Exams cancelled

[noblegiraffe]

Alternative arrangements will be made.

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

@portico

A question for noblegiraffe and/or other KS4/KS5 teachers. Will teacher assessments be based on past paper qns, or qns issued by the boards, where schools choose qns based on content covered so far. Or can teachers write yo their own qns

No idea! Lol. Teachers know as much as you do at the minute. Possibly less, as I've not had a chance to catch up with the latest news yet today. I teach maths GCSE and A level, but have no idea how we're going to do teacher assessments this year. GCSE will be easier than A Level for me, because our GCSE mocks went ahead as planned in November, with very few pupils affected by isolations. Other schools might not have been so lucky with the number of pupils isolating. A level mocks were supposed to be happening next week (postponed from November because half the year were isolating then). I've done a couple of short assessments since September, but nothing that's decent enough for proper valid teacher assessments.

@SnowballedMum

This an opportunity for the education system to restructure. I would love for the children to have another year in school; restart the academic year from September. Spend this spring and summer term focused on extra curricular activities, developing a love of learn and self improvement as opposed to this exam obsessed culture. It would give the EY children more time to play and start structured learning from 6-7.

I would be delighted if this happened. My son is doing his a levels. Never did GCSEs because school abruptly stopped. Had period off school this year and is so fed up about this that he is finding it hard to engage in online lessons. Online learning is not the same - he is just sat bored in front of a computer screen and the lessons seem to be very short, and some don’t take place at all due to ‘technical issues’.

Time for a do over.

Yep, no idea what’s going on. Our Y11 mocks were screwed by isolation. Y13 were supposed to have mocks in the next couple of weeks. We did do Y13 assessments in September to see where they were at post lockdown but told the kids not to worry as they were for our info only so 🤷‍♀️

People keep mentioning end of topic tests etc but they just aren’t good enough data to base an actual GCSE/A-level result on.

Whatever the DfE come up with they had better run it by teachers first before announcing it unlike last time (the ‘use mock results’ fiasco).

Although I am no fan of Williamson he just cannot win. He is telling us all early, of course its not ideal. I went through this last year at the last minute with my DS for A Levels. In end he did OK and is at his first choice university although he is not of course having the real university experience.

However my friends DD and another friends DS reckons that they will all be given A's and the odd B because of the all the hassle they have been through. Apparently its rife that this is what our young people are expecting will happen.

Please please tell your children to not take their foot off the pedal. My DS did very well in his mocks and some of his friends didnt bother revising. They were expecting (they say) to pull it out of the bag during the real thing. Issue was that the mocks were part of the real thing but no one realised at the time.

Also there will be a massive amount of levelling going on if the teachers think that they can just give inflated grades.

Mum of a year 11 DD and teacher of year 11 classes .

So fed up.

As well as not knowing how we will be assessing the kids there is a lack of clarity as to what we will be assessing- is it how well (or badly) they have learnt the course content given all the disruption or is it some more nebulous idea about their innate ability? In both cases the only way to get parity between schools is an externally marked assessment of some sort .

No method is going to remove the impact of covid if we are talking about a genuine assessment of where a child is this summer and the thought of just how unfair the grades could be between schools makes me faintly nauseous.

The fact they have left themselves some wiggle room in the vagueness of the wording might be a good thing if someone can pull a reasonable compromise out of thin air in the very near future. I have to hope that some team somewhere has been thinking about this eventually.

Right now at our school, we are ploughing on with the syllabus , hoping to get the kids back in school by the second half of term and assess them again.

Although I am no fan of Williamson he just cannot win. He is telling us all early, of course its not ideal.

Is it early? Students in Wales and Scotland knew from the start of the academic year that they would be getting grades assessed on coursework. I think changing the rules of assessment halfway through is better than just before the exams but it's still not good.

@Cuddling57

What would people like to happen?

I think they should have short exams (as an example, 1.5 hours) with lots of question choice.

Use that plus teacher assessment -50% for each. Then those who are good at exams and/or don't get on with their teachers have an option to improve their grade, and those who've worked really hard throughout will be ok either way.

(this is for A level - for GCSE do Maths and English tests).

I think cancelling exams lets the schools off the hook who made no effort with their teaching provision during the first lockdown.

I can't see how cancelling exams and relying on teacher assessment will make things more fair, really. It can't - because it simply isn't fair that some students missed a lot more school than others. Nothing can really change that.

