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

Am I dreaming or is this for real?! Students can substitute mock exam results for their GCSE awards if ‘validated’ by schools...

amp.theguardian.com/education/2020/aug/11/keir-starmer-england-must-alter-course-on-a-level-grades?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_WhatsApp&__twitter_impression=true

Yes @sandybayley any suggestions on wording? Is the basic premise no chiding for disappointment in grades across the spectrum? Well aware that a 6 (or insert mark) can feel like a success to some and not so much to others for whatever reason

@Janie74

It seems to be real. It's an utterly insane idea - how on earth can these be validated? Although could be good for DD as she got a very untypical and surprising "7" in her chemistry mock - we were hoping that would boost her usual 5s into a prediction of 6......

@HPFA
It’s bonkers! Mocks vary so much from school to school I just don’t see how this can be fair - if they’re trying to avoid lawsuits I fear they’re in for a nasty shock!

From a personal point of view it’s good news for DD if it comes to pass but looking at the bigger picture it’s insane!

I would be over the moon if they allow this!! DD got great mocks and worked hard for them!! Exceeded her predicted grades and then some!! Please let this be true!!!!!

@Janie74

I'm watching Edu Twitter at the moment - it's fair to say the universal reaction is absolute horror.

I could in theory look at DS’s results as I have access to his email. I don’t intend to though as they are his results and I think it would be wrong.

I may possibly look and tell him the email is there but I wouldn’t open it.

It really is difficult to come up with a scheme which will be reliable, but I think the majority of GCSE students will get close to where they should be, just hope the govt forces OFQUAL to make appeals accessible and free for the minority who don't. There will be disappointed people, and they may not be the same people who would have been disappointed by real results. For most people there is not the same urgency to sort GCSE errors as there is for A levels.

I want people to share good news as well as getting support for disappointment as it can appear all doom and gloom if only the disappointed people sh

... share because the happy ones don't want to brag. I think we want a true reflection of how this year looks.

Isn't what they are saying, that those who wish to substitute their calculated results for their mocks can do so, not that everyone has to. Sounds alright to me.

twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1293313752520175618

It appears that if you don't like your grade you can make an appeal to have it based on your mock grade instead.

Ofqual will be asked to determine how mocks can be "validated". Details to be "worked out".

Or, as per usual with this government, make up a policy, rush it out to the press and then let some other poor buggers try and make it work. Then blame those poor buggers when it all turns into a sodding mess.

Like Brexit, PPE, Track and Trace......

Just to clarify, it sounds alright so long as substituting with mocks is mandatory because not everyone did well in the mocks. DH just asked why not just use the teacher predicted grades? surely this would be fairer and a more realistic representation of student ability.

I saw that too @Janie74

I think it's a terrible idea.

My daughter did her mocks at the end of November, my school has two sets of year 11 Mocks - December and March. They literally had them in the two weeks before lockdown. In that time, students progress so much. So my kids would be able to use their March Mocks, whilst my daughter would only be able to use her November ones. That's in no way fair.

There are also massive discrepancies in the way teachers mark exams. I'm an examiner and use mocks to train my students in the mistakes I want them to avoid. So I tend to mark mocks a little more harshly than I Mark the actual exams. I tend to use the paper I had marked as an examiner in the summer, but all the things that were debated as to whether students should get benefit of the doubt on, I tend not to give but go through why an examiner might not allow it, if that makes sense. I also know the things that the board are getting stricter on (for example, they were less generous on spag last year than the year before), so I did suit and told them why (without telling them this was exam board policy now). But other teachers who are not examiners will not mark in this way, indeed, in my faculty I had a couple of teachers who completely over marked and when I moderated their results, I sometimes had to pull them down by up to two grades.

If teachers are not examiners and have not been standardised, then the marking will be incredibly variable between centres. Simply because teachers have different philosophies about how they mark mock exams.

As many are now pointing out, this policy is completely illogical.

The reason the Teacher assessed grades were to be "moderated" was because teacher grading wasn't to be trusted. But mocks are set and marked by the same teachers!!

And teachers now understandably furious that they've spent all that time assessing and ranking only to find out that it might all have been a waste of time.

I think this sounds pretty dubious especially announced at this late stage.

Surely will cause chaos? For A level marks won’t students need the correct grade immediately. How does that work?

When my daughter took her mocks she was very upset that lots of the others in her year had got hold of the mock papers in advance and prepared their answers getting very high marks as a result.
At the time I was consoling her that she’d done the right thing not cheating and that it wouldn’t pay off in the long run...

Can’t imagine how stressful this must all be for those working in education !

@Sarahbeans my DD also did her mocks last November and they hadn't finished some of their GCSE courses when they went into lockdown. It would be terribly unfair for those who did mocks so early on to be judged against others who had their mocks later in the school year. We also have a number of schools nearby who do GCSEs over three years and finished the coursework in year 10 so have spent year 11 doing past papers and mocks. I also feel really guilty as DD was struggling at mocks so I told her not to worry, they were only practice and as long as she learnt from them the experience and knuckles down to her revision for the actual GCSEs she'd be okay. If only I could take that advice back.

