Exams cancelled

[noblegiraffe]

Alternative arrangements will be made.

How stressful to announce that with no details about what will happen.

yes, and now these students and those who were told that if they were unhappy with their CAG they can always re-sit, are facing the possibility of no grade again.
I’m confused. Didn’t they resist them in autumn just gone? I thought anyone unhappy with CAGs had option of autumn exams. Not helpful for university / 6th form entry though.
I’m hoping that teens can ‘resit’ in good time. IE on time to get results for onward progression. But I doubt that’s doable.

Autumn exams didn't work for many who had been out of education for many months and needed the extra time to get back up to standard. For a person whose results in August were a shock asking them to re-sit in October having not studied since March is a big ask.

I'm confused (I teach up to ks3).... Are igcses cancelled too? I've been on Cambridge and Pearson edexcel websites and their updates say that they aren't. Anyone know?

@Stormer

I agree that exams - with modifications - was the only true fair way.

Me too.

DH is a teacher HOD, so I know what a lose/lose situation it is for them. Last year he had to face parents demanding evidence, not just of their own child's grade, but of another students grade, which was higher, and they thought unfairly so.

How are they expected to make or break a young person's future? Grade inflation is inevitable.

I don't think anyone in government has a clue about this age group and the young people pick up on how little they appear to matter to put current MPs in power. What a cruel blow to announce school closures and exam cancellations without signs of a plan B having already been made.

Last year he had to face parents demanding evidence, not just of their own child's grade, but of another students grade, which was higher, and they thought unfairly so.

I don't get this on multiple levels. But I do caveat that I have no idea how state school in-year grading is in secondary, so feel free to tell me off :)

1. if a kid gets constantly x grade and is then awarded somewhere +/-1 within x, it's reasonable to think that the teacher has really made the assessment and it's correct

1. how is a parent qualified to make the distinction that kid3 is worse than her little darling? I cannot imagine a scenario where parents see other kid's full work history.

1. I've been screwed over in high school 4 times (other country where you can fail and have to repeat the year), had to fight against school and escalate to a ministry level. And even I say that in the huge majority of cases teachers know the kids and don't have an agenda against them. I was unlucky, but it doesn't mean that all teachers ever are bastards.

I am taking (very small) comfort in the fact that my DC's generation will be very unlikely to vote Tory. Cold comfort when it's their futures being fucked up though.

I have to say it's slightly hard reading all the predicted grades of 3As and 9 x 9 as the parent of a DC with SN who needs 3 x grade 3 GCSEs to get into college and obviously takes longer to achieve a certain (and "lower") standard compared with NT peers. They are at a huge disadvantage as despite the school doing their best to help, the months out of formal education will have a huge impact and despite my best efforts, they are unable to "teach themselves" the way a grade 9 student would.

For full disclosure, I'm aware I sound horribly bitter and jealous and I'm really not as I also have another DC who is a grade 9 student. So I see the difference daily and how much harder it is.

I also have a huge deal of sympathy (and empathy ) for teachers of DC with SN as the current situation is so hard. Actually I feel sympathy for all teachers who have been fucked over as much as the DC. The governments failure to act and then throwing all the responsibility in the lap of teachers is absolutely infuriating. It's not as though they couldn't see this coming, it's been nearly a fucking year...

@IAmAMalenkyBitPoogly

I am taking (very small) comfort in the fact that my DC's generation will be very unlikely to vote Tory. Cold comfort when it's their futures being fucked up though.

I have to say it's slightly hard reading all the predicted grades of 3As and 9 x 9 as the parent of a DC with SN who needs 3 x grade 3 GCSEs to get into college and obviously takes longer to achieve a certain (and "lower") standard compared with NT peers. They are at a huge disadvantage as despite the school doing their best to help, the months out of formal education will have a huge impact and despite my best efforts, they are unable to "teach themselves" the way a grade 9 student would.

For full disclosure, I'm aware I sound horribly bitter and jealous and I'm really not as I also have another DC who is a grade 9 student. So I see the difference daily and how much harder it is.

I also have a huge deal of sympathy (and empathy ) for teachers of DC with SN as the current situation is so hard. Actually I feel sympathy for all teachers who have been fucked over as much as the DC. The governments failure to act and then throwing all the responsibility in the lap of teachers is absolutely infuriating. It's not as though they couldn't see this coming, it's been nearly a fucking year...

I totally understand

I too have a dd who got a string of 8's and 9's in her GCSE's and was hoping for A & A* in her A levels last year (thankfully she did).

