Local schools getting easier GCSE exams / inflated grades

[JoannaFurneaux]

Hi all,
my daughter is currently at grammar school where they are having very strictly run exams over the course of a month. 2 per subject. One of his friends goes to a local private school. Apparently his friend at private school said they have been having exams for weeks all of which can go towards their exam grades. Her friend who previously had struggled is forecasted to get almost top marks in every subject! Another friend at the same private school is also getting much higher predicted grades. Previously had also struggled as well. This sounds extremely unfair and is putting extra pressure on my own daughter and is surely not an isolated case. Does anyone know the best place I can complain to about this? I simply want to ensure the fairest possible outcome for my own daughter which at present it sounds like she wont get.
Thank you
Jo

Apart from 3/4 borderline, and requirements for 6th form choices, it doesn't matter in the long run.
It doesn't matter if Charlotte gets 8 and Sally gets 7s and Abbie gets 6s.
If they can get on to the 'right' course, then how they do in that course will be the main thing.
Universities / employers at 18 will remember that this is the cohort with the massively disrupted learning and inconsistent grades.
All our young people can do is their best, but looking across to other schools and what they are doing won't help. They can control their own work, but not anything else.

(And yes, I do have a y11. One who should have been getting a raft at 4/5 grade, maybe the odd 6, and is now scrabbling around to get any passes at all due to major MH issues over the last year.)

@Pastanred

I totally get it and I’d be just as angry but I’d be complaining to your school to be honest as they do seem more strict than most

Most kids near me got inflated grades last year - my dn got a 7 in one that she got a 4 for in a mock. No way would she have got a 7! But it’s very common and sadly whilst it’s wrong I’d be in the ‘if you can’t fight then join them’ camp!

I absolutely have to pull you up on this. Going from a 4 in a mock to a 7 in the real thing is perfectly possible with hard work. DD2 went from a 3 to a 7 in Chemistry in 2019, and from a 5 to a 7 in Maths. All due to really putting in the hard graft. Don't make such sweeping statements.

I did O Levels in 1983.

The last 6 months of school in most subjects was spent doing 'past papers'.

By the time it came to the exam it was like taking just another paper.

@TeenMinusTests I’m sorry your daughter is going through such a hard time.

Thanks Green She is much better than she was. For most of the year she was managing 1hr work per week with a tutor. Now it is 30-60mins per day.

Pointy things

Perhaps under normal circumstances

But kids were not in school and remote teaching was crap in most of the local comps near me this time last year

There were no expectations kids even completed work during lockdown 1.

Pastanred in your area that may have been so. Provision has been very variable. My local comprehensive and sixth form have provided excellent online teaching, including assessed work. As I said, don't make sweeping generalisations.

I didn’t make sweeping accusations🙄

I actually said ‘many kids near me’

I made an accusation about my dn who was set 3 and had no predicted grades for any subject above a 4! Suddenly getting a 7 having handed in nothing and only sitting his mock couple weeks prior to lockdown

I only have to look at my current year 12 cohort (I teach sixth form) - they needed a 6 to do my course and there’s a defo difference in standard. Some of these kids wouldn’t have got a 6 any other year!

That’s not to say some kids who are bright who have a bad day on a mock later do well but that wasn’t the case of what I saw last year

I’m talking about kids who were never more than a 3/4 getting 6+ dispite having no provision in lockdown 1.

They wouldn’t have even been entered into higher paper to even have option of those grades normally. Schools near us didn’t even send out work in most cases until June when year 11 had left

If your dd went from 3-7 then she was entered for higher paper suggesting she clearly had bad day and wasn’t a 3 at all. No one who’s a steady 3 would be entered into the higher paper and as such wouldn’t be able to get that score

If they can get on to the 'right' course, then how they do in that course will be the main thing.
Universities / employers at 18 will remember that this is the cohort with the massively disrupted learning and inconsistent grades.

Well they will, but will they give an offer to a child who has say a set of 6s and 7s, as opposed to a child who got all 9s? Which one will they go for assuming A-level predictions are similar?

It will effect children for the future.

And schools who give honest results the children are doubly penalised as they will be up against others that are their standard, but given higher grades, but people will assume that their grades are inflated too.

And last year there were overpredictions. This year, I suspect will be worse, as they know it's on teacher assessments, so those that overpredicted last year to look better than the rest, may well doubly overpredict to try and beat the others.

DD1's got a friend in year 11 and the teachers are sending them home with the questions and answers the night before they do the tests for example. So assessments can be "assisted".

But, Op, if it's any comfort. We know one school that predicted far too high. The children themselves are not happy about it from what I've been hearing from dd2 who has friends who were there. Firstly they're not proud of the results. They know that they didn't earn or deserve them, even the ones they probably did deserve, because others are clearly inflated, they then question the ones they do deserve and wonder if they are inflated too.
Some of them have dropped out of A-level courses, or even dropped a year because they started A-levels in subjects they'd been told they wouldn't get the grades needed, and they apparently did-but don't have the knowledge so found it too difficult.
They're also struggling with the idea that they will have to do exams at the end of the course, because they feel that they are going to do worse and it's going to be obvious. It's actually decreased their confidence in themselves not helped.

