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

Gah ... that should read ‘level of incompetence’

Oh dear, LBC presenter just felt the need to say 'but every year there are pupils who don't get the results they need'.
OK then - can you identify without an exam who those pupils will be this year? No, you can't!
And in previous years, the pupils who get lower than they expected can be reasonably confident that it is because they messed up. If it is an admin error it can be fixed in an appeal in which the actual exam paper is dug out and looked at. The paper can be remarked.
This is a completely different situation. Individual pupils are getting lowered grades based on nothing that can be proved or demonstrated.

Hi have been dipping in and out of these threads since DS1 went into year 11, felt now would be a good time to join! I am increasingly nervous of Thursday. DS mock results weren't great but his last lot of results in march were much better and he said then he felt he had cracked revision and the exams themselves and if he carried on doing what he was doing then the exams should be fine. All that work..gone. He wants to do A levels and needs 5-6s at least, I know he could have done this in the exams but am so nervous he is not going to get this. He's so quiet and I just want him to be able to move on to what he wants to do.

Gove/ Vine household obvs preparing to trash Gav ahead of Michael's performance as Education Sec coming under scrutiny..

@neutralintelligence this is what bothers me most about all this. If ds didn't get the grades after sitting the exam it's on him but without doing the exams and relying on this shitshow for his results it's all out of his hands but he has to take the consequences.

And now I have just heard another parent with a vested interest in A levels and GCSEs not reverting to CAGs - apparently this will massively 'disadvantage' IB pupils.
No it won't. Your child's IB grade will remain the same. It will not get worse.
The fact that another pupil gets the grade they deserve does not take anything away from you.

That was on LBC btw. Now they are able to hear from the man who is bring the legal action - might be worth a listen!

Thanks Orange for new thread.

My heart is still recovering from DS’s A level results last week - he was ok, so DD is now convinced that we have used up our family allocation of good fortune...

She has stomped off to our local stables to relieve her anger by shovelling horse poo (insert metaphor here).

Indeed, very uncomfortable position to be sitting for them. First the situation needs sorting then discussions will need to be held about the way forward and I can’t see that the abolition of most coursework and controlled assessments won’t be a central part of that discussion.

Really the IB parent's selfish and mean attitude is why we are in this mess. I sympathise that your DC IB grade was also downgraded, but fixing the mess for million of A level and GCSE pupils takes absolutely nothing from you. You lose nothing by other's getting a fair grade, other than what you have already lost from the shambles. It will feel more unfair, but you don't actually lose anything, you aren't actually disadvantaged in real life.

But @singingstones, Gav shouldn’t be judged on his own performance, but on an average of Gove, Morgan, Greening and Hinds’s achievements.

Can you all point your anger a bit more at OFQUAL?

The Education Select Committee, chaired by Robert Halfon (who appears to be decent although a Tory) told OFQUAL weeks ago that they should urgently release the algorithm for peer review. He even did it by issuing an interim report without waiting for the end of the review he was chairing as he saw it as urgent. They refused.

The Royal Statistical Society offered to help. They were told that if they were involved they would have to sign an NDA which lasted years beyond results day, which they were not prepared to do.

Every year OFQUAL tinkers with things in random ways which affect people's lives. They show an astonishing level of arrogance. You may have observed that although they held consultations, they barely changed anything based on those consultations.

I was sympathetic to the desire to keep grade inflation down as excessive grade inflation invalidates the grade system - DS wants to feel he got the results he deserved, which were equivalent to other years. I believe that could have been done, but it needed more engagement with schools.

There was an extraordinary level of incompetence at OFQUAL where the senior staff kept assuring everybody that all was well.

"Well" for OFQUAL meant that 90% of grades were "within 1 grade of the correct grade" for 51 out of 55 biggest A level subjects. How is correct within 1 grade OK? What about the 10-25% who OFQUAL KNOW were allocated grades which were likely to be wrong by at least 2 grades?!

It is worse for GCSEs, their modelling of the algorithm shows that some subjects are only "correct within 1 grade" for 35% of candidates and the best are less than 75% right. CAGs will be much more accurate than that.

Actually this happens every year. OFQUAL know that marking is subjective and variable, but appear to think that is fine. Until you are in this jungle of results, you think results are black and white. They are not!

