Teachers - do you know your students results?

[mummabear1967]

Hi

Any teachers on here - when predicting grades for your GCSE & a level students, how did you do it? Did you just look at all their mocks, classwork and homework and decide “John deserves an A and Charlotte deserves a D” ?

So when you predicted grades, is that what they’ll actually get, so do you know their results already? Or do you submit your predicted grades to exam boards and then they change them if necessary?

I haven’t taught Btec for years but I think they are given a pass, merit of distinction.

Seems pretty poor teaching if he’s never done any tests/assessments before lockdown.

I thought Btecs involve different units which he must have been completing as he went along?

Op what grade do you think he deserves ?

@Pieceofpurplesky

OP if you results in the department are not the same as last year you will have those grades downgraded. It wasn't worth a risk, even if a teacher was unprofessional enough to choose favourites.

We are a school that had a boundary change for this year - so a very different cohort - and our kids this year were due to get much higher grades. Sadly they won't as we are judged on previous years

That is why, as well as looking at the school's previous results, they are also looking at the KS2 scores of the cohort. That should mean they have picked up that your current year 11 are a much stronger cohort than previous ones, and will allow them correspondingly higher grades.

It's not going to be an exact science - I know that when a school I worked in got a suddenly much stronger cohort, it actually helped raise performance by more than the difference in intake scores - the effect on their peers meant individuals might have done better than they would have previously.

We tend to know these students very well, (my son is one!).
We would use our professional knowledge and grade up, but in all honesty, this year we might have been hauled over the coals for this. We had to present evidence to SLT and speak about each students strengths and weaknesses against the assessment criteria, but without firm evidence of 'but this is the type of student who pulls it out of the bag in the end' they would probably be marked down.
It is these students who I feel most sorry for this year, as they will probably not get what they would have done had it been a normal year.
The students who will benefit the most from this year are those who crumble under exam pressure.

@HappyKatieA , this worries me so much. DS is bright, his teachers had high hopes for him but he was the type to do the minimum and hope for the best with the plan to really go for it in the end event

Fortunately he hit the grades he needs to get into college during his mocks so I have every hope he'll at least get these grades, but he'll be very disappointed

@OverTheRainbow88

I haven’t taught Btec for years but I think they are given a pass, merit of distinction.

Seems pretty poor teaching if he’s never done any tests/assessments before lockdown.

I thought Btecs involve different units which he must have been completing as he went along?

Yes he completed 4 units over the two years.

For this particular unit, teacher was off sick for first few months. She came back just before Christmas. All they did was do PowerPoint presentations from then until March when the college closed.

When his course went online, his teacher for that unit asked the class to do part of a past paper and to send it to her as she’d mark it and use that as the predicted grade.

My Ds did not do this. Yes he has completed other units. Assignments due after lockdown began weren’t counted, so will he be hindered because he didn’t do this past paper?

@OverTheRainbow88 sorry I meant he completed 4 units in year 1 and year 2. So 8 units in total

unlikely but a definite possibility. some of my students failed to submit multiple assignments and missed deadlines, extensions and did not submit any evidence at all. My teacher assessment for a few of them was that they would indeed have failed the course so that's what they will get tomorrow. I have 10 years BTEC experience in FE and there are a few that do nothing yet expect to give in a few pages of drivel, months late and expect to pass. They will have the chance to do resit year possibly. FE teachers bend over backwards with flexible submission dates and really do chase up, support and reteach topics endlessly to compensate for poor attendance and poorly engaged learners but eventually thread to come point where if the work isn't done, they fail.
Maybe as him if he had met the earlier deadlines for other assignments and tasks and met the minimum standards to pass the other units. If he had then I'm sure they won't fail him for one poor unit out of 6 or so.

Sorry. Using tablet stylus very poorly .

@wantmorenow

unlikely but a definite possibility. some of my students failed to submit multiple assignments and missed deadlines, extensions and did not submit any evidence at all. My teacher assessment for a few of them was that they would indeed have failed the course so that's what they will get tomorrow. I have 10 years BTEC experience in FE and there are a few that do nothing yet expect to give in a few pages of drivel, months late and expect to pass. They will have the chance to do resit year possibly. FE teachers bend over backwards with flexible submission dates and really do chase up, support and reteach topics endlessly to compensate for poor attendance and poorly engaged learners but eventually thread to come point where if the work isn't done, they fail. Maybe as him if he had met the earlier deadlines for other assignments and tasks and met the minimum standards to pass the other units. If he had then I'm sure they won't fail him for one poor unit out of 6 or so.

Thanks. I’m hoping he won’t have failed. They did say any assignments due after lockdown started wouldn’t be counted, even though I’m sure most of the class would have completed and submitted most of those assignments.

For example, one assignment for one of his units was issued in February - I’m sure most people had this done in May, then the teacher turned round and said that they won’t be accepting them because the exam board has now said that those grades will be based on grades attained in the first term.

So I find it strange why this teacher wanted them to do a past paper after lockdown had began

He is so worried

I thought the original system was fair but then I have full confidence that ds school would have done right by all students and been realistic.

But do you think there was possibly any unconscious bias involved? I don't mean that as a dog because being a teacher in 2020 would be my idea of hell! Not just lockdown but now having to go back with no protection.

