GCSE Summer 2020 Thread 7 : Carry on Corona Cohort, Cruising or Crawling to The Final Countdown

[OrangeCinnamon1]

Welcome all to the 7th Thread for this year's GCSE cohort ...or the Corona Cohort as has been termed by @FoolsAssassin.

Some of us have been here since I started first thread back in 2010, some will be new. Everyone has been friendly and helpful in the past. It is hoped this will continue. Going forward we intend to stay in secondary so any new threads should have 'GCSE Summer 2020 Thread # : Carry on Corona Cohort' in title just to make it easier to find.

From now on our DS/DD may go down various paths so we decided not to be exclusionary and stay right here in Secondary

Thread 1 The first GCSE yr 10

Thread 6 last thread

Adding thanks to @neutralintelligence for the posts - very helpful.

So we are going to get free appeals but as pointed out - how flipping long is that going to take? The students will need decisive confirmation and quickly.

As to major Tory bods having y11 or y13 children...correct me if I am wrong but I’m 95% sure that both David Cameron’s daughter Nancy and Michael Gove’s daughter Beatrice are Y11 students expecting GCSE results this year? That could be an interesting one!

It is also disappointing to see commentators failing to educate themselves about the reality of the grade lowering before going on TV to give an opinion.
A normally reasonable educated commentator was just on Sky saying things like 'we can't just everyone an A'. That is not actually what would have happened if CAGs were used nor is it what anyone is asking for.
They shouldn't be broadcasting this kind of statements as fact.

Boris Johnson in March 2020: "No student will be disadvantaged"
August 2020: 2 million GCSE grades lowered.

Could someone please explain this if teachers have rank ordered a class for example in English and no 1 in the rank has their grade lowered does that mean all the students get their grades lowered as well? Or is it that grades would be more likely to be lowered going down the rank order rather than at the top of the order.

They're graded across the cohort and then ranked within the grade. So if we give 5 grade 9s and the algorithm determined that there should only be 3, numbers 4 and 5 move to 8, and so on. It doesn't necessarily mean that everyone will move down because there will be bigger groups of grades in the middle.

tech.newstatesman.com/public-sector/how-the-a-level-results-algorithm-was-fatally-flawed

Apologies if already linked.

So if they went to using mocks ( which is just as awful in my opinion) what happens to the likes of my son who were sick. Only took three. And one of those he got a 2 in as he only sat one paper.

What was the point in asking teachers if they were going to ignore them anyway.

I am actually getting crosser and crosser about this the more time is passing. My son was due to get 5’s in most things. Which was fine. Would have passed and moved on. If they downgrade him what then.

@FlyingPandas Beatrice is sixth form I believe ( not sure if lower or upper)

I think Government might be badly miscalculating here. They are working on assumption that election a long time away and people voted for Brexit despair knowing family members would be effected so still will retain their core voters next election.

There will be a lot whose Grandchildren have been hit by this, some of whom will have contributed significantly to their education both financially and in other ways. Brexit is not very tangible. A piece of paper and lost university places are. I think they are making a serious miscalculation if they think this will go away and it will so for them as the student loans did for Lib Dem’s.

@Nard75

Could someone please explain this if teachers have rank ordered a class for example in English and no 1 in the rank has their grade lowered does that mean all the students get their grades lowered as well? Or is it that grades would be more likely to be lowered going down the rank order rather than at the top of the order.

Nard75 Does this mean that the students at the top and bottom of the ranking are more at risk of having their grades altered, or similarly those on the border of a grade boundary?

www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-politics-53773796

@singingstones (hope I got the right poster?) it seems education committee is being recalled for Tues.
Is it too much to hope for parity across the system?

@ 0DimSumMum0 I don’t know the answer to that but my thinking was that if rank order was lowered from the top then that would mean all students in that subject would be lowered as well.

This is all an utter shambles they should’ve just cancelled this school year and everybody started again in September. It would’ve been better than this cock up. The exams boards have has 5 months to sort this out but this is what it has come to.

Go Andy Burnham!

Don’t think that it’s as simple as the bottom of one grade ranking simply moving down to the top of the next grade ranking and that pattern following down through the grades.
If, for example, the school ranked a student bottom of level 5 but the algorithm had decided that there must be one level 3 in that cohort in that school, the bottom level 5 will become level 3.

THAT is where the problem lies.

I watched a YouTube results video yesterday where a girl was moved from predicted A* to B (ie 2 grades down) but her friend, who had missed the whole of the first year of maths A level and had a CAG of E was put up to a C (presumably because the algorithm said that no-one should get an E, based on last year’s results).
He couldn’t believe his luck.

So now we know that appeals won’t cost anything. However currently the grounds for appeal by schools are so strict that schools cannot appeal. Speaking to a friend tonight-47% of grades were lowered but under government criteria she cannot appeal any of them. So I hope they are going to relax the criteria so all schools and colleges can appeal individual results.

