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

Centre Assessed Grade.

Centre Assessed Grades

Sorry to be dim but does centre mean school? You'd be hard pressed to believe I was a qualified teacher, I know. did leave a few years ago now.
Many thanks, that's cleared a lot of my faces.

Just checked DD's mocks having spent the last couple of months, reassuring her they don't matter! Exam conditions, but taken in November.
How is that fair compared to those taken in Feb/Mar. Based on those she can do Maths and Physics, but not Further Maths or History. She needs an 8 to do FM, and her History went badly wrong as she got a 5, she was predicted an 8.
Going to be interesting keeping her calm for another week.

Centre is presumably the exam centre (which will be school for the majority)?

Ok, a question as parents would you be less worried in my case.

Only needs 3 GCSE's grade 9-4 for the higher ed institution. (obviously A levels too, but just meaning GCSE for now)
Doesn't need anything to progress to FE as already at the school.

What I mean is are GCSE grades really important in this case. Or is it just passing the required amount thats important?

Just to say, a few of my students had CAGs lower than mocks because:

a) the school's data teams capped the umber of 9s I could give out so the four I wanted became one dead cert
b) We have coursework in my subject which some did not do very well on despite strong exam (although it was usually the other way around) and these tended to be top end students, oddly.
c) we don't have official grade boundaries. I used last year's but they were tweaked a but. I lowered the CAGs at some crucial boundaries bearing in mind I may have pushed them over in mock for self esteem etc

The irony is that now the kids can appeal my (less moderated, scrutinised and trustworthy) mock result is taken to be more valid that my very moderated CAG!

Oh well, I'll be pleased if a couple more get 5s or 8s/ 9s because that's where the tweaking was.

Redsky

Many thanks.

GCSE grades really aren't that important for most people to progress beyond school. Lots of sixth form are fussier than unis to preserve the quality of their intake. Si, in your case devlesko , no. Like my DS it's just a matter of pride and how far it affects aspirations, perhaps.

from ofqual : We are working urgently to operationalise this as fairly as possible and to determine what standards of evidence will be required for the appeal. We will provide more detail early next week.

www.gov.uk/government/news/response-to-the-secretary-of-states-announcement-of-12-august-2020

I've been working on the principle that as long as DS gets 8 GCSEs that are 4+ (which includes maths and English) then he is ok for most things he is likely to want to do in the future.

There are entry criteria for sixth form, but as he's already at the school, and the school has an "inclusive" ethos, I am reasonably sure (I've not told DS this though) that if he doesn't meet them they will be waived on the basis that his actual teachers have said they are fine with him continuing on to study their subjects. So the "only" issue really is how disappointed DS is - and even then, it will hopefully be short lived and he will bounce back!

operationalise ???!

@Piggywaspushed

operationalise ???!

Translation: we don't have a clue how this is going to work in practice.

After much ferreting through old emails I’ve found the exam timetable for the November mocks and they were all sat in the halls under exam conditions, it was the March ones a lot were in the classroom. They did the whole results released on certain day on one piece of paper thing,

Assuming those are likely to count as valid ? Please someone say yes

“..evidence from valid mock exams can be considered as PART of an appeal”

This makes it sound like mock results aren’t just accepted. Maybe I’m reading too much into this though!

Surely if a school has used past gcse papers that can be found by students or tutors and gone through beforehand (like dds school did for maths and science) then they can't be considered valid. Hopefully this wouldn't have affected dd's ranking either.

Red:

"They sound like good rules Orange (though maybe, in the spirit of the times we should introduce some new ones a day or so before the results come out??)"

@FoolsAssassin yep sounds very similar to DS's and I can't see how much more valid his could have been tbh. His school also did a year group mock results assembly where they were all given an envelope containing mock results so it was almost like a mini results day.

Thank you Piggywaspushed

That does make sense about more for pride and aspirations.
She's worrying about results even though I've told her she's very lucky and doesn't have a lot to worry about compared to many.

It’s a real mare’s nest! The Ofqual clarification statement looks like frantic backtracking to me. Using mock results as ‘part of’ the appeal process is not what Gavin Williamson said last night at all.

I’ve written to my MP to express my dismay at all the mess. He’s a hardline Tory so I’m not expecting much support back, but I couldn’t just let this pass. Our children deserve so much better.

There's no way they'd just be doling out the mock marks instead of the original ones. It's definitely only 'part of an appeal' as PaddingtonPaddington notes. I suspect they're much more likely to be used as part of a whole cohort profile in contrast to previous ones. So if it's a strong year they've got evidence as to why they should do better than previous ones.

But that sounds quite sensible so they probably won't do that...

So my daughter messed every single mock up. Literally 3s for everything but was predicted 6s all the way through. At the last moment they started reporting her as predicted 4s for all subjects so a real down grade. The school have a very average pass rate. What will happen here, I've not worried till now and today I feel really really sick with worry

@neutralintelligence

Indeed. And our kids still have to open the moderated ranking model results on results day without any idea how this new appeals process will work.

This is what concerns me. I kind of feel like what’s the point of going and getting the results which is a big event in their lives if the results they open may not be what they will actually end up with and could actually be more traumatic for them than it needs to be?! It’s almost like a worthless piece of paper for some for the time being.

I hope that makes sense, I’m not great with words.

So emails to my local mp and Gavin done.

Looked back at mock results mixed bag as dd still had heavy homework schedule and put more effort into her favourites and not so much in the basics, English and maths and this shows in the results. But since mocks and parents evening early Jan she's had her head in the game, school put in extra support and work in areas that needed work for exams and she as submitting work 2-3 grades above mock results for English and maths. I'm sure (well hope) the Tags would have reflected this improvement and her mocks would have been marked up by at least 1 level by her teachers.

Good luck to all those posters with kids getting a levels tomorrow. Hoping all this worry is for nothing and tomorrow's results won't be the same nightmare that they had in Scotland.

There was was a headteacher being interviewed on R4 today that said 47% of student CAG grades had been downgraded. Some were at A* down to a B. I know it’s A levels but that is more than one grade drop!! This has got to be indicative of what we can expect next week too I would think.