But last year ds needed 4 Grade 4's to go onto college and it was nail biting as although he got his longed for 8 in the practical subject he is now studying at Btec getting those 4/5 in maths and English (we always knew science was going to be 2/3) was not certain.

@noblegiraffe

No algorithm so no idea how the results will be moderated (and they must be otherwise 9s for all).

I think this is the one thing that has to be got right. The experience from last year shows that students at schools that internally moderated their CAGs before submitting them effectively did much worse than schools that simply submitted aspirational CAGs. If there is no moderation again, then we really will see grade inflation.

I realise this is a minority group, but I have a DS who was disappointed by his Computer Science GCSE result, but reasssured that he would be able to prove himself in his Computer Science AS this year. He's now back to having not that much control over the process (And how teachers assess students taking AS levels who've had at most one term in school after a 6 month gap, I have absolutely no idea).

@TheSunIsStillShining

Last year he had to face parents demanding evidence, not just of their own child's grade, but of another students grade, which was higher, and they thought unfairly so.

I don't get this on multiple levels. But I do caveat that I have no idea how state school in-year grading is in secondary, so feel free to tell me off :)

1. if a kid gets constantly x grade and is then awarded somewhere +/-1 within x, it's reasonable to think that the teacher has really made the assessment and it's correct

1. how is a parent qualified to make the distinction that kid3 is worse than her little darling? I cannot imagine a scenario where parents see other kid's full work history.

1. I've been screwed over in high school 4 times (other country where you can fail and have to repeat the year), had to fight against school and escalate to a ministry level. And even I say that in the huge majority of cases teachers know the kids and don't have an agenda against them. I was unlucky, but it doesn't mean that all teachers ever are bastards.

Some schools internally moderated their grades based on historical grades. So they ranked students and then if historically 5% got As that’s what they gave out. So in my son’s case no one had got a A in his technical subject for a few years. So although he was ranked as 1 in the group he got a C. Even though his predicted grade was a A/B. Therefore I felt perfectly within my rights to ask the school why they did this. They said they had been advised by OfQuel to do this. Yet other schools (particularly in the private sector who were not threatened with sanctions) did not internally moderate grades. So if they felt 10 students were at A they got A. They took the risk that Qfquel would not investigate. The state schools in most cases couldn’t/didn’t take this risk. The threat was that the school would not be an examination centre in the future. Some schools did not internally moderated. Some schools gave out the UCAS grades which are well known to be aspirational.

So you can see why teacher assessment is ambiguous. What does it actually mean.

It is clear that schools in both sectors took advantage of the CAGs last year. This year however is different. If you believe what is written on hear and said in the news most state schools have no or very little data on their students. The reasons seem to be that the curriculum was suspended in March and many many students have since had to self isolate.

On the other hand private schools, like my DDs, immediately went to on-line learning in March and if a student or group had to isolate they could access lessons as they would be streamed live. I know that my DDs has a vast amount of data on her. They held exams with cameras on during the first lockdown and have had exams at school last term. They are continuing with mocks in February.

I don't know what grades my DD will get however the school has as much data as they could have been expected to gather. They have been told all along and continue to be told that they have to keep working.

Yet again this shows the vast difference between the state and private sector. Rather than keep screaming 'its unfair' parents should be asking why the state sector could not offer more. The provision is clearly so very patchy with some excellent schools and some doing nothing.

I am no Boris Johnson fan however schools need to take responsibility for not putting in place even basic measures to ensure 'A' level students stayed on track.

Schools downing tools on their Year 12 students last year was the most appalling thing. They should have been prioritised. The state 6th form provision varied so much from school to school. I'm relieved my DD chose her large 6th form college over the 6th form in the next town which normally has some of the highest grades for GCSE and A level. Her 6th form continues teaching to timetable, mostly live lessons. The school did nothing. Another 6th form college in the next town provided very little and teachers weren't available. I could not understand how they could do that to A level students.

@2021vision I feel your post is misinformed and widely inaccurate.

My children are at a state school and their experience is exactly the same as that your private school provided.

However and it is an important however...

It is fair to say that students at private schools come from comfortably off families and have parents who are invested in their education. Their families have provided them with access to technology allowing them to have lessons on line and have space within their home to allow children to study.

I can’t believe that you are so naive to not appreciate that not every child lives in an environment like that. Many have no tech, no home support, no place to study, responsibilities for caring for others and many many more issues which effect their ability to study.

