Battling with school on A Level CAG results marked down from Mock exam

[Almeri]

Sorry for the long post, but I would really appreciate any opinions or advice as we are in the process of appealing against an A Level CAG grade and are going through the internal process at my son's school and I'm keen to gauge opinion before a meeting next week. My son was marked down from his mock exam that he took at the end of February. The school are arguing that because his coursework, that made up 20% of the A level was of 'a moderate quality' it was in fact a B, it meant that his mock grade of an A was pulled down to a B. Unfortunately his teacher, who he had a problematic relationship with for 2 years, is Head of Department for this subject and we believe he has been biased. There was an incident out of school that we strongly believe affected the relationship. However my son didn't want to pursue a complaint at the time as he thought it would make things worse at school. This teacher told him at parents evening pre UCAS predictions, that he would not predict him an A and told my son he was incapable of achieving it. He predicted him a B. After his mock exam, he got the A. His other teacher on the subject was delighted for him and said she knew he could achieve it. She also told him that he couldn't be moved down from a mock. This has now happened and he hasn't got the grade he needed for his course. Has anyone else found themselves in these circumstances?

@OverTheRainbow88

I gave 4 A’Level students a grade lower than their mock.

Why?

Kashtan - DD's predicted grades were updated in mid February based in the mocks and the coursework elements seen at that point. Therefore they ought to have been considered better imo. Dd lost out due to the opposite issue faced by the OP however - huge chunks of coursework and nea not included, and then management collated the results and applied historic data etc to them so thus reducing many again.

I guess it shows there was no fair system this year really though.

@Almeri

Thank you for your comments. The reason for my post on this forum, was to find out if there were any students who have found themselves in a similar position in achieving lower CAG grades from their UCAS and mocks. I have spoken to a cross section of people who are either teachers in other schools or parents at my son’s school or other schools and I’m yet to hear of this happening to anyone else. All have confirmed that in their case there were no marking down from mocks. Indeed in many cases, students were marked up by 2-3 grades from their mock. If anyone has experienced a downgrade, I’d be interested to hear about your experience.

Gcse not a level.

Da got a 6 in drama after mock.

They hadn't done a final assessment piece at that point.

His paper was fair but there's all sorts of components.

CAG a 5.

Didn't occur to me this wasn't a true reflection of what they felt he would have got overall.
But then maybe because they actually really liked ds?

But grades weren't based on relationships.

I'd be got a B in coursework that is done over time and in that 1 assessment got a A - where is the evidence he would have got enough marks within A boundary to get an A overall?

Also UCAS predictions are always extremely aspirational. 16% of students get their ucas predictions.

The marking and internal moderating of the NEA for my subject took place after my students had sat their mock exam. An awful lot of data contributed towards the CAG - the mock result and NEA mark were two elements of that data but by no means everything.

If we take out all the subjective stuff about the teacher not liking your son (which I'm sorry, just won't have been a factor - I couldn't have given two hoots about how I felt about a student when working this stuff out), it sounds as if the school (as they should have done) gathered as much evidence as they could to predict as fairly as they could what your son would have got had he sat the exam. You'll really struggle to make a case for malpractice.

If anything, the problem appears to be the other teacher who told your son, erroneously, that he couldn't be moved down from his mock. She had no business giving out inaccurate info like that.

Out of interest, what grade did the Ofqual algorithm give him?

Out of interest, what grade did the Ofqual algorithm give him?

I wondered that, but it must have been lower, otherwise it would have stood as the grade?

DH is a hod and in his school didn't make any of the grade decisions alone. Weeks of work went into the CAGS, back and forth decisions, everythibg had to be backed up. If 2 A level teachers had disagreed they'd have had to provide evidence to senior management. It is highly unlikely your DSs grade was decided upon solely by that one teacher.

Almeri, the process was an imperfect non-standardised process - and perhaps inevitably so because schools were at different stages of their own unique A-level preparations when things ground to a halt.

Given the underlying imperfections in the process, I do think there are legitimate grounds to suspect there have been instances of unconscious bias in assigning CAGs.

I'm not sure if that helps much. Or if much can be done to seek justice. But wanted to let you know that I agree with you in thinking the process was open to human bias.

I do think there are legitimate grounds to suspect there have been instances of unconscious bias in assigning CAGs.

But as FortyFifty says, these grades were decided within my school by using data, consulting subject teachers, consulting HoDs, reviewed and scrutinised by senior management and the exams officer. Are you suggesting that in any one case, all of those people - some of who wouldn't even know the student in question - were going to be biased against that student? And that the data used would also demonstrate and support that unconscious bias?

How does that work?

