Has DS’s school disadvantaged the students by the way they tested GCSES?

[Bigblueone]

They didn’t do mini assessments. They did exams in the style of normal GCSEs. They had no idea what was on the papers and these were the only opportunity they had to show what they knew. DS was told they’ll give out the grades based on what a normal year (pre 2020) would receive. After today’s news I’m concerned.

I think the higher grade inflation in private schools this year (and last year) demonstrates it’s patently unfair. We shouldn’t have some schools giving pupils “the benefit of the doubt” while others stick diligently to previous years’ results. But Gavin Williamson was in charge… 😏

Remember schools are assessed based on the grades too so they are not going to damage themselves by having students grades too low. Also in schools I know (teacher with lots of teacher friends) the way your school has done it is the normal.

Not this year @mimofboy2 - grades for this year and last are not part of performance measures.

@AttaGirrrrl

Not this year *@mimofboy2* - grades for this year and last are not part of performance measures.

Fair enough I haven't taught since Covid began so didn't realise. Do still think schools care about pupils and will want them to do as well as they can and therefore wouldn't negatively impact them through testing in the wrong way

It is incredibly unlikely students will be disadvantaged. The "bad day" effect can't be accounted for under TAGs. I know there are some of the students we awarded a grade 4 that may not have got a grade 4 in an exam series. However I can't predict which kids it would have been, so any borderlines were generally rounded up rather than down.

I understand why it feels confusing and unfair. The private school split is unfair, but so is private school!

It's not really in school's interests to downgrade them 🤷‍♀️ I'm hoping this is the case anyway. Good luck for tomorrow! 🍀

good luck op

Totally agree with you. DDs school had tests every 2 weeks, content provided to each in terms of what was on test. Each test was small and contributed to overall grade. This 'modular' style approach is much easier to do well on than a single 'pretend gcse' test your ds had

Its grossly unfair

Our school did mini assessments. I thought the whole point of cancelling the exams was because they were felt to be unfair, given all the disruption students had faced? So I don't understand why some schools (apart from many private schools who expect their pupils to really pull their socks up right at the end of their courses and go up a grade or two) would do this and put their pupils under unecessary strain, unless they were doing it to protect the teachers?

It’s a mess. And it is unfair, if OP’s child is being marked on exams done under exam conditions and other schools have done more relaxed tests knowing the content. It’s completely unfair. But it’s been a difficult 2yrs and not sure what the right answer is. My DS is going into year 13 now and so had his GCSE’s last year and did very well but there are rumours of no formal exams next year, which would mean he will have sat no formal exams for either GCSE or A level. He wants to sit exams so I feel really sorry for him, as he genuinely would have come out with mainly 9’s but now it feels like his grades were inflated which isn’t the case. Argh I hate it

My kids' school did exactly the same - proper exams with unknown topics under exam conditions. I have twins and one did better than predicted and one did slightly worse.

Our school also did proper exams under exam conditions.
Another school I know very very well did 2 "mini assessments" and told the students their predicted grades would stand unless they did better in their mini assessments - so they couldn't go down but they could go up.
Personally I think our school did the right thing (they cut the curriculum a little but dc spent weeks revising as they would have in any "normal" year) and I think the other school is the one that's disadvantaged its students as they've never done proper exams, never had to revise etc and may well struggle more at A level.
For what it's worth there have not been a lot of surprises amongst dc's friends so far today so hopefully the same will be true for your ds.

Our school also sat mocks and actual exams under normal GCSE conditions - all crammed into two weeks with two or three exams a day.

Our local pvt school did one GCSE a week - so they crammed for it over the week and then sat it at the end of the week. I’m not sure if the content was known or not but certainly an easier format to revise for.

Both schools will be able to submit evidence for their students but the methodologies were completely different.

Our school did "proper" full length exam hall exams without any idea of what was going to be on the papers. I think they were pretty rigorous tbh. The results for dd and her friends seem fair - most are happy with what they got but none of the grades seem over inflated.

DS did well and got the grades he needed but turns out their school didn’t even do TAGs. These GCSE length exams we’re blind marked by another school and sent then sent to the boards to be moderated with no teacher input. Some of his friends were very disappointed with their marks which were worse than mocks and previous assessments. Was this approach even allowed?

Definitely no grade inflation here.

That is not the proper process, who told you that's what happened?

A small sample from some schools was taken to "moderate". No board took in marks and moderated for all subjects so someone has misinterpreted or misrepresented something somewhere.

@Hercisback one of his teachers this morning.

She didn’t know what mark he had until she’d asked him.

@Bigblueone

DS did well and got the grades he needed but turns out their school didn’t even do TAGs. These GCSE length exams we’re blind marked by another school and sent then sent to the boards to be moderated with no teacher input. Some of his friends were very disappointed with their marks which were worse than mocks and previous assessments. Was this approach even allowed?

Every school has submitted assessment records and rationales to explain their approach to exam boards. After that, each school had at least 3 subjects sampled and a number of pieces for each student for each subject was submitted. Schools could approach this in anyway they judged fair. For us, we had some internal assessments as such, but also used exam papers that were marked blind by another school. Then, the original teachers of each student examined every paper and compared them to the grade descriptors provided by the exam boards. We had to have extensive evidence for each grade, and the majority of teachers used for cross marking are examiners in a normal year. There HAS TO HAVE BEEN teacher input.

If the exam board was not happy with the approach they would have had a deeper sampling period or gone to the school to interview staff.

I know schools have had different approaches, but there was no guidance issued to instruct us more than "gather evidence such as....." Please be pissed off at the government and not the staff that spent months doing this. I worked more in our 3 weeks of assessment than I ever have working for the exam boards on top of my normal school role.

You can appeal. Google it for more info.

I'd say the teacher misrepresented what actually happened. Someone in their school will have known the grades awarded. The leadership team and subject leads had to sign off on them.

Schools had to say in their centre policy how they would mitigate against potential bias in assessing work, and blind marking is useful for this when the assessment is based on exam scripts. It's how "real" exams are marked. We also had our marking moderated by another school for that reason, and we moderated them. Grading the marked work is another matter, and that is what has been so difficult given that there was absolutely no consistency between assessments used by different schools.

It’s very odd. She definitely said they had only just seen the results and implied they’d had no input with the mark. Luckily my ds did well by some dcs marks were a couple of grades lower than they’d ever previously had.

Is the school part of an academy trust? I've heard of similar, where exams are marked by other schools in the trust to avoid bias. It's not ideal, but arguably closer to a normal assessment.

If they were basing the grades on the exam scores, it is definitely a good thing to ensure that the marking of those exams is fair. When you're marking the work of a child you know well, objectivity with respect to the mark scheme can be hard.

We cross trust marked some moderation copies of papers but not blind marking on a whole cohort. The marking process isn't the issue.

You can ask which evidence was used towards the grade given and DC should have seen it beforehand. There should be no indication of grade given on any work from March onwards but seeing marks is OK.