GCSE resits November 2020

[TheSingingTowers]

We’ve been told by school that parents will have to pay for any GCSE resits in November. Has anyone else’s DC’s school said the same? Surely this is discriminatory against lower income families?

It is standard practice to ask students to pay. My advice to anyone at the moment is to wait until results come out before considering sitting the exams in the autumn.

But surely this is a different situation to other years? Otherwise only students from wealthier families will have the opportunity to sit the exam If they disagree with the teacher assessment grade.

Maybe they will use pupil premium money for those on the lowest incomes.

I don't think the school should have to pay for a resit if a pupil was never even predicted the grade they're re-sitting to get; they wouldn't normally.
However you'd hope that they might cover those who they had really expected to get a particular grade but who fell foul of the statistical adjustment.

It may be sense, even if they will pay for some, to make it clear that it shouldn't be assumed that they will. Until they know the extent of the adjustments, they'd be rash to promise anything the budget might not cover.

The other thing is that pupils and parents tend to think GCSE grades are a bigger deal than they really are (mainly because schools have spent the last two years telling them how important they are). In reality, once they've got started on the next stage, nobody takes that much notice of exactly what GCSE results they've got (universities will be more interested in predicted grades for A-level), and everyone's going to take 2020 results as being somewhat approximate anyway. Apart from maths and English, there's probably not a great deal to be gained by re-taking.

As far as I know very little detail has been published so far about the Autumn resits. For a normal remark situation, you get refunded the fee if your grade goes up. There may be a similar mechanism for the resits but who knows.

Those who aren’t pupil premium but who can’t afford to take the risk will end up just accepting the predicted grades, whether they agree or not, whereas children from wealthier families will be able to have another go and take the better out of the two grades. I think this is really unfair. This is an unprecedented situation and everybody should be on a level playing field.

Your phrasing is misleading I think OP; it's not about "agreeing" with the grade. These will be the students' GCSE grades, just as they are in any year.

In any year, if a student feels they could have done better, they may choose to retake, tho in practice few do, apart from the crucial English and maths. It's not that they don't agree!

Teachers (and I know lots) will have spent considerable time assessing and calculating the grades students should be awarded. They will have taken everything into account and made an honest assessment. If students feel they could do better, they have the chance to retake. But tbf, most will not bother, and not for money- related reasons.

Welcome to the world.

This is not a slight against teachers as I know how much effort has gone into getting the right grades for students. Some kids may feel like they would have done better in the actual exam though and I guess I thought that due to the circumstances this wouldn’t be at cost to parents. By not “agreeing” I really meant if the student genuinely feels they would have done better.

U think you have to take into account the huge amount of work staff will have done before submitting these grades OP- I doubt there will be too much room for significant disagreement
As yet there is still a possibility that the government will find retakes as these are exceptional circumstances.

School have a limited budget and have already paid for the exams that they were entered for in June. Exam boards are still providing a service in standardising and awarding grades so they will say the fees paid already covers this work. They haven't said what exam fees will be for the November gcses yet.

However I do tend to agree that the disadvantaged will be more disadvantaged unless there is some form of waiver or means testing or the government covers the costs for the schools.

The problem is that schools already spent the exam budget for these children - on the entries they had in the summer!
Schools haven't been given refunds from the boards, even though exams were cancelled. (Boards still had to pay staff, for exams to be set, despite them not being sat, to collate grades and apply the moderation model, and issue results. They'll also need to pay for new papers to be written for the autumn series. The only thing they've not paid out for is marking)
Schools are struggling to staff classes, they have no extra money anywhere in most cases.

How do you expect the exams to be paid for?

Schools now have to find extra space to put on exams (erm- with social distancing there is NO space in schools to be found), staff the exams with invigilators (who don't actually work for free!), rearrange lessons around Y12s that want to do resits etc etc. It is a nightmare for most schools. They certainly can't find what is essentially a resit too.

Something else to keep in mind is that the schools have had NO refunds from exam boards for the summer sessions. At DH’s school this is many thousands of pounds. To pay again would really drastically impact on budget. Essentially the extra exams will be like an ‘appeal’ which has always been paid by the student not the school.