Yes it would be fab if every child had the same access to education as your child and mine but surely you can appreciate the barriers tgey face?

It’s not as easy as you make out.

Your post is actually really insulting to many teachers, schools, students and parents.

I agree with KittyMcKitty. Simply put, all schools are not created equal. Even if you take out the Tories' woeful underfunding of state schools and their ideological approach to Academy chains, the fact remains that some state schools are in catchments where it isn't reasonable for them to expect their students to have access to the technology they need to participate in excellent online learning. Even if all schools had the funding to provide laptops and dongles for students who needed them, there are still too many areas in the UK where 4G is patchy at best. (I'm in one of them - I can't get on Teams on my phone because the 4G is so poor, thank goodness I can afford good WiFi!).

The patchiness of state provision is in large part caused by the enormous social and economic inequality in the UK, which is structural and encouraged by this government.

You are wrong Kitty and made a lot of assumptions. I know that some state schools have offered an excellent provision, as they should have done. My point is that it is clear that many havent at all and rather than keep making this comparison where schools havent stepped up the parents should fix the state provision not moan about what private schools are doing.

I am well aware of the advantages that my DC have and so are they. Whenever this is raised the poster is always accused of not understanding or appreciating how difficult it is for those who are very disadvantaged. I am also, through my job and volunteering, well aware of this. However I stand by my point it is clear that many schools did not react quick enough, many doing nothing. Some were great and continue to be, some teachers are awesome, some are not. Why can't people understand this?

Just because some students don't have support at home/access to laptops etc does not mean that all provision should be stopped for everyone else in that school. There seems to be an attitude of 'we can't provide a service for every pupil so no-one can get it'. Again, whilst it is obvious some schools are doing everything in their power to support and help, many don't seem to be - there is always a reason why not!

DH is a teacher HOD, so I know what a lose/lose situation it is for them. Last year he had to face parents demanding evidence, not just of their own child's grade, but of another students grade, which was higher, and they thought unfairly so.

I am in agreement about what you are saying. The problem from a parent's view is that to say grades will be down to teacher assessment means the system will not be transparent. Decisions need not only to be impartial, but to be seen to be impartial.

Some state schools really did make little effort last year. They could have provided handouts to be collected or posted.

Not all private schools provided a great amount of effort. Even within the same school, it could depend on who your HOY was.

There are some understandable reasons for the above including the illness and shielding of key staff. Point is there is a lot of inequity including, as 2021 says, a huge variation on the amount of data held on students.

I also agree that any grading system should be impartial and transparent and it is worrying that is unlikely to be the case.

Another thing to factor in, that no matter what standard work schools were seeing out in the first lockdown, many students (both private and state) did not engage for a myriad of reasons.

It will be interesting to see what happens this time.

Ok, I’m a state school teacher who said I don’t have enough data to base a grade on.

That doesn’t mean I haven’t got data. Of course we’ve marked assessments and done end of topic tests and whatnot. I’ve got spreadsheets of numbers. BUT that doesn’t mean it’s good enough to base GCSE grades on. All data isn’t equal. A topic test sat at home because the year group was isolating is basically useless. A topic test sat in school but done poorly because they were off with covid is useless. Homework scores are irrelevant. Data from March is out of date.

Don’t go crowing about how much data your private school has because it might actually be worthless when it comes to assessing a GCSE grade.

@noblegiraffe do you think they will devise some assessments that need to be carried out in the next few months on which you will assess the grades?

A friend mentioned today that their daughter is sitting secondary school entrance exams from home and the secondary school has asked for her to consent to ‘vigilance spyware’ (their words not mine) so that candidates can’t cheat etc. when they login to sit their exam. Interesting. Initial thoughts are wouldn’t work for GCSEs / A levels mocks or continuous assessment as not everyone has access to devices and secondly safeguarding. Did make me wonder how the school had got around the second issue though.

Universities did exams online didn't they, so did they use something like that?

@noblegiraffe Do you not rank each student though when you are thinking about teacher assessed grades? From your personal experience of each student can you not work out who are the high achievers and who is at the bottom of the class? Surely even poor data would support that. As parents we have to trust that you know our children well enough to judge.

But if a pupil has only covered half the syllabus, even if their work is of a really high standard, can they be given the same grade as someone who has covered everything. Especially in something like maths or science, as won’t they struggle going into A-level

And pupils who have family issues/mental health issues due to the lockdown and isolation - how are they going to be fairly assessed. Not everyone informs their school of their family circumstances, however their work and engagement may drop off for a short period. Will they take this into account?