@mummabear74

I really empathise with this;

" I also feel really guilty as DD was struggling at mocks so I told her not to worry, they were only practice and as long as she learnt from them the experience and knuckles do"

My daughter was quite cocky before her mocks, didn't want to listen to any advice, knew how to revise etc... and we decided to let her learn the hard way. Sure enough, she did well on the subjects she wasn't very good at, because she had revised those, but did extremely mediocre in her best subjects because she hadn't bothered revising those ones properly. Of course, I knew this was going to happen but at the time thought it was going to be a good learning curve... and it almost was as she had downloaded the revision app by Feb half term and made her schedule and started it... but so little time to show her improvement.
But, yeah I now feel guilty too. If I had of insisted...

@Sarahbeans

It’s a recipe for complete inconsistency! They might as well just go with CAGs which did at least draw from a range of evidence and alongside rankings would have been carefully considered and discussed by teaching staff. Using the mocks as backup hardly makes for a level playing field - I can almost hear the education lawyers rubbing their hands together in glee!

Well that is Er, Interesting news to wake up to !
DS sat a full set in September and then there were some in. March but he missed 3 days and was very off colour for the rest, probably with Covid following return of the ski trip and his tutor from Italy (which he kindly shared around the rest of us, still wheezing and coughing). We don’t know all his results from then , just the November set.

I feel a bit bad as said to lift share’s parents not worry too much about the March mocks as will do him good if doesn’t do so well as motivate him to work for real thing. He was also ill during them as DS was and friend’s daughter was coughing so much she had to leave the room in a couple of exams.

But I know logically there is nothing to feel bad about , how could we have possibly known what would happen? We went into this year thinking the biggest issue was going to be exam stress in May and June and then the world imploded. We said what we thought was the right thing at the time.

With the Maths it is not unusual to resit along side Level 3 courses.

Results day I would really like to hear the successes. I am very mindful there may well be some who don’t get what they deserve due to school’s prior performance and I think that will be harder to deal with than exam results as out of the individual’s hands. It’s sounding like it will be straight to appeal which will be a stressful time of there are 6th form places dependent on it. I’m sure as a group we can support those who have to go through it whilst celebrating for those who have got what they were hoping for (or better). It was fine on DD’s thread so can be done if everyone mindful of what others are going through and i’m sure we all will be.

So how is this going to work with the mocks, they have to be exam conditions - take.n in another setting other than classroom as with main exams? DS’s school did some in the hall but some during lessons in the classroom. Does that mean those in classroom don’t count leaving him effectively with no mock results in some subjects?

They haven’t thought this through have they, what a mess.

I'm torn between 'yes please to mocks' (DD's GCSE results were very good) and 'no way to mocks' (DS1's A Level mocks don't quite get him his uni place). But in my heart of hearts I know it's nonsense as their two schools had completely different approaches to mocks (inspire v scare).

@FoolsAssassin - yes, I think it's right that people come about post what happened - success or not. All personal successes should be celebrated and disappointments equally acknowledged.

I think what goes down really badly is when newbies post outstanding results and bugger off (put your time in on the thread first people!).

I also think it's fine to post success and not be coy about it. It's actually better if everyone posts because then we have a real picture (at least for MN) and not a skewed sample of only the disappointments. That's my view anyway...

Totally agree with that Sandy. Really feel for you with two lots to wait for.

I’ve just woken up & trying to absorb what this change means.
DS has sat 2 lots of mocks, one set in November when they hadn’t completed full syllabus & one set in Feb.
In Feb, he focused on a particular subject (an A-level choice) & got a 7 but it meant that he let another slide (he’d achieved a good result in Nov mocks so felt confident) and it dropped to a 5 ...
Which mocks do they use, or is it combined?

😫😫
I’d rather they just went from CAG’s!
If the same teachers marked the mocks - and some have said they mark mocks harshly, however some may not why WHY don’t they just trust the same teachers assessed grade?

It feels like the government just don’t want to copy Scotland.

Apologies if this is rambling. Still haven’t finished my first cuppa!

And I feel so much for A-level students. They are all competing for same Uni’s yet Scotland are using CAG, England / NI have option to take mocks when schools handle differently & Wales have no to upgrading....

Could cry reading this latest update this morning. Had so much hope before another hot sleepless night last night that Gavin and co would do the right throng with English exams and follow Scotland’s lead.

How on earth is this anyway fair. Schools sit mock exams at different times. Syllabus are no way complete - dd sat here in December. Was still getting full load of homework to be completed as well as revision so inevitably mocks did nowhere near enough reflect true potential for real exams.

For first time in my life I am going to write to an mp, going to write to 3 in fact, my local mp, Gavin and Boris.

They have got to put them on a level playing field with Scotland - I just can’t see how they can treat them any other way.