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

But what happens for DC who don’t have ‘valid’ mocks?

I believe the govt's answer to that would basically be "tough shit".

What a mess. I have one totally confused and stressed teen.

Her school very much use mocks as a harsh reminder to knuckle down and revise, so those that they did get results back for were well below the grades she was hoping for/expecting. Not helped by the accommodations agreed for her actual exams not being properly used (laptop broken for one, had to ask for one in another, rest breaks not possible as they had back to back bookings for the hall).

All the way through shes been worried about how much mocks were going to ge taken into account and was relieved to know it was going to be teacher assessment. Now who knows.

It’s a total disaster.
Surely the government can’t say valid mocks can be alternative when there is so much inconsistency in how they were taken, the scope & times.
I feel an angry tweet to GW coming on. I struggle to be angry & succinct in 140 characters!!!!

I’m joining late. We’ve had so much to deal with here. Thank you for all the info on this thread. We have the added worry of a funeral about 90 mins away on results day. Dd has just had enough now. (Although it’s also my fault we don’t live by the sea 😁). She was barely there in year 10 and ran away from home for months - she was just pulling it round.

Ds was due to sit ALevels but as an external student via oxford open learning there was no predictions so he had to take them in October and now I’ve just started worrying they’ll be stopped too. He dropped out so only has one gcse!

Interesting @Alsoplayspiccolo, thank you

Looks like Wales is waiting to see how bad the reaction is - I thought 36hrs notice of the changes was bad but "more information on Thursday" takes the cake!

DD (state) school treated mocks like the real thing. They had exam leave, only came in for exams, all sat under exactly the same conditions as the real thing: they even had a results day where they had to go and collect them from the hall in an envelope. I would hope they count as valid mocks!

Primrose Kitten, the science and maths tutor has just summed it up on YouTube :
" Thegve taken an assessment system that was unfair to everyone and made it unfair AND uneven to everyone!...Gavin Williamson, what where you thinking??!! "

An updated was just published here:

www.gov.uk/government/news/triple-lock-for-students-ahead-of-a-level-and-gcse-results

Very vague on what "valid mock" really are.

I doubt many kids will have higher mock results than their awarded grade? DD’s school also mark them very stringently. In Biology she got a mark which would have just been a 9 last year but she was told it was a 7. I’m certain CAGs would be much higher than mocks - and if CAGs are unlikely to go down more than one grade, that will probably still be higher than the mock grade.

So I’m not even mentioning the latest announcement to dd as I don’t think it will be relevant to her. Getting mock grades would pretty much be her worst case scenario. We’ve said all along, be prepared for lower than what you hoped for but try not to get too invested as GCSEs don't matter that much.

I just want to get it all over with now and move on. I’m starting to worry more about whether they’ll actually be in school come September, given the rise in cases! Dd is mainly anxious about the new school too, rather than results - it would be awful if it was all online and she couldn’t meet anyone!

Lots of DS's mocks were last years papers which are apparently findable if you look hard enough (and some of his peers did).
For one of his subjects the teacher gave them a list in advance which was basically the questions they were asked on the paper.
So perfectly possible to get higher grades in mocks if those sort of circumstances apply.

But the mocks were carried out under "official" exam conditions so probably meet the "valid" criteria.

my DD had some 9s in her mocks, sat under exam conditions, and the school's historical data is pretty poor so we were expecting 6/7s instead of 9s.

But who knows, things seem to change so fast.

I guess it could affect subjects with substantial practical / NEA components, if the written paper is your best bit you could easily do better in a written mock than in your final grade. Or the other way around as I think a PP described, DC got a B in the written mock but predicted A* in the practical so on for a good A.

PS especially in something like Drama where your practical marks are dependent to some extent on your fellow students.

Mine had awful mocks and they weren't administered as exams, just the questions in a normal lesson.
I'm suddenly worried after the good (for her) English result.
Mine only took a few and was awarded mostly 3's and 4's with a 2 in Maths.
Music was looking good but not sure now, was predicted a 9 along with the rest of the school.
It will be interesting to see what happens here.
Drama is out already and dd friends were happy with the result.

It depends though @crazycrofter - on mocks marks, number of papers taken etc etc. My DS definitely has one or two subjects where he did particularly (surprisingly!) well in the mock and will almost certainly be a higher mark than the moderated CAG. He got a 9 in physics for example and no-one was more gobsmacked than him. And hand on heart I wouldn't say he's a strong level 9 physics student - more of a 7 (maybe 8). He absolutely would not be high enough in the school rank order (knowing what I know about many of his very-strong-STEM-ability cohort) to secure a 9 via CAG.