It is appalling. DD is an anxious mess - her friendship group are all feeling the same. They are a group of hardworking girls - not automatic straight A students but all with different strengths and weaknesses. DD’s major worry is maths but she should have been on track for 9s in her languages. She has worked so hard - she has revised steadily since Y10 and it was all really coming together with exam technique etc when the schools closed.

Even then she didn’t stop working just in case teachers used ‘attitude to learning’ to gauge her ranking. Once June came she switched to sixth form prep work for A-levels.

All their lives I’ve told my DC that if they work hard and do their best they will get the best results they can and have more choices in life. My DD has gone from being confident of hard work paying off and getting the grades she needs for sixth form to an anxious, weepy shadow, and I am beyond angry about it.

I too want to thank Neutral for her clear posts.

I too don't think GW will resign. He'll just ride the wave. Like Cummings.

My Ds1 seems ok. But we are very pragmatic. My Dh works for a big water company and has to go on several mental health courses. They always teach that it's pointless to worry about things out of your control. I have said to Ds1 that we'll deal with whatever it throws at us on the day, no matter how bad.

Saying that he's bright, but lazy. I'm hoping he'll pass most. I'm a bit worried that he won't pass triple science.

Will it be enough to get into his school 6th form. Hope so.

I'm not talking to Ds1 about all this shite. That's because I'm not talking to him at all. Because he's been so incredibly rude to me for weeks, getting worse and worse for months, particularly awful this week, where I shouted at him, twice, on Tuesday and then again on Wednesday, so much so, that pre sitting down to work at 9am, I'd made myself hoarse with a sore throat.

I told him I was 'done'. And wasn't going to speak to him again. Until he could show me respect.

As I said before, this is such a nice thread. I'm sure we'll all support each other, no matter what Thursday brings.

I came on here to post something positive - DDs school has suprised and impressed me. She received a letter stating she will receive an email with her GCSE results on and there will be a further email with her centre assessed grades and mock results.

I really thought I would have a fight on my hands to get that information as usually not very forthcoming.

She will then get a phone call from 6th form team to talk about her results and next steps.

I'm really happy with that. Sounds very sensible and well thought out :-)

BUT then I read @RedskyAtnight comments "I think it's likely to be much worse for GCSE. They are only using 2 years of past data (3 at A Level)" !!!
I worked out that DD "may be ok" using the last 3 years of data but- looks like she could miss out on quite a few grades using the last 2 :-(

In the long run mentally for DD I think as long as she sees that the CAG results are what she feels she deserves she will be ok. She will think she could have done better in the exam Im sure, but she knows that isn't the results she will get. I think she can cope mentally with an unfair system if she feels she did well herself. I predict there will be tears and shouting but in the long run ok..

It shouldn't be like this though should it - it should be fair for all.

Interesting - thank you @OrangeCinnamon1
(Yes it's me!)

Hopefully they will be addressing GCSEs with some urgency - at least they have brought in the safety net of AS grades for the Y13s (not much use for Y12s who should have taken AS this year, but they are allowed to have their AS result discounted when it comes to A2). There's no fallback like that for GCSEs, there is some literacy and numeracy testing but we don't have SATs.

Wales actually moderated down a higher percentage of A level grades but there seems to have been less fuss, whether that's just because the big story is always England, or because the AS grade thing has helped, I don't know. It would be interesting to know how many people have made or not made their university offers.

Have got everything crossed for a) unmoderated CAGs and b) teachers have not been too stingy. And if Scotland and Wales have both gone down that route, surely England will have to. 🤞🙏

@Alsoplayspiccolo I saw that video too! Her poor Mum was so lovely and determined for her to appeal and get what she deserved. Such a horrible situation

Oblomov
It’s so hard when they behave like that, isn’t it?
DD is generally pretty easy going (but has a tendency to whinge) and is quick to apologise when she goes too far, but DS (14)can be appallingly rude in his attitude, and I can see we are going to have to be very firm and consistent over the next few years unless we want a towering, obnoxious individual on our hands.

I hope things improve for you soon - I think the last 5 months and the prospect of results is taking its toll on everyone involved, even if they don’t quite realise that’s what it is.

Oblomov, friend saying the same about her DS. Mine weirdly being difficult all summer with me actually gone the other way. I think there is a huge amount of pressure now building and they are all responding in different ways. A lot of my friends are feeling very anxious too and now going to be a difficult week staying calm for the DC’s. Even if DS does come out ok I am going to be very upset if others aren’t now.

Heifer that is good news and we need that ! I hope more schools do this. I think for most with the GCSES it will be ok in a bit but after the year we have all had we shouldn’t be going through this.

Local Tory MPs now offering their support to people which is really good to see. Mine is silent. Have looked on Twitter and seen quite a few protest being organised- London, Bristol , Brighton , Liverpool and Manchester so far.

seashellsaand, yes, her mum was lovely. Didn’t that vid show brilliantly the winners and losers in all this? One predicted A*, the other E...and they end up a grade apart. 😡

And Ofqual would have us believe that teacher’s CAGs are over-inflated!!!

Grateful to Tobias Elwood and Connor Burns for doing the right thing in this situation.

Thank you Assassin & Piccolo.