Exams cancelled

[noblegiraffe]

Alternative arrangements will be made.

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

No idea about other predicted grades as that data isn’t collected.

They used to be : they really shouldn't have stopped!

The ALGI parents' group on FB also really really does not get that UCAS grades are 'on your best day, with a good wind behind you, a 4leaf clover and luck on your side' grades.

However... exams in history , English and even biology , sociology and a few others are notoriously 'inaccurately'/ unreliably marked so the UCAS grade and teacher prediction might have been right. The exam could be the wrong result. That is not considered in the UCU research. which assumes exams are 'correct'.

I’m in Kent. My child missed 8 weeks of schooling from September to December as a result of self isolating from positive cases at their school. That seemed pretty standard for this area.

A decision needs to be made ASAP. My eldest is “resitting” one of his As as a private student - ie he isn’t at school and has a tutor for one hour a week. We approached his old school before Xmas to ask if he could sit the exams there. He needs to know if he can stop paying for a private tutor and give up on the A level and move on. His Chosen career path is stuffed If he doesn’t improve on his A level anyway. Just A rubbish situation and it’s not as though the Govt hasn’t had time to plan something. What has Ofqual been doing since October?

I think that was unlucky for Kent.

While we’re pointing out things that are learned at GCSE, how to usefully scale your axes to best view your data is something the DfE could work on. Look at that white space.

The plummet in attendance in London at the end of last term shocking.

Bit surprised that some of you seem to think that Southerners somehow have some advantage over Northerners in the exam stakes. I live in the London Borough of Barking & Dagenham which has had the dubious pleasure of having the highest rates of Covid across the country. My DD has been IN school for 9 out of the last 32 school weeks. Her school has been devastated by the virus. She has had 4 periods of isolation, 1 when she caught Covid herself, 2 when other students did and 1 when 20 of her teachers had to isolate because 5 had it. The school has also been shut down by the LEA for a a deep clean. The shocking attendance is because we have a high number of ethnic minorities living in the local area who are at higher risk and they are scared. My DD hasn't done mocks, they didn't happen because the school was closed and she hasn't been in school since the last week in November. GCSE exams for her are untenable and it is unforgivable that there was no plan 'just in case' this happened. I should also add there are high levels of child poverty in Barking & Dagenham, many of my DD's friends don't have laptops and her Zoom lessons frequently have students missing as they have no WiFi. Not every parent on Mumsnet is worried because the lack of grade 9's at GCSE will affect their childs journey to University, some just want the opportunity for their child to move on to the next stage of their education despite the difficulties they have faced through no fault of their own.

That's a dreadful situation @HappySonHappyMum and I'm really sorry your DD is in it.

I'm in a London borough too that has also had high rates and I've only just remembered that as as well as my child having to isolate, their school was also completely shut for several weeks before Christmas (their various periods of home schooling as blurred into one ...). Unfortunately these two periods of isolation didn't fully coincide.

Nowhere near as bad as a situation as your DD but not great either, and I know we weren't the only school to close in our borough and the surrounding ones. Southern children most definitely have been badly affected too.

Dreadful happy : poor DD. What do you think would work best for your DD and other kids in her school?

That’s so sad to hear. I have a y11 too, my heart goes out to you both.

@HappySonHappyMum - that sounds really hard. I know Barking and Dagengam had been really hard hit by COVID as has a number of the other neighbouring boroughs. Some of the Thurrock and Kent rates were astonishing.

Sometimes there is a tendency of MN to equate London and the SE with advantage. The truth is that there is wealth and poverty and a lot in between. It's a hugely varied experience for Londoners but COVID ripped through schools before Christmas. 50% of DD's year group tested positive.

That is very difficult to hear, Happy and obviously very worrying for you. As covid is a virus, there will be clusters of badly affected students and then, possibly even close by, relatively unaffected schools, or even year groups which makes experiences of this pandemic so different.

There was some expectation that attempts would be made to mitigate the effects and disparity in consistency of education here, but I don't see anything in the Ofqual consultation that even begins to address it.

What is really needed is focused funding from that catch-up tutoring put into those areas and schools to support them with exam preparation, I think. But that requires the DfE to actually do something.

@Piggywaspushed

Dreadful happy : poor DD. What do you think would work best for your DD and other kids in her school?

My DD is a really hard worker and has been predicted 7's at GCSE but the way things are I would like to hope that she'll get 5's. With the lack of guidance and having been taught on Zoom for 23 weeks I hope she'll pass at this rate. I should add that for 2 additional weeks she was in school but half of her year were on Covid restrictions so she sat in class watching her teacher who was sitting in front of her giving a zoom lesson to the kids that were not there! So still no actual teaching. It's had a devastating effect on her mental health. She 'crashes' quite frequently and when she caught Covid she swore me to secrecy because she felt her friends might 'blame' her for stopping them all going to school again. Of course I told the school and year 11 was shut and she only began to feel 'better' when her friends started sharing the results of their positive tests. I really want teachers to give grades, they know her, they have been her teachers for 5 years they are best placed to estimate what she would have achieved before all this. Mini tests would be a huge worry, she's had no exam practice at all so it would be extremely stressful and she'd be very unprepared. I'd like them to draw a line, give the teacher assessed grades and then use the rest of the year to prepare them all for their next steps making sure they have the skills and knowledge that they need to transfer successfully onto their A levels. We can't change whats happened but we have the chance to prepare them for whats to come so we should use the time left for that.

