Exams cancelled

[noblegiraffe]

Alternative arrangements will be made.

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

I thought it was really well written as well. And much more parent friendly than the Ofqual stuff.

Surely if this is the case, results will be significantly lower than last year - in fact, significantly lower than usual?

If they are doing where they are performing, they might as well just sit the exams...

Or is it 'where they are performing on the stuff they have covered...'?
Though I know there was something about having had to have covered a good proportion of the content...

Let’s pray, conditions are safe enough for school return in March and they stay open till end of June. EOY exams should help to determine the CAGs

@littlequestion

Surely if this is the case, results will be significantly lower than last year - in fact, significantly lower than usual?

And if that's going to happen they'd be better off not bothering with grades at all and just giving the kids a 16+/18+ school leaving certificate.

Not sure where that leaves us with university offers though.

It would be massively unfair to have given students who missed approx 10% of their course last year a grade based on 'what they would have achieved on a good day'. Yet students this year who will have missed up to 50% face to face teaching and been subject to repeated self isolation, be given grades based on current performance.
Why not compensate for mitigating circumstances en masse? This is needed even more so than last year. Not less.
A good grade B achieved this year for example, would surely be a grade A student under normal circumstances.

@cptartapp

It would be massively unfair to have given students who missed approx 10% of their course last year a grade based on 'what they would have achieved on a good day'. Yet students this year who will have missed up to 50% face to face teaching and been subject to repeated self isolation, be given grades based on current performance. Why not compensate for mitigating circumstances en masse? This is needed even more so than last year. Not less. A good grade B achieved this year for example, would surely be a grade A student under normal circumstances.

I agree that compared to last year that is unfair.

What would you propose they do this year though? I can’t see fairness in any of the proposals.

I just thank goodness my dc is gcse year and not a level, and hope that things will be nearer normal by then.

@cptartapp

I completely agree with you. It’s incredibly unfair that they are effectively being penalised for being Y11 in the middle of a pandemic and are going to have lower grades as a result.

😭😭😭😭this is a nightmare for our A-level children. They did not choose any of this and many of them have worked as hard as possible under much more stress than usual. It would be so unfair for them to have lower A-level results for the rest of their lives which don't reflect their true potential and effort. And what about their uni applications???

Yes and many will be competing against last years cohort who have taken a year out for places. It’s completely unfair.

They should be lenient with the marks across the board, for A levels and GCSE's. There is no other way. They have to be compensated somehow, as students would normally be who have mitigating circumstances.
Exam year students this year have mitigating circumstances! Massive ones. Arguably more than any other time in history. This shouldn't just go out the window because hundreds of thousands are affected rather than a few.
So mark accordingly. The vast majority of DC will be underperforming through no fault of their own and this must be recognised country wide not penalised.

I agree they should be lenient but I am not getting the impression from ds' sixth form college that they will be. I don't expect them to give a C grade student a B but I do think if a student is very borderline they should get the B.

As an example my son got BCC in his mocks, the B was very close to an A on the 2019 grade boundaries (one mark away!) and one of the Cs very close to a B (not sure about the other C). So I would hope he would get ABC as a minimum for CAGs if the mock results play a significant part in the CAGs (of course at the moment we don't know what the process will be and it might be that the mocks play no role at all).

I am amazed there hasn't been uproar about this. Our year 11s have missed months of schooling. Now they are inevitably going to end up with poorer results.

They will be competing for university places , apprenticeships etc with last year's cohort who ended up with results far above average due up due to the way they were (eventually) awarded.

They're being shafted. How is this in any way fair?

There hasn't actually been any clarity about it which is why no uproar yet. The Ofqual consultation was only published, what, 3 weeks ago and while it was reported that the national grade profile would look different to last year's, it wasn't said whether this was expected to be higher or lower.

The Ofqual consultation does talk about teachers selecting what content to examine their pupils/base their grades which means they could avoid areas they hadn't managed to teach but that's just a big mess given that it would be up to the individual school to decide what to test, but then standards should be moderated between schools. So there is a suggestion that schools should be narrowing the assessed curriculum to account for lost learning but also awarding a grade based on their current performance. That would suggest that a pupil who covered the whole syllabus in less detail would get a worse grade than a student who covered 70% of the syllabus in greater depth.

The committee that was supposed to be investigating how to sort this out was disbanded before it even convened.

@noblegiraffe would you expect the year 11's to stay in school until the end of term in July this year?

I am slightly concerned that if it goes to teacher assessment they'll all be done by after the may half term or something.

They’d be out of school on study leave by May half term usually. We can’t keep them till July!

I actually think they need to keep there as long as possible. They have missed nearly 2 terms of last year, nearly a term already of this year. The last thing they need is to spend yet more time at home, it’s not like they can do much!

@noblegiraffe that's what I thought you might say. I was hoping they may get an extra half terms teaching to catch up.

You’re assuming they’d show up!

My Y13 is revising old content and learning new; he didn’t have mocks do all to play for. My qn is what happens to those who have had mocks. Do they carry on revising old content, or just learn that new content that is being taught at school.

My dd has had mocks they are continuing with the syllabus as far as I can make out. They seem to be carrying on as normal, presumably until the consultation results are revealed on the 22nd. Normally I would suggest that she revised over February half term but that seems pointless, unless she knows what she is revising for.

@noblegiraffe
I think you might be surprised. I know DS wants to be there as long as possible.

What would Y11 do in school though? If their grades are already decided there's no real reason for them to be in beyond May.

Teachers released from y11 duties are usually dealing with Y6 transition visits etc

The thing is, do we/society want grades to record achievement and show what the students know and can they move on to the next stage in that subject (which is what traditional exams are designed to do); or is it more of a way of showing future employers their general intelligence and potential (which is, to be fair, how most GCSEs and even A levels are viewed down the line)?