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

Why on earth would a lower mark ever trump a higher mark - seems very unfair?
Surely the higher mark of any mark that can be used in an appeal should apply (like with Scottish CAGs and Welsh AS grades)

I just don't get the use of CAG if it is lower than a mock.
If my DS school give him a CAG lower than his mock, I will be v v pissed off.
Are they trying to turn pupils and schools against each other?

Does the NEA thing mean that for a subject like music (40% exam, 30% composition NEA, 30% performance NEA) you could be awarded a grade just on the (a) NEA or just on the exam? That sounds bonkers.

why being bonkers would make it unlikely to be so, I don't know at this point

I’m thinking CAGs won’t be lower than a mock, especially if 2 were sat(Nov & Feb/Mar).

My DS does have 2 subjects where he got a 9 and the teacher said his predicted grade was an 8.
That is what the exam was for - so he could prove he deserved those 9s!
I was predicted a B for Alevel chemistry - got As in all homework, tests, mocks etc. Obviously got an A in the real exam. Under these circumstances, I could have be given the B only though.
Very unfair to use the lowest mark available.

DD’s lowest mock grade is Maths. 4 in November, 5 in March and class work a good 6. I’m hoping 5 at lowest.

I was predicated an E for A level sociology and got an A. Teacher was gobsmacked. I got lucky on the day with the essay questions and I did cram.

But I really wasn’t an A student. Would’ve been happy with B/C.

@lilgreen that's brilliant ! Would love to be giving that man his appraisal . @MrsHamlet this is sooo useful thank you - read it twice .. would be rare for a prediction to be lower than a mock ..

Funny isn’t it? Not my work unfortunately.

Sorry if it does not work for any of you but I get that grades should rarely be higher than CAGs. I don't know whether DS's mocks will count, they were done in an exam hall but mostly used 2019 papers which some people had found on social media. If People got high grades because they had seen the paper and been through the mark scheme, the CAG would be a more accurate reflection of what they might actually have got. There is also the issue that exams taken before Christmas cannot have covered all the content as most schools would not have finished teaching it.

I still think it is a bad move to use mock grades which many students will not have and that CAGs would be fairer, although still unfair as different centres were more/less robust in keeping the grades in line than others.

@Oblomov20 we are FINALLY round the corner with DS1 attitude. Once he left school and got a girlfriend (he is now on a gap year) he became so much nicer!

Got to be fairer than an algorithm though surely?

My daughter got a. 7 in one mock and a 6 in another. Both subjects were reported in February and the predicted a 5 for both. I pushed back in this and was told that they were sure she was just lucky in the day and that their predictions stood. So I guess that’s 2 subjects where I know for a certainty she would have lower CAGs that her mock grades. That is not fair!! She worked her arse off to prove them wrong and was on track to donut again in June. Either they can appeal with their mocks or they can’t. Why all of a sudden do CAGs seem so valid when they weren’t before?

Not fairer than algorithm really if they think they have solved it but the solution is only available to, say, 30% of people affected. Loads of schools do mocks in classrooms without going off-timetable.

Maybe the thing about using CAGs if they're lower is to put people off appealing in the first place. Can you / the school appeal just one grade or is it all of a student's grades or all of a cohort's grades?

DD mocks were block in a 2 week block. They had exam leave and only came in for the exams. She has special considerations and all students sat them in the manner they would have done in June. They couldn’t have been closer to the real thing if they tried.

@Monkey2001

Sorry if it does not work for any of you but I get that grades should rarely be higher than CAGs. I don't know whether DS's mocks will count, they were done in an exam hall but mostly used 2019 papers which some people had found on social media. If People got high grades because they had seen the paper and been through the mark scheme, the CAG would be a more accurate reflection of what they might actually have got. There is also the issue that exams taken before Christmas cannot have covered all the content as most schools would not have finished teaching it.

I still think it is a bad move to use mock grades which many students will not have and that CAGs would be fairer, although still unfair as different centres were more/less robust in keeping the grades in line than others.

This is my worry for many schools ...that the mocks won't count. That they wont have NEA s to fall back on. So where do they go if they want to appeal an unfair grade. There has been so much disinformation losing sight of the fact it is quite frankly, a shit solution.

Because they now have 3 grades: the mock, the CAG and the "moderated" grade. To use your daughter as an example, @Cherryonthetop2019, the mock is 7, the CAG is 5 and the grade next week is 4 because she gets beaten by the algorithm.
You can appeal and get the 5 because that accounts for exam fluke and what the teachers thought she would get. It's not 7 but it's better than 4.
It's not fair but very little about this is.

Been lurking a long time but now coming on to say that DD is in a terrible state about next week. She has been offered a chunky scholarship to do IB at a prestigious boarding school for 6th form but the offer is conditional on high GCSE grades. In normal circumstances this would have been achievable but she was ill during mocks and took some papers later in non exam conditions and didn't do others. She is now fearing that the sixth form experience she had been hoping for and working hard for will now be taken away we can't afford the fees without the scholarship). TO be fair her current school said as soon as exams were cancelled that they would offer a 6th form place to all Yr 11 students regardless of grades which was really decent of them but they don't offer IB and she hasn't enjoyed being there anyway so doesn't want to go back.

I've signed petitions and shared stuff on social media - anything else that can be done?

Some people will have a mock and an NEA in a subject, but lots of people will have neither and are not helped at all.

(Basically they are paying lip service - as they are not available to everyone, you could say that the mocks / NEA thing makes it less fair if anything)

It is also a big deal that they had no idea that they might be so important. DS1 had a main part in the school production in March of Y13 so his mock results were 2 grades below what he actually got, but CAGs would have been more accurate as they could draw on more evidence. DS2 missed one of the maths mocks because there was somebody coming in to school to talk about economics and he was encouraged to go as they were not worried about whether he did that mock.

I think DS2 might benefit from being able to use his mocks and the NEA for music was great, but it is still not fair.

The closest thing to a fair solution is to hold out for CAGs to be confirmed as grades.

Wales is now offering free appeals to students if there is "evidence of internal assessment that has been judged by the school or college to be at a higher grade than the calculated grade awarded"

Much better than mocks imo although what constitutes an internal assessment hasn't been made clear yet. I presume they would have said mock if that was the only possibility though.

Question: In his Physics mocks (which sound like they meet the acceptability criteria) DS sat 2 papers. He got a 7 on Paper 1 and a 5 on Paper 2 (they hadn't covered half the content for Paper 2 at that point) and was allocated a 6 overall (not too surprisingly). It sounds like the rules judge a mock as valid if they cover content equivalent to one paper. Can DS therefore just claim the result of Paper 1 as his mock result? (I'm expecting his CAG to be 7 and he was hoping for an 8 or 9 in an exam; so I'm not trying to artificially inflate his grade beyond the probable)