@Pastanred I agree - it’s a total cock up of a situation and is fair on no one. We sat a number of kids for foundation last year and a few of them that were predicted 5s (the max grade on a foundation paper for those that don’t know) were bumped up to a 6 by the algorithm.

We also had some kids who were all set to get 1s bumped up to a grade 3. In other schools with historically worse grades than ours pupils were marked down and cheated out of higher grades that they deserved.

This year no matter how your local school is assessing there will be untold levels of unfairness. This is because how can you use one set of grades but thousands of different assessment criteria/protocols and expect fair outcomes?

I and many teachers see no reason why exams couldn’t have gone ahead. We’re all back in school and even if there had been an outbreak around this time they could easily have socially distanced y11 and 13 in exam conditions whilst other year groups stayed at home. What we’re seeing is the work of a government who is terrified by the enormity of last years fuck up, and has come up with an ingenious way of avoiding a second public fuck up this year - passing the buck to schools.

It’s unfair to kids and teachers. Teachers are marking thousands of papers that exam boards usually PAY people to mark and TRAIN them to mark. We’re just expected to do it in our free time around our ordinary teaching load.

When schools are this stretched and guidance is so thin on the ground, unfairness will abound. I wish the population at large could see the chaos that exists in schools right now - but I fear the government will get away with this one too.

I'm just going to give a standing ovation to @AmazingGrapes because that's the whole situation. My students should have had the chance to sit exams. They are being assessed to within an inch of their lives currently.

@Greenmarmalade

You know what though... the system is totally unfair on lots of kids anyway. The kids in the crap schools with the endless stream of supply teachers are the ones who constantly miss out, year on year.

The kids with SEND in a class of 32 kids with no extra help, compared to those in private school in a class of 15.

Those who have parents who can pay for tuition, grammar school entry tuition, extra-curricular; and those who don’t.

There is no ‘fair’ in education.

Thank you for bringing this up. I was reading the OP's comments and thinking the exact same.

[quote AmazingGrapes]@Pastanred I agree - it’s a total cock up of a situation and is fair on no one. We sat a number of kids for foundation last year and a few of them that were predicted 5s (the max grade on a foundation paper for those that don’t know) were bumped up to a 6 by the algorithm.

We also had some kids who were all set to get 1s bumped up to a grade 3. In other schools with historically worse grades than ours pupils were marked down and cheated out of higher grades that they deserved.

This year no matter how your local school is assessing there will be untold levels of unfairness. This is because how can you use one set of grades but thousands of different assessment criteria/protocols and expect fair outcomes?

I and many teachers see no reason why exams couldn’t have gone ahead. We’re all back in school and even if there had been an outbreak around this time they could easily have socially distanced y11 and 13 in exam conditions whilst other year groups stayed at home. What we’re seeing is the work of a government who is terrified by the enormity of last years fuck up, and has come up with an ingenious way of avoiding a second public fuck up this year - passing the buck to schools.

It’s unfair to kids and teachers. Teachers are marking thousands of papers that exam boards usually PAY people to mark and TRAIN them to mark. We’re just expected to do it in our free time around our ordinary teaching load.

When schools are this stretched and guidance is so thin on the ground, unfairness will abound. I wish the population at large could see the chaos that exists in schools right now - but I fear the government will get away with this one too.[/quote]
This too from a teachers point of view. Absolutely right.
All the government cares about is that the buck for this year's shambles (and it will be a shambles) gets passed to someone else apart from the DfE.

I teach at an independent school. We are being incredibly rigorous and having two full A level and GCSE style assessments under exam conditions. I’m getting the opposite story from my students. They claim that local state schools are only doing short topic-based tests where they are being told questions in advance. If schools are following JCQ guidance, students should not know what grades they are achieving at all at the moment. If grades are being shared with students, this could be considered malpractice. The whole situation this year is a farce, with the government and exam boards washing their hands of the process (yet still charging fees for exams). The guidance is vague and open to interpretation; all I can do with my students is be as fair and rigorous and unbiased as I can, so they get grades that fairly represent their ability. Plus supporting their mental health throughout the process. I can’t influence what other schools do. However, don’t assume independent schools will hand out top grades like sweeties!

@TheLeftHandOfDarkness

I teach at an independent school. We are being incredibly rigorous and having two full A level and GCSE style assessments under exam conditions. I’m getting the opposite story from my students. They claim that local state schools are only doing short topic-based tests where they are being told questions in advance. If schools are following JCQ guidance, students should not know what grades they are achieving at all at the moment. If grades are being shared with students, this could be considered malpractice. The whole situation this year is a farce, with the government and exam boards washing their hands of the process (yet still charging fees for exams). The guidance is vague and open to interpretation; all I can do with my students is be as fair and rigorous and unbiased as I can, so they get grades that fairly represent their ability. Plus supporting their mental health throughout the process. I can’t influence what other schools do. However, don’t assume independent schools will hand out top grades like sweeties!

