Thread 8 Carry on Corona Cohort: GAV give us the CAG?

[OrangeCinnamon1]

Welcome all to the 8th Thread for this year's GCSE cohort the Corona Cohort!

Some of us have been here since I started first thread back in yr10, 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 until HQ chuck us
At this precise moment in time we are awaiting GCSE results that seem to have been produced by an algorithm that also takes very little account of Teacher Centre Assessed Grades. There is an appeal process but it was changed yesterday to include mock results and coursework, then taken down again for review.
Trying to protect our young people's mental health.during this shit show , which the government claims is their priority...when they talk about wanting students back in schools/college in September...

first ever thread

previous thread

We've had an email from school as well - says that they can request CAGs on the day but not sure if that means they'd get them then or not. But they won't be given automatically.

No mention of whether CAGs will be used for entry to the 6th form. And a link to a long appeal form.

It's not exactly giving me much confidence.

Orange and Flying, I’m with you - I was happy to accept the process up to the point they said they’d ignore CAGs, which is maybe why I feel a return to that would be acceptable; I’m assuming that when they applied that process, grade inflation was too great for Ofqual, which seems to suggest that it may actually favour students.

When we all thought is was a combination of data points, weighted to give as fair a result as possible in the circumstances everyone was okay with it. But it isn't that at all.

@IHeartHarryStyles

Yet again the HT at DD’s school has stepped up. He’s ace.

Well done that headteacher.

@AndwhenyougetthereFoffsomemore was the releasing of the AdMaths universally released early or just certain exam boards. I know quite a few people whose children took it but they haven't mentioned it.

Just done our weekly click and collect and bought lots of non alcoholic drinks, alcoholic drinks, choc and ice cream. Now sneaking into hidey places in preparation for Thursday.

NI have announced that GCSE pupils will receive their centre assessed grade as their GCSE grade on Thursday.

I've just realised that ds's school changed exam boards last year for maths and science half way through the course. So their algorithym for those subjects will be purely based on one years worth of data.

I have had a response from my Tory MP and he had been quoted in the papers today urging there to be a speedy way to rectify this mess. I’m actually quite impressed with him.

Also the problem is that what's on the table now is not what was on the table originally.

At the beginning we were expecting results more or less as assessed by teachers, rounded up or down a bit by a standardisation process. The teachers had to use evidence and be prepared to back up their grades if they were challenged. I was a bit gutted for DS because he does his best work closest to exams so we expected his grades to be lower than if he'd taken them. But hey ho, his teachers know him well so at least the assessment will be fair in that way and it's just bad luck that this year's circumstances happen to disadvantage his normally perfectly valid way of working.

Now his grades will be decided by how well previous years have done combined with the ranking. They are using an algorithm that rounds down instead of up. Instead of grades coming from teachers, who can back them up with evidence of an individual student's achievements, we have grades that include no information about an individual's abilities at all. We didn't know any of this at the beginning. Now we have seen it applied to the A level results, it's thrown up all kinds of information that we didn't know before.

Education & families editor, Sian Griffiths, Sunday Times just tweeted this 3 min ago:

NEW Announcement on #Alevelgrade fiasco expected today. Speculation growing that there will be a U turn and teacher assessed grades could be accepted after all.

(I have no idea how reliable this this though)

*this is

Good call @Zandathepanda must get multiple bars of white chocolate and distribute round house. Need to purchase real strawberries and haribo strawberries, chilli doritos, mountain dew, iced coffee drinks and supernoodles.

I saw a similar tweet @LillyM50 but from a male ...then lost the page ...but I have seen one.

Guardian is suggesting an announcement at 4pm.

More news sources are now all referring to an announcement regarding a-levels @ 4.

"Tory MPs told by whips there is announcement coming around 1600 on A-Levels in England. Spoke to a few Ministers who are confident there will be a change of policy today but not sure to what extent."

Doesn't mention gcses though.

Interesting @LillyM50

I am relieved, at least, that sustained pressure on the government appears to be continuing by media, politicians, headteachers etc, even if government are doing their level best to knock the headlines off the front pages with other news. Let's hope the pressure works.

@RedskyAtnight @OrangeCinnamon1

Fingers crossed !!!

Yes but what about GCSE grades? That isn’t being referenced?

Totally agree @singingstones.

When I did my students grades and rank order, I thought they were using the grades and the rank order would only be used if students needed to go up or down. So I spent hours making sure the grades were right, but less time on the rank order. I made sure the ones at the top and bottom were right, but those in the middle I didn't worry about quite so much, as I thought they would be less likely to be put up or down,

I know the CAGs I gave are not the same as the ones that went off to DFE as SLT put them through some statistical process to make sure they were in line with student predictions etc, in the hope that they wouldn't be moderated too much. So clearly my SLT didn't know either that the grades would be ignored for the rank order either.

I think that's what I'm most mad about. If I had known only the rank order would be used, then I would have focussed all my attention on that. But that wasn't what I was told at the time. It's hugely infuriating!

Whatever is announced for A Levels must surely set a precedent for GCSEs?

Agree with @FlyingPandas about algorithm.

I have been involved in/following people like Michael Bell campaigning to ensure outliers and schools with variable results were not disadvantaged on The Student Room and HEPI, but nobody imagined until very recently that OFQUAL would do something as stupid as ignoring CAGs. As expected, Michael's daughter went down from CAGs of AAA to BBA because the school's previous results were weak. There were also a fair number of people following the reviews of the Education Select Committee and putting pressure on OQFUAL to allow appeals for unfair results, although we had no idea what scale of unfairness there would be.

The right thing was indeed for a competent authority to take the CAGs and moderate them across schools so that fair results which were comparable with previous years could be awarded. We thought OFQUAL was competent!

Honestly my head will explode if they announce A levels, but ignore GCSE's.

One of the many terrible things about this whole process @Sarahbeans is how the govt has treated teachers. And then tried to blame them for its own cock ups, the shameless, spineless bastards.
I hope everyone remembers this at the next election. DS will certainly not be voting conservative, that's for sure.
The Labour leadership here in Wales had better pull their fingers out too - we have Senedd elections next year and they've lowered the voting age to 16

But if A levels get CAGs and Scotland and NI get CAGs, the momentum will be overwhelming.