Schools have had no refunds though because the exam boards are still working to provide results but just in a different manner ie. collating standardisation data for schools and cohorts and modelling etc and still issuing results and certificates. Why would they be doing this for free. They are businesses after all.

I don't think there will be many resits. You aren't going to be better at a subject you haven't studied since March. There will be one off cases but few students will resit anything outside of maths and English. Why would you bother? Once you've moved on to sixth form/college /apprenticeship your results become less relevant.

It has always been standard practice.

You will get a refund if the grade changes.

Happily I thought that was just for remarks not resits? Resitting is different.

@SeasonFinale the biggest cost for exam boards is the examiners - those marking the papers or assessing coursework. This year they have none of that cost and they have not honoured any examiner contracts. I read about this in an article last week by a group of people who usually examine PE.

It will be interesting to see if the fees for the resits will be the same given boards have spent less over the summer with not having to actually mark any papers!

I think there will not be a lot of resits. Possibly more in English/Maths for students who have not achieved a 4. I don't see how the vast majority would do better if they haven't studied the material for months and have started A Levels, Btecs etc

Corblimbea -and Bobbybobbins : but this year they have the expense of working our historic data modelling for each and every school, each and every prior cohort attainment etc so it is swings and roundabouts. There will have been an awful lot of extra work just done by different employees. I suspect there will have then been some form of audit on their modelling. Its not as though there is no cost at all. Until such time as the new exam fees are published we don't know what they are. They may be lower to allow for some form of credit for any overpayment (but I suspect not).

How will they grade the higher levels given that anyone with an 8 or 9 probably would not bother to resit?

How much do they cost?

Julmust you can look on the exam board websites for fees now but around £40 per GCSE subject.
Schools have had some money refunded and government is apparently covering anything more than the refunded amount but I'm recommending my school ask students for a deposit which will be returned in full once they've sat all their exams. Just because there is a lot of work which goes into making exams happen, we'll have to pay for invigilators once they've come in and set up and unless a student withdraws several weeks before the exam we lose the fee so if students don't turn up we could have wasted a lot of money which we can't afford.

Schools Still Used the Abandoned Algorithm.

Up to 1,900 schools still used a similar algorithm to the one the government abandoned due to "too many significant inconsistent and unfair outcomes". 1,900 schools sent their CAGs to FFT Datalab who sent back to them, information about how many grades to change to fit their school's 2019 data. 1,000 schools sent them to FFT again to further check their CAGs.

I'm writing to FFT, my MP, Ofqual, my school, exam boards, any journalist whose written about the algorithm. I suggest you share this information and do the same. My child's grades were at or lower than his most recent sustained, attainment grades.

Grades should have been, per Ofqual, "[a CAG] which represented the grade that student would have been most likely to achieve if teaching and learning had continued and student had taken their exams as planned."
AND
"Working At Grades" as well as "Target Grades" (FFT Target Data) were not to be used as per Ofqual, "note that these centre assessment grades [CAGs] are not the same as - working at grades (the grade a student is currently working at) [and] - target grades". Rather, the DfE and Ofqual stated when determining CAGs to use "student's knowledge, skills and abilities in relation to the subject. This evidence should inform teachers' professional judgements about each student's likely performance at the time of the exam."; "those judgements should be holistic, based on the range of evidence that schools and colleges have. So students shouldn't worry about one disappointing mock exam result"; "performance over the course of study"; "review data, classwork, bookwork"; "performance on any class or homework assessments"; "signed off by at least 2 teachers [or an equal] in that subject .... [stating] fairly represent the grades".

Please see the following: ffteducationdatalab.org.uk/2020/06/gcse-results-2020-a-look-at-the-grades-proposed-by-schools/?fbclid=IwAR1i6OB4gEvjEcBa4yCWW9xYW83S5EM1K2WiWanh-BKoqTpo1Q0V2Z9-V1g

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/909035/6656-2_-_Executive_summary.pdf

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/887018/Summer_2020_Awarding_GCSEs_A_levels_-_Info_for_Heads_of_Centre_22MAY2020.pdf