But I'll explain using my ds what I mean.

Ds has send. He got an ehcp end of year 8. Before this his predicted grades were 4/5's and he could barely tolerate being in a classroom all day.

By end of year 9 this had risen slightly and Bh mocks at beginning of year 11 he was well over his predicted grades.

The school can take full credit for this as they were amazing with him.

But my guess if is you have 10 students say (who like my ds) for a 9 in their mock for a subject and you had to grade them and is usually you get 8 students getting a 9 the 2 you rank lowest are the the ones who you know may get an 8 instead.

I just can imagine a situation where teacher thinks "well Susan has been predicted an 8 since year 8 and mininweird was lredicted a 5, then a 6 and amazed us Bh getting a 9 in the mock. So he's be happier with an 8 than Susan"

(I will add ds also for all 7/8's during year 10 module tests)

As I say that isn't a dig and I actually think that on balance of probability is more likely if only 1 for the 9 it's the way it goes.

I'm asking because ds is now obviously expecting that whatever he gets he can challenge it and get his 9. Yet I'm not actually sure if he gets an 8 that he should iyswim?

So what I mean by unconscious bias is that there may be judgements based on knowledge of student that extend beyond what they were actually doing at the time you had to submit grades.

@mummabear1967

🤞🏽🤞🏽 For your son. Hopefully the teacher would take into account the 8 units he completed before lockdown.

[quote OverTheRainbow88]@mummabear1967

🤞🏽🤞🏽 For your son. Hopefully the teacher would take into account the 8 units he completed before lockdown.[/quote]
I just can imagine a situation where teacher thinks "well Susan has been predicted an 8 since year 8 and mininweird was lredicted a 5, then a 6 and amazed us Bh getting a 9 in the mock. So he's be happier with an 8 than Susan"

No, really not. We predicted what we genuinely believed they would be most likely to have got had they taken the exam. It was hard sometimes but that’s what we had to do.

Sorry completely random and irrelevant quote in my post above!

@itsgettingweird I teach students like your son. When I did the CAGs I cared not a jot for y7-9; it was all about what I knew of him and I would have fought for him to get what I believed he would get if he sat the exam.

itsgettingweird, I can relate to what you’re asking and why.
DD also has ALN and only really started to excel over the last 12/18 months at school.
Her year 10 results were good, her mocks in some subjects were amazing and her teachers were thrilled; everything had started coming together at just the right time and she would have carried on improving right until June.
I can see that a teacher might reasonably feel they didn’t have enough long-term evidence to rate her alongside/higher than someone who had had a steadier profile.

I can see that a teacher might reasonably feel they didn’t have enough long-term evidence to rate her alongside/higher than someone who had had a steadier profile.

If it helps, we very consciously used only recent evidence - children don’t develop in straight lines!

[quote OverTheRainbow88]@mummabear1967

🤞🏽🤞🏽 For your son. Hopefully the teacher would take into account the 8 units he completed before lockdown.[/quote]
Thanks. Yes he needs to learn that leaving things to the last minute and not doing tasks will not get him anywhere!

In his year 1 units, he got 3 distinctions and 1 merit.

In year 2, he just left all his assignments to the last minute and got 1 merit and very low passes in the rest.

He’s quite worried now.

@HipTightOnions

I can see that a teacher might reasonably feel they didn’t have enough long-term evidence to rate her alongside/higher than someone who had had a steadier profile.

If it helps, we very consciously used only recent evidence - children don’t develop in straight lines!

Thankyou. This is reassuring.

And thankyou for realising I wasn't trying to have a dig but genuinely wondered what a teacher would do if faced with this decision.
So the fact that by the end ds was faring better than 'susan' consistently may mean his ranking was higher than I'd they judged over 4 years (4 because ds started yr 8)

[quote MrsHamlet]@itsgettingweird I teach students like your son. When I did the CAGs I cared not a jot for y7-9; it was all about what I knew of him and I would have fought for him to get what I believed he would get if he sat the exam.[/quote]
Thanks that's reassuring. And thankyou for realising I wasn't judging or having a dig but genuinely wondered.

His year 9 teacher for the subject told him he would never pass it due to his poor social skills and illegible handwriting so to get the third highest mock result in the year group (highest in his half) was a massive thing. He did work for it though!

That’s good to know, thanks HipTightOnions.

When DS1 did GCSEs I had constant phone calls from teachers telling me he would fail English, maths and many other subjects right up to Easter break. He ended up with 8 and 9s across the board. We knew he was bright and able as did he, but no teachers believed in him. I think some especially very bright boys coast along and just pull it out of the bag on the day. They won’t do well tomorrow.

Interesting point. My ds did get some stick for being a swot for pulling great grades out at mocks.

Sad really.

@itsgettingweird your job as a parent is to fight his corner. Mine is to find his potential and nurture it.
The handwriting thing is bollocks.

I'm a bit confused by this government turnaround. Are they saying they are now more likely to use mock grades only? Because if so my DS is shafted. He did his mocks right back in September and none of them did very well due to not enough work over the summer. Since then he'd started to pull it out of the bag and get the 8s and 9s he was due to get.

Worried.