How can teachers possibly give fair grades to a situation which is unfair to start with? They can't. Do they say 'well, if this student had been in school for the whole time, they would have got an 8. But they've only been in for a couple of weeks here and there and haven't learned much of the material, and only score a 5 on the assessments we've done. So I'll give them an 8, because I'm sure that's what they would have got if things had been normal'. Or do they give a 5, which is reflective of the work that they actually can do by this point? One method is unfair to a specific student who didn't get the chance to achieve his best because they had to miss so much. The other method is unfair to those students who do know the work needed to achieve a level 8 and are able to do it when this student can't. And it all makes it difficult for moving on to sixth form, too - unfair for the student if he can't move on to the course he always intended to do, because he only got a 5 because he missed so much. But unfair to the other students and teachers if they have to start teaching GCSE level work instead of A-level, because that's the level some people are at. Or unfair to the student to let them onto the course but then start teaching at the normal A-level point, when they've missed out much of the earlier work. It's just unfair all around, however it's done.

I don't know what else they could do really. But I don't really see that exams would have been much worse than teacher assessments in the fairness stakes. (Though possibly it's easier to cope with possible disruption to the timetables, people isolating during the actual exams, all that side of things, if it is still going on by then - though hopefully not!). But in terms of fairness in terms of how much pupils have missed, well, there's not any good way of overcoming that - they needed to be on top of it much earlier to try to prevent some of the unfairness from happening, by making sure schools were able to deliver high quality online teaching, everyone had devices/broadband, more places available for those who don't, more catch-up programmes over the past months and in the future, safer schools that might have allowed them to stay in-person for longer. etc.

I agree thimbleberry I think in a situation with only crap choices , sitting the exams was the least crap. You could shorten them and/ or adjust grade boundaries to bring them into line with other years . At least then grades are being awarded impartially by strangers .

I do not want any part of the crystal ball gazing this year group’s grade will require.

[quote noblegiraffe]DfE press release:

"we will not be asking pupils to sit GCSE and A levels... will consult on how to award pupils a grade that reflects the hard work they’ve done and will continue to do"

twitter.com/johndickenssw/status/1346539700694228992?s=21[/quote]
I wish the press would report this accurately.
'CANCELLE' implies that courses have FINISHED, the end.

I have not heard anything about lessons ending.
I really hope they don't.

Right now at our school, we are ploughing on with the syllabus , hoping to get the kids back in school by the second half of term and assess them again.
Same here!

@noblegiraffe

Yep, no idea what’s going on. Our Y11 mocks were screwed by isolation. Y13 were supposed to have mocks in the next couple of weeks. We did do Y13 assessments in September to see where they were at post lockdown but told the kids not to worry as they were for our info only so 🤷‍♀️

People keep mentioning end of topic tests etc but they just aren’t good enough data to base an actual GCSE/A-level result on.

Whatever the DfE come up with they had better run it by teachers first before announcing it unlike last time (the ‘use mock results’ fiasco).

If they have any sense... I really hope they consult Headteachers. I'm praying that they do.

I think that there definitely has to be an appeals system

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

A friend wants to know how a child who was due to sit A levels as a private candidate (following last years fiasco) is going to be given a grade.

I haven’t a clue.

[quote Grumpyoldpersonwithcats]@Coffeeandcocopops

From the Ofqual website
Overall A level results in England are higher at grade A and above compared to 2019 (27.6% in 2020 compared with 25.2% in 2019
Private schools got a 4.7% increase in A & A* grades
State schools got a 2% increase
6th form colleges only got a 0.3% increase.

This is clearly therefore not only about private schools scamming the system. All sectors got better results although the private sector did best out of it.

And thank you for the advice - but actually I don't rely on the media for stats.

Anyway DS2 is in the state sector - so may end up being further disadvantaged.[/quote]
I would be interested To see the other grades ie percentage that got a C in the private sector and state sector compared to last year. My sons school internally moderated the grades to the previous years’ grade. My child was working at an A in one subject but because it was a small group and the top grade was a C in previous years that’s what my child got based on the ranking and him being top. Schools understood the govt guidance differently. Some gave out the ucas grades. But I still think it is cruel to the 2020 year to say they were over inflated. So they should - they didn’t sit exams!!

@Comefromaway

A friend wants to know how a child who was due to sit A levels as a private candidate (following last years fiasco) is going to be given a grade.

I haven’t a clue.

Last year 20,000 A level students did not get a grade because they were home educated or were resitting privately.

