Exams cancelled 2

[Orangeblossom1977]

Started a new thread as last one is full.

If a student does well in these but hasn’t performed as well the rest of the year and the results aren’t in line with their expected progression would some of their other work be required to give a more realistic grade?

I think the schools will suss out if young Johnny has been gaining 60% in assessment up and until end of March, and then attains above 80% when the exam boards release the papers. Otherwise, it’s grade currency inflation gone made. Whole point of grades is to assess and differentiate. I’m pretty sure there is some detail that’s missing that will demonstrate some robustness - I hope so!

My daughter is borderline for now 2 of the grades she needs for her chosen uni. My worry is that because schools have to essentially rank students, they can't all get A* or A, then they will will potentially need to 'chose' who drops a grade. My DD's school are using a number of items to assess grade incuding some class assessments and some proper exam assessments (which I think are the exam board papers) so lets face it they can 'prove' what they like. This sounds like I don't trust the schools and I suppose I don't actually, at least with an exam there is no-one to 'blame' if you don't get the grade you need.

Given schools are taking different approachesmit is difficult to make comparison between schools and therefore students. It also doesn't seem to matter to universities that, according to even mumsnet, many schools have missed a lot of the curriculum.

Yr13 have been told that they’ll finish the content this week and will be tested on the whole 2 year course so to revise everything. They’ve been told that they will not be told topics in advance. So they have Easter to revise 2 years worth of work without any consolidation time. The exams next week only allow for revision over this weekend.
It seems other schools are telling them the exact topic, revising that topic for a couple of lessons and then testing on it. The difference in these approaches is huge.

All exam years at our school are having anonymised exams. Although I’m sure some teachers will recognise handwriting and style it’ll help teachers reduce both conscious and unconscious bias, which can only be a good thing.

Even then, schools grade profiles will need to be similar to 2017/18/19 exams.

They said that last year. Until they changed their mind after the event.

Ellmau last years decision to drop grade profiles was borne out of the cluster fuck that was the algorithm. This year will be different.

Well, I hope so, but I'm not over confident.

DD, predicted a load of top grades is realistic to know they won’t be believed. Very sad for her as she is very capable and has worked very hard. It is demoralising but she is trying to stride on but goalposts, expectations, testing regimes etc constantly shifting has impacted her belief this process will be fair. She hopes most employers will discount her entire year’s GCSEs (even taking into account if she gets all 9s) and she is now focusing on A levels.

She clutches at experiences now rather than grades and was delighted to be chosen as the top English student to be on the interview panel for a future teacher at her school. It shouldn’t be as random and as rare as this. Our children have been denied any fair test of their abilities.

Saying that DD’s school are putting in what seems as fair a regime as possible, but it involves lots of tests, exams and assessment to get the best picture. I feel sorry for all the marking and extra work for the teachers too.

Teachers at our school are definitely working over the Easter holidays. They’ll have the assessments from the next two weeks to mark plus work out which of the mini assessments to use. Given the minis start first day back I don’t see them getting a break. Again!

My year 11 and 13 have their books/work marked every week as standard at this time of year. So that is 55+15 a week.
Normally at this time of year, I'd mark y10 fortnightly - but we shifted things round so to keep on top they need weekly marking too. So that's 22 more.
I also have three year 12 classes. That's another 35 students writing essays.
I am dying of marking already and we're not even doing assessments til after Easter.

Ours have just been given grades based on work up to Feb, but these are not their final ones just a benchmark - not sure how they will get the final grades and how much is based on the final assessments. Still seems quite unclear really.

Have they actually been told these grades @Orangeblossom1977? Ours aren’t being told any resukts of any of their assessments, even the the end of topic, classroom assessments this week.

Dribs and drabs are coming home with DD from college each day as teachers disclose the latest plans they have. They are going to be tested between Easter and half term every week. It looks like they will have lots of small papers rather than sit one long exam for any subject.

The college are still talking to the students about rank order and letting them know grades will be rationed. I'm slightly concerned they will be too rigid with where they place the grade boundaries. The college has been on the up for several years, especially in STEM subjects. They increased the GCSE grades to be allowed on the A level for maths and sciences. I'm guessing the current cohort might not look much like the cohort of 3 years ago.

Regarding the grade rationing and schools being investigated if they give too many high grades - what will the consequences be if the school are found to have over inflated them when compared to other years?
Do the children get their grades re marked down?
Does the school get a fine?

The more I think about all of this, the more ridiculous and unfair it all is.

DS has already started weeks of mini assessments, with teachers stressing "it's where you are now" that counts rather than predictions.
They've missed so much - face-to-face teaching, practice exams (DS missed year 10 exams and 2 sets of mocks), and revision classes. The exams were originally pushed back 3 weeks to allow for more teaching time - now he's taking tests in MARCH.

If these grades truly reflect "where they are now" ...surely they will be miles behind where they would have been otherwise?

So grades should be lower rather than higher...but everyone will think there is grade inflation!

littlequestion that's my worry too. Some schools seem to be working really hard to get their students up to usual standard, telling them questions/what to revise etc. Dd's college are treating it as if the pandemic hasn't happened, so exams as usual and results of where they actually are, no allowance made for online learning etc. Surely our dc will be at a disadvantage?

Does anyone know if there is somewhere I can find the grades for A levels from previous years. Are they only available if I ask the college or are they published Somewhere centrally?

I mean actual grades for each subject, not just A-C or A-E

Do you mean the grade boundaries? The exam boards have all this data for each of their subjects if you look at their websites

Or do you mean the actual grades achieved at your school? A lot of schools publish this data on their website but they don't have to. I must say that when schools don't publish it, I draw my own conclusions...

just found this.

isn't it a nightmare? All the schools here are doing differnet things and we seem to get daily updates.

It's worse than the actual exams would have been?

It's worse than the actual exams would have been?

Yes @Blodwen9, I think so.

schoolsweek.co.uk/keep-records-of-parent-pressure-over-exam-grades-ofqual-tells-heads/

There’s some interesting bits in that piece herc Seems schools will have to use the same evidence events for whole cohorts. This could be a bit if a shock to some students (and parents) who thought the evidence would be cherry picked; like a portfolio of best work per child, which may have been doable for a tiny A level class perhaps. But reading this, no cherry picking allowed.

And again talk of them meeting the profile of 2019, 2018 & 2017 rather than the inflation of 2020. So Gav was talking crap when he said they’d be as generous as last year. They won’t be. Which is fair enough IF the lack of inflation is well publicised.
Totally agree that students & parents absolutely can’t be pressurising teachers.