It’s of course possible that there are instances of unconscious bias affecting predictions. I also think we have to consider that the process of generating CAGs might actually have revealed unconscious bias in previous predictions. I think previous predictions are more likely to be biased than CAGs.
At the start of the CAG process my colleague and I ranked our small class of A Level students based on our “professional judgement”, just gut feeling based on what we’d seen of their work. We came up with a rank of 1-8 for our students and were confident it was right. When we looked at the data and performance of the students in mocks, NEA, essays, homework etc it was clear that we were over-estimating some kids and underestimating others. We ended up with the order being 1,4,2,3,6,5,7,8. Student number 4 is quiet, diligent and consistent. 2 and 3 are more vocal in class, have flashes of brilliance but are inconsistent. The evidence showed us that we were wrong to predict them higher than student 4.
There were some similar anomalies at GCSE, with our initial predictions under-estimating what I call the metronomes, those kids who are quiet, consistent and never miss a beat. I can understand why any a student who was given predictions of an A in the past would be miffed to find that they are now predicted a B when a classmate, who has always been predicted a B ends up with an A, but we were told to look at a range of data and give grades that we felt we had the evidence to support. It was a much more rigorous process than a usual predicted grade report and so there were a few cases where kids grades wouldn’t have matched their previous predictions. Once we’d revealed those biases we had to correct for them.

@MadameMinimes I was nodding along to everything you said. Thank you for being so rigorous and honest in drawing up your CAGs and especially for being professional enough to recognise your own biases where there were any and correct them. No parent could ask for more than that.

Thanks Shimy. You’ve made me blush!

In my A Level and GCSE class we didn't give any CAG that were lower than mock grades. But we were in the fortunate position of having done 3/4 sets of mocks through years 10/11 or 12/13 so had covered the whole of both papers and had sufficient evidence of either a CAG that was equal if the mock performance was sustained at a particular grade or higher if a trajectory was shown.

@MadameMinimes

as PP have said when we were asked to provide CAGs for students we went through a very vigorous process, especially given that we were told at the time that exam boards would request evidence to support our grades if they deemed it necessary as part of their moderation process - this not only vastly reduced the so called grade inflation, but also aided against bias.

For example in my school (and from speaking to colleagues in other schools they followed the same process)
Step 1 - as a teacher I used the evidence I had i.e. books, essays, homeworks, tests, mocks to formulate the most probable CAG for each student and then I had to rank them
Step 2 - as a department we had virtual meetings to moderate the grades and determine the overal rankings (smaller departments worked together to ensure that this step was completed as per the larger departments)
Step 3 - our grades and rankings went to SLT at which point unless we were asked specific questions teachers/HoDs were out of the loop in terms of the grades put forward. This was done specifically to ensure that teachers were not 'in-line' for specific allegations etc. This also meant that any 'odd' grades were investigated i.e. a student given a CAG of a D in one subject, but As in others or if the data already held on a student showed a different grade completely - we were asked for our reasons, the evidence etc.
Step 4 - the evidence used to create the CAG had to be available for the exam officer to immediately forward if requested

Whilst there may still be instances of bias creeping through as no system is 100% fool proof given the wealth of evidence we had to use to formulate the grades and the sicking stress, hard work and tears that teachers went through to provide these and the multiple layers in place to even out any bias it would be very, very unfortunate that your DS lost out.

If he really feels that the grade is wrong, then put in for the exam (deadlines are tight) else I would just suggest that he moves on from this

Thanks to all of you teachers with your detailed responses, it’s very interesting as a parent to hear your views and the thought and work that went into gradings. In terms of my comment regarding potential malpractice, I’d be interested to hear your comments. The Deputy Head has interviewed the teacher in question and has admitted in writing it was a poor relationship, that unfortunately got worse when my son (And 1 other) witnessed him behaving inappropriately. There are statements from both my son and his teacher on this. Only a few discrepancies, but mainly accurate account from both. As you can imagine, this has somewhat made it more complicated.

There should have been measures in place to prevent these factors affecting the CAG. It should have been agreed by more than one teacher, and will definitely have been signed off by the Head. If this process was not followed, there could be malpractice.

Sometimes there are instances where a relationship between a teacher and pupil becomes quite negative. That sounds like it’s the case here. That doesn’t necessarily mean there has been malpractice. There would need to be clear evidence that your son’s grade was not reasonable given his previous performance. By all means query it, but I think it’s likely that the school will be able to give an explanation that the exam boards would consider reasonable, especially given his lower NEA grade.

I feel really sorry for OP on this thread. Everyone's saying get over it / let it go.
On every GCSE thread they are absolutely indignant that you must appeal, write to MP, this is an utter disgrace etc.

@Oblomov20 My advice would be the same for GCSE. The bar for a successful appeal is set very high. For an appeal to succeed, the grade given would need to be lower than a consistent pattern of performance. There aren’t many GCSEs left with NEA but a giving a student a CAG which is the same as their NEA grade is highly unlikely to be considered malpractice without some really exceptional circumstances. Telling the OP to write to her MP and fight the grade would not be doing her or her son a kindness in these circumstances.

Thanks. This situation has been hard for young people, they haven’t had the chance to finish the way they should have done and been able to prove to themselves and others what they are capable of. The CAG’s have benefited a lot of kids, who we’re arguably more diligent then my son day to day but found exams tough. Certainly both my nephews were very relived to be taking exams in 2020 and I’m happy for them that they have opportunities that they might not have had in previous years. My son is probably what you’d call an exam performer, but reading posts from teachers this wasn’t the leading factor. Before the Government U-turn he would have got his place at uni based on mocks. It’s a life lesson, that’s for sure.

@Almeri it has been really shit for the students. Lots of kids over perform in the real exams, some crash, and none of them got to really demonstrate their knowledge and skills. I think all teachers really feel for this years 11s and 13s.