to BJ’s promise that every student will get what they need? I mean, fair enough, some students will fail in any given year, so his statement could never be true, but even so?

Wheresthebeach · 07/08/2020 09:36

They can’t really have ignored teacher submissions can they? That’s madness and unfair. Surely there will be a legal challenge as ignoring the work pupils have done can’t be a fair way of awarding grades

Piggywaspushed · 07/08/2020 09:36

It'll all be fine. And repeat...

Decorhate · 07/08/2020 09:54

Why would you ever believe anything Johnson says? He only ever says what is expedient at that moment.

OrangeCinnamon1 · 07/08/2020 10:23

@Wheresthebeach

They can’t really have ignored teacher submissions can they? That’s madness and unfair. Surely there will be a legal challenge as ignoring the work pupils have done can’t be a fair way of awarding grades
I'm quite worried if they have ignored teachers submissions but given weight to SATs results and the like.

Those poor secondary school teachers - at least they have used the ranking I suppose.

Was the announcement yesterday some kind of sweetener ?

Piggywaspushed · 07/08/2020 10:34

I think the appeals thing was a sweetner but also possibly to prevent too many resit entries.

They can't use KS2 for each individual child because that would alter rank order. I think they have used it to ascertain likely whole cohort performance for their sodding bell curves.

Fiddlersgreen · 07/08/2020 11:06

Surely most, if not all, subjects would have more than 15 entries?

This is getting me very confused now. I’ve dipped in and out of the info given here as I haven’t kept up with the fast moving page.
Everyone is so helpful and knowledgeable though so I am grateful to have found you all.
Can someone please tell me, what “statistical modelling” means? Is the algorithm people keep mentioning?
And does this mean they are deciding our children’s results having never seen their actual work or am I completely wrong there?

I’m getting more and more nervous as DS school is new so has no prior GCSE results to go by.

MadameMinimes · 07/08/2020 11:43

Fiddlersgreen- Yes and no. They will be using a statistical model to decide how many of each grade a school “would have” got in any particular subject. The rank orders given by the teachers will then be used to allocate the school’s allocated number of 9s to their top students, 8s to the next best, 7s to the next best and so on. Schools worked hard to produce fair grades so the majority of students will end up with the grade their teacher predicted, even though their teacher prediction wasn’t part of the formula used to calculate their grade. If the statistical model says that the school should have got 5 grade 9s in Drama and your child was in the school’s top 5 in the rank order they will get a 9 regardless of what grade the teacher predicted. If the model says that students 30-43 in the rank order should get grade 6s then your child will get a 6 if their teachers placed them somewhere in that range in the rank order.

Piggywaspushed · 07/08/2020 12:01

I do think.that modelling becomes complex though if the statistics based on prior performance at school level say one thing but the subject itself performs higher or lower than the stats suggest. Even more complex in new subjects. To give an example,last year my own predictions were pretty accurate. Predictions based on KS2 ( ie their target grades) were wildly out. Thank God that lot didn't have their grades allocated by algorithms.

MadameMinimes · 07/08/2020 12:13

They won’t be using any individual child’s prior data in the calculation of their grade. The adjustments will also be made at subject level. So if your subject usually performs a lot better than most other subjects in your school the grades that the kids get will reflect that. If your kids last year hugely exceeded their targets you can expect that your cohort this year will also exceed their targets.