A-Level estimated grades/Covid-19

[MMyers]

Call out for any A-Level students who will be impacted by estimated grades this summer - The Unis of Birmingham and Nottingham would love to hear your views in our (anonymous) survey: bham.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_es1zCwBzhxYgrU9?Q_CHL=social&Q_SocialSource=twitter

They aren't estimated grades - they are centre assessed grades.

More than slightly worrying that someone from Uni of Nottingham would be referring to grades as "estimated grades" .

Agree to some extent - the terminology here is vague. The processes for awarding grades are as you will know that schools award the grades they anticipate and then rank their pupils. These local school rankings form the basis for an overall nationally adjusted award. Its the new/different process and the impact this has on pupils that we are interested in researching.

In a lot of quarters (e.g. mainstream media) this is being referred to as 'estimated grades' (as opposed to exam based grades etc). Our use of that terminology and similar is just to flag up what we are interested in. In the final analysis of course pupils will not receive an 'estimated grade' they will simply be awarded their A-Level grades.

I meant that you have yourself referred to them as "estimated grades" on a education forum. You are feeding into the myth that these students are merely being handed their grades.

Most parents who frequent these boards are fully aware of the process including standardisation, prior cohort attainment and so forth so I meant it was disconcerting to see academics using such dismissive terminology.

Actually I think the truth is that nobody knows whether they will end up being more in the "Centre Assessed" direction or "Estimated" - depends how much the statistical moderation changes the CAGs.

I forwarded the link to 18yo DD.

They will actually be centre assessed or calculated but never "estimated" which does a disservice to the students

Hmmm, this is semantics. The order of grades within a school will come from the school and should have a high confidence level, but if a school has an atypical cohort, the grades determined by the statistical modelling may or may not be described as estimates.

Big cohorts and selective schools where there is less variation will be OK, and I think GCSEs should be OK as they are likely to be within 1 grade of teacher estimates, but we just don't know how non-selective schools with outliers will fare.

Estimates are generally the result of a calculation, the prevailing view in the press is that around a third of CAGs will be changed. Of course it is also true that if people did exams a significant number would have had a bad exam and would not have done as well as expected.

@lljkk

I forwarded the link to 18yo DD.

that's great - thank you!

Call out for any A-Level students who will be impacted by the new arrangements to award grades this summer - The Unis of Birmingham and Nottingham would love to hear your views in our (anonymous) survey: bham.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_es1zCwBzhxYgrU9?Q_CHL=social&Q_SocialSource=twitter