OFQUAL algorithm report - assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/909368/6656-1_Awarding_GCSE__AS__A_level__advanced_extension_awards_and_extended_project_qualifications_in_summer_2020_-_interim_report.pdf

Accuracy of GCSE results within 1 grade attached. I would be willing to make a significant bet that they will be getting CAGs.

I also loved the post yesterday on here about Gav's annual review!

LBC presenter changed to another person who has researched the subject. About to talk to the man bringing the legal action apparently.

Just wondering how all those ‘retaking’ A levels and GCSEs next year will affect things for current year 10s and 12s. The ‘retakers’ will probably be doing fewer exams and will have had the benefit of almost 2 years teaching unlike the current year 10s and 12s. That doesn’t seem fair to year 10s and 12s but you can hardly blame those who’ve lost out this year for retaking.

Thank you @Monkey2001 i will be writing to Ofqual.

@Monkey2001 very useful Ofqual facts there. Thanks,

Regarding directing anger at Ofqual - yes, but parents who don't want other pupils to get their CAGs are commenting in the media and distorting the situation. It isn't about pupils in other years or pupils who took other exams. It is about this year's GCSE and A level pupils. And I can't abide the attitude of some along the lines of if you do well, that takes something away from me, my success is worth more if others fail, etc.

@neutralintelligence I have been following the sad IB situation and he does actually have a point. Just like it would be unfair for English students if Welsh students get their CAGs, a lot of IB students got ridiculous results and were told to wait for A level results day to find out whether they could still have their university place.

I also think Y12s have a good reason to worry as do the more selective universities.

Both Y12s and IB students will be competing with an A level cohort with inflated grades if many of the students being awarded CAGs take a gap year and re-apply with their improved grades.

I still think that given where we are that has to be what happens, but it all creates different bits of unfairness.

Mail are reporting they can use cags now for appeal but not mocks. This is great news for my dd if its true

Yes, I have masses of sympathy and felt very sad for the woman and the dreadful situation her daughter had been placed in.

But that evaporated when she said that English students should not get their CAG - that is what she said - because it would disadvantage her daughter.
But if English students do their CAGs, that will massively increase the chances of her DD getting a higher grade on appeal or if there is a U-turn also.
Fundamentally, one set of pupils getting a fair grade can only be a good thing. Wishing and hoping for the opposite is not acceptable.

I agree @FabTab whatever happens this year will also have knock on effects for next year. Eg if they honour marks on appeal or u-turn to accept predicted grades and unis defer students to next year to prevent overcrowding there will be fewer offers and increased competition next year.

I do not begrudge the Welsh pupils their A/S grades and I do not begrudge the Scottish pupils their CAGs. If the people administering the IB change their method to make it fair and accurate, I would be so so happy for those pupils. I am not wishing and hoping that their unfair situation continues. That is what this woman was wishing and hoping for the GCSE and A level pupils.
I am being thinking kind and generous things for her DD, she is hoping my DS gets downgraded and has to keep that downgraded mark.

The IB situation is clearly just as wrong, unfair, inaccurate and unethical. I agree!
I don't agree in IB parents hoping that Ofqual makes our English pupils keep their downgraded marks and hoping that we can't use the CAGs.
Hope it is clear now.

Surely universities will be aware for next year's applications that 2020 A Level grades and 2021 A Level grades cannot necessarily be directly compared!? UCAS forms have to be submitted in the next few months; they are fairly unlikely to forget the circumstance under which this year's A Levels were awarded, quite so quickly!

I think that the current unfairness is at an individual level, but inflated grades would create unfairness at the level of groups of people.

We had this a bit with DS1 who did his GCSEs in 2017 and did not get a medicine offer first time round, so re-applied for 2020, competing with people who did GCSEs in 2018.

There were almost twice as many 8/9 grades in 2018 as there had been As in 2017 and universities treated 8/9 as equivalent to As. He got 6xA/9 and 4x A/7 which meant that he could not apply to Oxford, Leeds or Cardiff for medicine. 2 of his As were less than 1% from an A, so he would have got at least 8 x 8/9 grades, possibly 9 and would have got an interview at Oxford or Leeds and possibly Cardiff. It is what it is, but lots of changes have unforeseen consequences for others.