Exams cancelled 2

[Orangeblossom1977]

Started a new thread as last one is full.

Also the headlines 'exams cancelled!' when my Y13 DD has probably sat more tests than the years before her, and most schools will choose to do a terminal exam so that they have the most solid evidence should the student or the government question the given grade

@noblegiraffe my use of ‘accurate’ is probably not the best descriptor. But given what BelleSausage has posted here about value added, ofsted etc, it seems unlikely that grades will be hugely inflated. Likewise, they won’t be downgraded/harshly moderated within schools so as to cause appeals. With these two ‘balances’ won’t the grades given be more ‘accurate’ than the newspapers may assume? By ‘accurate’ I mean within a grade either way of what they’d get in an exam?

NotDonna look at what happened last year with CAGs versus the algorithm - not on an individual scale but on a national scale which was a mess. CAGs were inflated compared to the algorithm which was already set to give a generous national distribution compared to previous years.

A lot of schools were more cautious because of the algorithm and tried to match its output internally.

This year we’ve been told no algorithm, so teachers will give the ‘best day’ grade (of course they will) and grades will go up even further.

There aren’t any progress 8 or league tables this year so they won’t be able to say ‘hang on in 2022 you got -0.9 but in 2021 you got 1.8.

@noblegiraffe

There were lots of better solutions, MrsKeats but it’s way too late to implement them now.

This is the issue I have with this whole debacle. There has been a lack of clarity from day one regarding exams. The Scottish students knew from the beginning of the Autumn term that exams were not going to take place and therefore they were given time to absorb this information English students were told that exams were definitely taking place and GW said that he wouldn’t change his mind. He then changed his mind . The poor teachers and children don’t know whether they are coming or going

Schools will be able to pick which questions to use from the assessment papers based on what their students have been taught

Could this be a concern if some schools choose less areas than others then brief the pupils to prepare / cram just those areas?

For a time before Christmas when such ideas were being presented, our school told us about 'topics which will be in the mocks after Christmas' with specific areas to revise for..

This didn't happen in the end as schools didn't go back - however would this have been fair on others doing full mocks with no 'guidance' for certain 'topics'?

Even if pupils have been home should the school not have covered most of the work in some form either online or in school?

It's a minefield!

It's not even consistent on schools in normal times. I never prep my students for questions - they know it'll be on Macbeth and that's it - but others effectively do a plan on the board

I assume the option is given for schools to pick which questions to use as that will depend on which topic they chose to drop for the revised GCSEs for exams like History, but I wondered if schools would drill down even further to choose which questions they think would suit their students more.

It's not being presented very positively in the Times...

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/schools-told-to-work-out-their-own-gcse-and-a-level-exam-grades-dcz2zftcl

"Schools told to work out their own GCSE and A-level exam grades
Concern over credibility of A-levels and GCSEs

Widespread grade inflation is expected in GCSEs and A-levels this summer after ministers decided that results would be awarded by schools.

Experts said the plans risked jeopardising the credibility of the qualifications and could lead to soaring grades with little consistency. They also warned of an avalanche of appeals as families in England will have far fewer restrictions on challenges than usual...."

..."The system will be generous, according to government sources. Ministers are determined not to use an algorithm to moderate results after an outcry last year, when some pupils were downgraded because of the past performance of their school.

Instead Ofqual, the exam regulator, will look at random samples of schools’ results and investigate any highlighted by its systems as being unrealistic or flagged by whistleblowers."

DS seems to be studying poetry now which I'm confused about as thought that had been dropped from the English course

Interesting that they say there will be widespread grade inflation and an avalanche of appeals, do they think all parents will appeal unless their child got all grade 9s

Thank you @noblegiraffe
A lot of schools were more cautious because of the algorithm and tried to match its output internally.
Oh! I thought a lot of schools had done the opposite and graded highly thinking the algorithm would downgrade. Which in the main it did, didn’t it? Hence going back to original CAGs? To be honest I don’t know the before and after data. I think the press jumped on the extreme cases, which is what I will have most likely heard rather than any general trends.