@Comefromaway

The rampant grade inflation was not in the state sector. My son didn’t get to sit his A levels and received a CAG lower than his mocks. His certainly wasn’t inflated. Infact I would say he was robbed. Don’t believe everything you read in the media - it has been pretty inaccurate on this issue.

Same here

Ds got a 4 in his mock Business Studies GCSE. He's been consistently working around a 4/5 grade all year. He got a CAG of 3.

We can only assume that this was based on one poor assessment just prior to lockdown. Ds was not himself around this time. He was lethargic, headachy and had a really bad cough that lasted 3-4 weeks from just after February half term. (We are convinced now he had covid but no-one was interested back then).

Same here. Dc school take one gcse in year 10 (last year). Mock grade was the same as teacher predicted grade and the level dc had been working towards.

Ended up with one grade lower. Even the teacher said she was disappointed dc didn’t get what she had predicted.

Turns out school could only give so many of certain grades due to previous year so dc was downgraded by slt. Nothing we could do, but it does make me worry for this year as the school is very mixed ability.

@portico does qns stand for questions or something totally different?

Apologies portico I was still on page 4 and hadn’t realised there was a p5 with your query answered. Ignore me.

@Thimbleberries

I can't see how cancelling exams and relying on teacher assessment will make things more fair, really. It can't - because it simply isn't fair that some students missed a lot more school than others. Nothing can really change that.

How can teachers possibly give fair grades to a situation which is unfair to start with? They can't. Do they say 'well, if this student had been in school for the whole time, they would have got an 8. But they've only been in for a couple of weeks here and there and haven't learned much of the material, and only score a 5 on the assessments we've done. So I'll give them an 8, because I'm sure that's what they would have got if things had been normal'. Or do they give a 5, which is reflective of the work that they actually can do by this point? One method is unfair to a specific student who didn't get the chance to achieve his best because they had to miss so much. The other method is unfair to those students who do know the work needed to achieve a level 8 and are able to do it when this student can't. And it all makes it difficult for moving on to sixth form, too - unfair for the student if he can't move on to the course he always intended to do, because he only got a 5 because he missed so much. But unfair to the other students and teachers if they have to start teaching GCSE level work instead of A-level, because that's the level some people are at. Or unfair to the student to let them onto the course but then start teaching at the normal A-level point, when they've missed out much of the earlier work. It's just unfair all around, however it's done.

I don't know what else they could do really. But I don't really see that exams would have been much worse than teacher assessments in the fairness stakes. (Though possibly it's easier to cope with possible disruption to the timetables, people isolating during the actual exams, all that side of things, if it is still going on by then - though hopefully not!). But in terms of fairness in terms of how much pupils have missed, well, there's not any good way of overcoming that - they needed to be on top of it much earlier to try to prevent some of the unfairness from happening, by making sure schools were able to deliver high quality online teaching, everyone had devices/broadband, more places available for those who don't, more catch-up programmes over the past months and in the future, safer schools that might have allowed them to stay in-person for longer. etc.

I think that's an issue which hasn't been covered much, and which is more problematic this year when students will have missed out on a lot of teaching time. Fine if you're relying on your grades to show your general intelligence/ability - but will they be prepared down the line for further study in those subjects which build on earlier work/knowledge, eg maths (especially), sciences, languages?

So do we think that schools will allocate grades according to what historically their results are? DS goes to a good state comp and is predicted 2A*1A on his UCAS form. He needs to attain these grades if he stands a chance of getting into any of his 4 main courses. Do we think teachers will list students from first to last grade wise? This will certainly not help those that cram for exams or those who are suddenly maturing after GCSE's and excelling in their chosen 3 or 4 subjects. Lots of things to skew results, past history in GCSE's, past historical results for the school/college. Just a minefield.

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

@Goodbye2020Hello2021

Right now at our school, we are ploughing on with the syllabus , hoping to get the kids back in school by the second half of term and assess them again. Same here!

Even if you get all your kids back into school to assess them surely the results of these assessments will only throw up the problems that caused the cancellation of exams in the first place - so will not be fair. Kids with no access to the internet, those who have struggled to engage, those who have been ill or whose families have been will perform poorly and be penalised because of the data you get from these assessments. Surely you have to go on historical data? My DD has been getting reports with estimated grades since she started senior school - can this not be used?

Last year 20,000 A level students did not get a grade because they were home educated or were resitting privately.

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.