That's the assessments' version of the usual 'Well, Jessica's Mum lets her have chocolate biscuits and a Red bull for breakfast every day' and 'Dad lets me stay up and watch 18 rated films all night, you're so unfair'.

State schools are absolutely following the JCQ guidance, as the last thing they want is somebody alleging malpractice and potentially fucking over an entire cohort. The papers are being treated with the same level of security precautions as normal ones from Edexcel/AQA, the marking is blind and, to be honest, to even think that the Exams Administrators and SLT responsible would do anything different when there is so much at stake is daft.

I agree it is possible to move up grades, but many students last year did go up several grades very unrealistically. There was a problem with the algorithm and foundation students. Although in theory it isn’t possible to get higher than a 5 on a foundation paper, the algorithm ‘stretched’ the cohort across all grades, leaving students predicted at the top of foundation with a chance of getting 7/8/9. Whilst thus seemed like a bonus for them at the time, some are now really struggling at A level, and it doesn’t seem fair on the higher tier students.

Which is why all the anecdotal evidence needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. At the end of the day it is what it is. Schools have all set their methods now abs they’re supposed to sticking to the guidance. My DCs school is being incredibly strict and they’re sitting a full set of GCSEs. Crammed into three and a half weeks though so they literally have 6-8 papers a week. Way harder than the normal gcse timetable

We aren't blind marking, nor can we treat the papers the same as normal years because they are on the internet. Not in their whole form, but all the questions on the papers are out there and available.

Everything we are doing is within JCQ guidance. Sadly the guidance is lacking in clarity and the words 'should, may and could' are doing a lot of heavy lifting.

@NeverDropYourMoonCup totally agree. I was just replying to the original message. Rumours and stories abound, and the grass is always greener at the other school! It’s a horrible situation for the students.

@TheLeftHandOfDarkness I’m sure it’s not a state vs independent school issue. I bet there are rigorous and unscrupulous schools of all types.

However I also think that even if we all followed the guidelines to the letter it would still result in unfair outcomes and experiences for kids as one person’s estimation of what a fair and rigorous assessment will be vastly different to the next person’s.

Totally agree with you that this is a farce of the government’s making. They messed up last year and know that results day this year will bring similar controversy (what’s the bet we’ll have record numbers of top grades this year again) and they’ll rest easy in the knowledge they can blame the teachers.

@TheLeftHandOfDarkness

I teach at an independent school. We are being incredibly rigorous and having two full A level and GCSE style assessments under exam conditions. I’m getting the opposite story from my students. They claim that local state schools are only doing short topic-based tests where they are being told questions in advance. If schools are following JCQ guidance, students should not know what grades they are achieving at all at the moment. If grades are being shared with students, this could be considered malpractice. The whole situation this year is a farce, with the government and exam boards washing their hands of the process (yet still charging fees for exams). The guidance is vague and open to interpretation; all I can do with my students is be as fair and rigorous and unbiased as I can, so they get grades that fairly represent their ability. Plus supporting their mental health throughout the process. I can’t influence what other schools do. However, don’t assume independent schools will hand out top grades like sweeties!

The way the JCQ guidance reads to me is that one can't tell students what their TAG is in England. But I don't see anything that says that one cannot give a mark or grade for work they are doing at the moment.

This is ultimately the reason why, when universities take state school pupils and private school pupils entering on the same grade, statistically on average state school pupils do better. This year will be the same on steroids.

The pressure on private school teachers and pupils will be intense as they want ‘value for money’. But ultimately it leads to the grades having no value.

Also it’s going to be fun in the long term on the school’s record as, however they spin it, it’s going to look like their record years did better at home on a computer than being taught at their actual school. That’s going to attract the types of parents that are nightmares for teachers.

The papers are being treated with the same level of security precautions as normal ones from Edexcel/AQA

This isn't true in the slightest, and the guidance doesn't suggest that they should be. The guidance says that a range of evidence can be taken into account including work done at home. If that doesn't suggest lack of security and rigour, then I don't know what does.

@Zandathepanda having taught in both state and independent, there are pushy parents everywhere. In my experience, the parents who buy into the independent sector thinking they are ‘paying for grades’ tend to be disappointed! I had the same misconceptions before I started in the independent sector. Actually, we get students for a really complex mix of reasons. Some love the extra sport, outdoor activities, drama, music etc. Others want the routine and safety of a long school day so they can sort childcare issues. Many students come because they have had a poor experience elsewhere and need extra pastoral or mental health support, or have educational needs that haven’t been able to be addressed elsewhere due to funding cuts. It’s not right that this type of education is only available to those who can pay, but please don’t suggest that our students’ grades are somehow worth less than those from state schools. Especially as for many universities, contextual data is used to give them higher offers than those from state schools.

The whole thing is a mess. And it isn't a private versus state thing at all. Of my friends from teacher training and previous schools, it sounds like some state schools are being absurdly lax and some independents really strict, and vice versa. The guidance is ever-changing and vague so it's an impossible situation for schools. Thanks a lot Gavin Williamson...