This year we’ve been told no algorithm, so teachers will give the ‘best day’ grade (of course they will) and grades will go up even further. much further than they would if they’d taken an exam on a good day? If Tim is borderline 5/6 then the teacher will give him a 6. The teacher won’t give a 7, 8 or 9. I get that grades will be more generous but not hugely. I’m talking about at an individual level though. I suppose en masse the stats will look very different - is that what you mean?

There aren’t any progress 8 or league tables this year so they won’t be able to say ‘hang on in 2022 you got -0.9 but in 2021 you got 1.8. wow! So there’s no ‘balancing’ as I was calling it. So what’s stopping a school giving my grade 5/6 Tim a 9? In fact the whole class a 9? Is there a structure preventing this or is it really down to schools’ internal moderation? It’s a rhetorical question - I'm not teacher bashing and suggesting they would actually do this.
As a parent I hugely appreciate teachers coming in here and explaining these things as it’s very hard to know what’s going on and their thoughts. I very much respect their thoughts! Thank you.

I hadn’t actually realised that @noblegiraffe

How are they going to Ofsted next year if two years worth of data is missing? It does seem like a license for some SLT to pull a fast one.

I would also like to outline for all non-teaching posters that the way this is handled in each school will be down to SLT and not class teachers.

@ineedaholidaynow

Interesting that they say there will be widespread grade inflation and an avalanche of appeals, do they think all parents will appeal unless their child got all grade 9s

It’s such a contradictory statement isn’t it?

I would also like to outline for all non-teaching posters that the way this is handled in each school will be down to SLT and not class teachers. understood but thanks for highlighting to any who don’t. That’s why I was very careful to use the word ‘schools’ & not ‘teachers’ in my above post re the rhetorical question.

So what’s stopping a school giving my grade 5/6 Tim a 9?

No details yet, obviously, but apparently Ofqual will be random sampling schools to look for stupidly high results and also relying on whistleblowers.

What the threshold will be for Ofqual intervention is unclear (bet they use an algorithm....)

@Orangeblossom1977 it was an option to drop poetry. We split the teaching of it across 10 and 11 so we had to come back to it.

Actually I’m assuming there’ll be no progress 8 or league tables this year as there weren’t last year.

@Orangeblossom1977 DS is studying poetry but his exam board kept it in, and as they had spent the summer term studying it, that was a good thing. I think other exam boards gave an option to drop it.

This year we’ve been told no algorithm, so teachers will give the ‘best day’ grade (of course they will) and grades will go up even further

I disagree. Nobody is unbiased. The kids who worked hard will get good grades, the lazy ones won't, even if they would have done in exams because they are crammers. I have no reason to think ds 6th form college will do students any favours, covid or no covid.

As someone said on the thread in AIBU about the 14 year old not doing work, it's ridiculous that pupils are being treated as if nothing is wrong at the moment.

I bet all the hard working girls will get all A stars and boys will get lower grades because they tend to be crammers.

I was the opposite, I was much better at exams than coursework so teacher assessment wouldn't have done me any favours, although I would have been ok at A level as I had good lower 6th and mock exam results.

This is what it says in the Press Release:
'Qualification results awarded using alternative assessment arrangements in 2020/21 will not be used to create performance table measures at school or college level for use in accountability. More details on what this means for accountability arrangements in 2020/21 will follow shortly'

There is no data for Primary schools again this year. Will be interesting for Ofsted

The kids who worked hard will get good grades, the lazy ones won't

If they haven’t worked then the ‘best day’ version of their grade won’t be as good as it would have been if they worked.

There will be assessments needed to ‘evidence’ grades.

@poppycat10 after the nightmare of last year I am hoping the crammers realised that would be a very risky strategy this year.

Re Appeals
The appeals process would be in two stages, he said. Pupils would “go to the school first of all to make sure the processes were right, and then, if the student is still unhappy, they can appeal to the exam board and they will then look at the grade to make sure … there was a reasonable exercise of academic judgment”
Stated in this whopper of a headline
www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/25/covid-tests-masks-not-compulsory-english-schools-nick-gibb

@poppycat10 I have very little sympathy for lazy kids. They’ve known all along how likely this has been. EVERYONE has been telling them to work. If they’ve chosen not to then unlucky. It’s very very different if they’ve not been able to get the work done because they’re disadvantaged.