Ofqual - you can’t appeal CAGS or use mocks

[noblegiraffe]

Updated info just out from Ofqual because there has been obvious confusion after last weekend.

Students will not be able to appeal on the basis that they think their CAG was unfair, and they will not be able to appeal on the basis of a higher mock grade.

Appeals will be allowed from schools only for admin errors, such as data entry errors.

If there are concerns about bias or discrimination, they should be raised with the school in the first instance.

The autumn exam series will be available for anyone unhappy with their result.

schoolsweek.co.uk/results-2020-what-you-need-to-know-about-this-years-appeals-and-autumn-resits/

Good luck SusanWalker. Admin errors have always been a good reason for an appeal. Fingers crossed for your DS.

So good you contacted the school @SusanWalker!! That is quite a huge error! Hope they can sort it quickly.

Keeping fingers crossed for you @SusanWalker! Let’s hope you will get good news soon. That definitely sounds like an appealable admin error but what a nightmare for you and DS

Thank you to the teachers on here who have explained how the CAG allocations and ranking discussions worked. It must have been a hugely stressful job for all of you especially where you were all too aware that a student was unlikely to get more than a 2 or 3.

Oh my Goodness Susan. Was it the school's error?

I still don’t understand why we accept a process of comparing children to the last 3 years. Yes this was a horrible job for the teachers and has deflated and inflated grades. The grades of any student at anytime should be based on the student not on past students performance and someone else’s results. You can’t say you can only give out 10 7’s and then pick students who could get this, if 30 students consistently score a 7 they should get a 7! What the current system does is bolster some students and downgrades others undeservedly on both counts.

A fair system is that ANYONE who gets say over 98% correct gets a 9, it doesn’t matter if 30% or 3% get this grade because they will have deserved it by getting 98%, then anyone who say gets 90-97% gets an 8 again doesn’t matter how many students and so on. That is a fairer system if we continue to use exams to assess them. Why are we of the opinion that there should only be a % of students getting a particular grade?!

You can’t say you can only give out 10 7’s and then pick students who could get this,

Sorry, I didn’t explain it well, we didn’t decide to give out those 10 7s because that’s how many got 7s the previous years, that was based on this years cohort.

I feel so sorry for all the students and teachers let down thus summer. It’s a shame they didn’t delay the exams instead.

Thanks for all the messages. I think it's the tutoring company's fault because they put the wrong covering letter detailing ds achievements and levels with his work, basically the letter said the pupil had failed to attend any lessons all year.

But then the school only read the covering letter and based the grades on that, where if they'd looked at his work they would have seen it didn't match at the time.

Anyway they are now sorting it out between themselves. We went to the college today and they were very sympathetic. DS is signed up for maths, accounting and business studies a levels, then he's going to attend further maths and they'll put him in for the exam if he gets on ok, but as he's not enrolled he can drop it easily if it's too much.

They even said if he had to retake he could do 2 A levels and 1 GCSE this year, then pick up another a level and do 3 years of college. They really wanted him to do maths! Hopefully it won't be an issue though.

DS is feeling much better and so am I!

@Lightuptheroom - that’s terrible. At our school for A level we worked out and agreed rank order and grades with partner teacher and then this was discussed with Head of department and assessed against the last three years’ data. It then has to be signed off by management. I find it hard to believe that they would not use mocks and coursework.

@SusanWalker glad it is getting sorted!

SusanWalker that is great news. We assessed an external candidate's work to put them in our rank order and it was a tricky process. Fortunately we largely agreed with the tutors on the grades.

Yes I can understand how it slipped through the cracks given the circumstances. I'm feeling a lot more forgiving now I know what's happened!

Luckily the ranking doesn't matter now so it's not going to affect anyone else.

Slightly disappointed I didn't get to quote ofqual and the equalities act 2010 though 😂

The whole thing is a mess but people need to remember

• mocks are rarely all of the exams eg they may do three papers for real exam in the summer but only one in a mock
• mocks may be made up questions as students tend to practice real papers and learn mark schemes
• mocks are done for different purposes - motivate a class lacking in confidence or shock students into doing some revision
• teachers know their students and what they will get - this does not mean they would get it on the day - students often miss read, rush, have a meltdown etc etc that can affect their results
• people in education were clueless about the car crash of the algorithm - no one knew what they would actually exactly do or work out the results with
• the results mean nothing to the schools - they can’t be used for anything / in any league table etc etc
• higher grades at gcse make it harder to show progress at a-level so could make them look worse in league tables
• (some) parents think they know what their child will get but are (often) sometimes overly optimistic
• students would have always been able to see their centre assessed grades as part of a data request - teachers have known this from the start
• predicted grades and targets tend to be optimistic - what the child COULD get from their starting point not what they WOULD get

Try and focus on next steps and resitting if you aren’t happy!

I've emailed school. No response. Grades good enough to get into 6th form.