That’s so hard. Are you and other parents able to access the consultation and make it known what you want to happen. It’s a bit of a tick box of agree & disagree but there’s comment boxes where you could say exactly what you’ve put across very well here. Maybe in every comment box on the paper. And if your DD and her friends complete it too. They need all perspectives but especially from those who’ve had a tough time!

I have answered the consultation but reading through it seems like they've decided that mini tests are the way to go - they want opinions on how they should be used not if. I know everyones experience of Covid is different and some kids haven't been affected too badly but there is no way to differentiate between this so we have to err on the side of caution and go with the worst case scenario I think. There is no good result but I think we should trust our teachers, I don't think they need to be setting and marking additional tests to give students grades. Every report my DD has ever had contains her expected grades, minimum expected grades and the grades she could achieve. Surely that data has to count for something.

I’m afraid not,Happy, that data is junk.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/secondary/3457511-Ofsted-announce-school-report-grades-are-bollocks-and-to-be-ignored

“Too often a vast amount of teachers' time is absorbed into recording, collecting and analysing excessive progress and attainment data within schools. And that diverts their time away from what they came into the profession to do. which is be educators.

“And, in fact, with much of that internal progress and attainment data, they and we can’t be sure that it is valid and reliable information”

Ofqual won't have free choice about what they do; this will have come down from above. They just have to work out what it looks like and then pass the really shit parcel to the ABs.

@noblegiraffe

I’m afraid not,Happy, that data is junk.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/secondary/3457511-Ofsted-announce-school-report-grades-are-bollocks-and-to-be-ignored

“Too often a vast amount of teachers' time is absorbed into recording, collecting and analysing excessive progress and attainment data within schools. And that diverts their time away from what they came into the profession to do. which is be educators.

“And, in fact, with much of that internal progress and attainment data, they and we can’t be sure that it is valid and reliable information”

Jesus wept - what is the point of these figures on a report then if it's just a misleading set of numbers that mean nothing?! What a waste of everyones time. There are no comments on reports anymore so it literally turns a report into a data drop. The only contact I have with any teachers is a yearly parents evening - and I haven't had one of them since year 9. Really looking forward to the shit show that will be my DD's GCSE results now

I genuinely don't think that is true of all subjects. It's a bit of a sweeping statement and I take what Ofsted say with a pinch of salt. I agree that data gathering is obsessive and often too regular to produce anything other than anomalies but teacher predictions are often a pretty good source of information about individual student progress.

Surely that is because Ofsted was also falling down the rabbit hole of believing only exams are 'reliable' There is , as ever, scant reference to subjects with NEAs in any of this.

Report Grades are bollocks Mmm, maybe some. After reading a fair bit of that thread I think noble has a point that parents and kids put too much faith into theses ‘grades’ but to say they are bollocks is somewhat of a harsh sweeping statement. It really depends on how experienced the teachers are, where the data comes from and how the reports are written.
We get various style reports throughout the year. Some are written and include an effort and attainment grade that’s derived from class work, homework and tests. Some reports are just effort & attainment grade. But after end of year exams the report has 3 columns for each subject. One saying their result as a percentage, 2nd saying the median (so the middle mark not average), then 3rd column is the ‘predicted’ grade. So as a parent you are very aware that the grades apply to that exam only. The other reports throughout the year provide more of a progress report. We also have an annual parents eve where the kids are present too and the teachers talk to the student mostly - progress chat & no grades. I think all these things combined give a pretty accurate view of where the child is at. Okay, so they can’t look into a crystal ball and ‘know’ what the future holds but I think teachers do a damn good job of seeing into the future!

Having made them up for years, NotDonna, I think parents would be surprised at both how little thought, and science go into their creation. Maybe being a mathematician also gives me a different view.

I’d actually trust all that information from a professional much more than a one off exam like a gcse. But I’m a bit anti-exam at the best of times.

You really make them up?

Piggy teacher predictions are often a pretty good source of information about individual student progress.

You can't measure progress!

I wonder if the fact that you think the grades assigned on pupil reports aren't junk and I do is why we disagree so much about the cancellation of exams.

What is interesting though, is that we've had lots of discussions over the years about the unreliability of exam marking in essay subjects, and how subjective it is. That two examiners could look at the same English essay and give it entirely different but supportable grades under the same marking criteria. With that in mind, how do you think that it is any more accurate when it is a teacher doing it to classwork? Surely if exams are unreliable in essay subjects, it's because the entire concept of a reliable grade in those subjects is nonsense, not because it can be achieved more accurately through other assessment methods.

@NotDonna

You really make them up?

Stab in the dark. At KS3 certainly nonsense to assign GCSE grades to kids.

At GCSE probably more accurate because we sit mock exams. From those mock exams we know their position in the year and from their position in the year, because they are so close to exams there's unlikely to be massive movement.

It's their position in the year group that gives us any accuracy about their predicted grade, not the quality of their work. And there's certainly room for movement even from mocks.

That makes sense. That’s why I like the median percentage on our end of year reports.