But in theory I guess we could push for that 9 to become his 'proper' grade. Even though hand on heart it would be an inflation of actual ability...

But yes overall I suspect that is what Mr W and co are banking on - that on average the majority of students wouldn't actually want their mock grades to apply.

It is all such a flipping mess.

singing, DD was due to sit drama.
She managed to do her NEAs and was given really good marks by her teacher (in theory), but her written mock went less well, because a/ she focused on weaker subjects, and b/ she misunderstood a question and focused on the wrong aspect (something that she worked on in the months following).
She is doing drama for A level and really wants a 7 or above; looking at the school's results in the previous couple of years, that should be feasible 🙏

Scotland had to revert to CAG when they worked out that the algorithm unfairly penalised kids from lower economic backgrounds. If there is a triple lock system here of algorithm, resit or mock that will be the same and I will tell you why.
Firstly I would say that I have children at both state and private schools so there is no agenda on my part.
At the state school I imagine that kids who were on to get a 3, and got a 3 in the mock, were told they had a 3. At the private school, after 5 years of enormous fees, no one would have been given a 3 in the mock. Even if the teacher thought it was a 3 they would give a 4. After all, if kid gets a 3 on the day of the real exam it's their fault. But when you have been paying you want something for your money, and its the 4 in the mock (at least). Once this has been through the assessors/lawyers and I am proved right the grade will become the higher of mock, CAG, written resit or algorithm. Massive grade inflation.

And don't even get me started on how (to generalise) kids in lower economic areas are going to do more practical exams (DT etc). And they are penalised by the lack of any practical work in any of the assessments except the CAG or algorithm. So if only algorithm is used, they are penalised. It won't stand up long term and they will have to add in the CAG for a quadruple lock....

DS might CrazyCrofter. It depends on how the other 2/3rds of the year have been doing which which have no idea about so can’t have a good idea about DS’s ranking. It also depends on what the school’s previous 3 years performance has been like. The only thing I know is a tiny handful if the top performers but out of years around 400 it is not helpful.

He got 5 x 9 in November mocks. If the algorithm decides they can have 3 grade 9s for example based on previous performance and he ranks under that then he will get less than his mocks. Some of his mocks may not count as valid as that has not been properly defined so if the case that won’t help, The hope would be the SATs of his cohorts would be stronger than previous years, I think they are but don’t know. If it really is the case that they are one grade lower than CAG, all good I think. But the 2 grade drop in some cases in the IGCSE are concerning me now.

I would be relatively laid back about it but on top of having worked very hard throughout his time at school, he worked really hard for the selection procedure at place he holds an offer. If he gets in it will be a really great opportunity for him that he can not get anything close to locally and as life changing as going to university would be . I am hopeful that they will let him in anyway but they have a waiting list so it’s a bit nerve wracking, especially as I am trying to sort bedding etc to take down on Friday. If he gets in.

I have a horrible feeling it will be like furlough, people falling through the cracks. Hopefully he will open the envelope next week and will fall into the category of results same as CAG.

My son didn’t do mocks as he was sick. So that’s helpful. I’m also been told today that we will see what grades the teachers gave them before they were went off

I'm feeling a bit down about it all (and next week's weather forecast for our long awaited holiday!). Just found out DS's school also relying heavily on summer 2019 results which he didn't do well in as was grappling with exam technique and undiagnosed condition that makes writing hard.

It all feels so pointless and deflating.

I know it's nothing in the great scheme of things and will be positive with him whatever happens. In some ways the less good GSCEs will be good as it will put an Oxbridge application out of the picture (would be a long shot and I worried it would be for us as both parents went and all the cousins etc and would be additional stress).

Fingers crossed for her piccolo!

I have a DD doing drama too but she's just going into Y10 so that fun is all still to come.

DS had a couple of surprisingly good mock results which will be higher than the CAG I expect - they only did the easier paper in the economics mock for example, I think he got a B but once macro economics is factored in plus economics has had the worst results historically, he's expecting borderline C/D 🤦‍♀️

But he just told me all their mocks were done in normal classes so not valid anyway. And of course appealing on that basis is not an option here at the moment! Think I might need to stop thinking about it all 😂😂

I have read all the news and don’t know what to think.

I am worried as it feels like the government/OFQUAL don’t even trust themselves to get this right and trying to fix it at the last minute.

What does CAG stand for? I know I'll kick myself.

ClarasZoo, at DD's indie, lots of girls did indeed fail their mocks in some subjects - all but one student in an entire drama class!

CAG=centre assessed grades