But I'm still peeved. That he dropped from a 8/possible 9 in Eng Lang to a 6. And a predicted 8 in RE, to a 5, which was his lowest mark.

Felt better for emailing HoY, but knew it was futile.

Oblomov20 if you want to talk to someone at the school I would email either the exams officer asking them to pass on to whoever is dealing with appeals or one of the heads of department in one of the subjects your ds is disappointed in. The head of year quite probably isn't looking at emails and would only pass it on anyway (unless they're involved in the process at your ds' school). Hopefully the school will be happy to talk through how grades were arrived at and that might help.

Thank you Blueberry. I have no idea who that is (exam officer) at the school, but I'll check.

Schools Still Used the Abandoned Algorithm.

Up to 1,900 schools still used a similar algorithm to the one the government abandoned due to "too many significant inconsistent and unfair outcomes". 1,900 schools sent their CAGs to FFT Datalab who sent back to them, information about how many grades to change to fit their school's 2019 data. 1,000 schools sent them to FFT again to further check their CAGs.

I'm writing to FFT, my MP, Ofqual, my school, exam boards, any journalist whose written about the algorithm. I suggest you share this information and do the same. My child's grades were at or lower than his most recent sustained, attainment grades.

Grades should have been, per Ofqual, "[a CAG] which represented the grade that student would have been most likely to achieve if teaching and learning had continued and student had taken their exams as planned."
AND
"Working At Grades" as well as "Target Grades" (FFT Target Data) were not to be used as per Ofqual, "note that these centre assessment grades [CAGs] are not the same as - working at grades (the grade a student is currently working at) [and] - target grades". Rather, the DfE and Ofqual stated when determining CAGs to use "student's knowledge, skills and abilities in relation to the subject. This evidence should inform teachers' professional judgements about each student's likely performance at the time of the exam."; "those judgements should be holistic, based on the range of evidence that schools and colleges have. So students shouldn't worry about one disappointing mock exam result"; "performance over the course of study"; "review data, classwork, bookwork"; "performance on any class or homework assessments"; "signed off by at least 2 teachers [or an equal] in that subject .... [stating] fairly represent the grades".

Please see the following: ffteducationdatalab.org.uk/2020/06/gcse-results-2020-a-look-at-the-grades-proposed-by-schools/?fbclid=IwAR1i6OB4gEvjEcBa4yCWW9xYW83S5EM1K2WiWanh-BKoqTpo1Q0V2Z9-V1g

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/909035/6656-2_-_Executive_summary.pdf

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/887018/Summer_2020_Awarding_GCSEs_A_levels_-_Info_for_Heads_of_Centre_22MAY2020.pdf

This is dealt with in the summary guidance for appeals.

"A school or college that took into account the distribution of centre assessment grades compared with grades achieved by the centre’s students in previous years will have acted within the guidance. The taking into account of such information is not, therefore, an error.”

Thanks for the heads up. Just published today. I believe I smell a rat. The FFT organisation is connected with the DfE. That paragraph above seems to be designed for them, since they now know how poorly they've affected so many students.
I can't give up for the sake of so many they've injured. I hope others will carry on fighting too. After all, the DfE has withdrawn lots of other guidances!

It doesn't change the fact that the government declared the algorithm to contain "too many significant inconsistent and unfair outcomes". I suppose instead of appealing on the basis of an error, it has now become discrimination. There is no deadline for that type of appeal. I suggest parents write directly to the exam boards. Think it through though, spend a bit of time on it, provide lots of information.

AQA
[email protected]

EdExcel/Pearson
[email protected]

OCR
[email protected]

That’s helpful information. I’m certainly gathering all the evidence I can!

Just be aware that exam boards generally won't speak to parents and will tell you to go back to the school. So if someone does make sure you get their name and the time/date of the call as I think, from my experience, parents will be told to contact the school with a complaint about CAGs.

Good to know. I did read that the exams boards understand if your complaint is sensitive and you may not wish to discuss it with the school. Perhaps that is a way to circumnavigate that issue. I just don't feel the schools have the energy nor interest to resolve individual student complaints. I think they were given bad advice but now feel compelled to live with it and even defend it.

I understand that the only reason you can appeal is on the basis that (unless school admit an error submitting dates) there has been bias or prejudice? My daughter was for example working at a 7 on her Fev 2020 school report, predicted a 7 on her Feb 2020 school report , but given a 6... this was English and she even volunteered to go to drop in English for 8 weeks at least to try and get her grade up to her target grade of 8. How can she have gone down from her predicted grade in her Feb school report?
Out of 10 subjects she only got the same as her Feb 2020 report predicted grades in 3 subjects... the rest all were lower . I thought predicted grades were what was written on a school report predicted grades so why 2 months later have they all been downgraded ? Do I stand a chance appealing ?

All school have said is ... we refer you back to our letter regarding appealing via Ofqual but won’t enter into a discussion .