Gcse 2021 anyone appealing?

[Cleanmean]

Dc has had a rubbish year, getting covid and being off school for ages (like many others). He's just got his results and is pleased but 2 of his grades are lower than his tracked grades and may mocks. He wants to appeal but I said it'll be impossible to appeal this year as teachers will have followed the protocols very carefully and there's less margins for error. Is anyone appealing this year and if so what do you think your chances are?

52andblue, I don't have any advice - I just wanted to say that I'm sorry. The whole situation sounds horrendous. Is he at least done with the school now?

www.jcq.org.uk/summer-2021-arrangements/

This website will help - you have to appeal to the school first - the form is on that website - and then appeal to the examining board.

@Anyother
Yes, he is. I've moved my younger child too. They could NOT stay there.
It's the only state High School for 30 miles (rural area) so I've had to move away (awful for kids). But it was dangerous and educationally awful. A teacher whistle blew 2 years ago, dismissed, took Council to court and won but & his life was made hell. Poor kids stuck there.

Thank you for the website info. x

My dcs school had no mocs either in 10 or 11 due to covid. Tests wete done 90% on icas and 10% on prior attainments. We do not know how prior attainment was calculated. In a couple of subjects the icas wete significantly below any grade my dc were given in any test. Is there amy way we cam check whether the tests were fair and square. We previously won a court case against the school and the slt do not like me

AzPie is it possible you and school are at cross purposes re the access arrangements? They may mean that your DD is not entitled to e.g. 25% extra time (there is a formal process to go through involving applying to the exam board, I think by January - maybe they didn't apply). But I think you are saying she should have had rest breaks/separate room-type arrangements, which the school can organise themselves without reference to the exam board I think.

The bottom line is though, that every head of department had to fill in a form to confirm access arrangements had been applied where relevant (or explain why not on a special consideration form).

Hopefully you can gain more clarity on this from the school. If nothing else, it will be useful experience if you have to go through something similar in sixth form.

@Cleanmean

Will the autumn resits be exams with reduced content? Papers prepared by exam boards? I can't seem to find any info online.

Yes they’ll be full normal papers as if they’d say a normal exam this summer.

In that case I don't think ds will bother with the exams if they're full exams as his school barely taint any content. What a mess this year has been.

We've asked school to confirm how far he was away from the next grade so he can decide if there's a risk of going down a grade. If he's close to next lower boundary he definitely doesn't want to appeal. I hope school can send through the info quickly, although our school have indicated it'll probably be late Sept by the time the info is sent to ds.

I have finally been given the literature from our School re the Appeals process (not inc in results envelope as stated and not emailed to us).

It's a stitch up basically. You can only appeal on the basis of them not following procedure / not awarding grade on evidence that 'any other reasonable teacher' would. The evidence is not reassessed by the exam centre at all. We should be able to appeal. My child had exams on parts of the course that were never taught. part of his practical work for his DTech course was stolen by another child and broken and he was downgraded as he was never given time to repair it, 'catch up lesson's were scheduled after school (20 miles away) when no school bus / public transport ran for him to attend them. I was given no receipt for the letter I wrote re his extra exam concessions (he has Autism AND Dyslexia / Dyspraxia / Dyscalculia) and was told verbally by SMT that he would not receive these. None of this is reasonable but how the hell do I prove it? My feeling is that if we contest the results they will lower them out of spite (I have seen how they treated a former teacher who 'whistleblew' about conditions there, won a court case but still nearly had a breakdown over the sheer malice from school)

It might be safer to stay schtum. How appalling.

@Squidlydoo

I’m in charge of TAGs at my school and would say there is a very very slim chance of a successful appeal. Work will not be remarked. The only grounds for appeal is that the school has not followed its protocols correctly. Sadly mock exams and predictions will have limited bearing on final grades so this in itself will not be grounds.

Think carefully about appealing as grades can go down - and you don’t get to choose to accept the new grades

I’m a teacher and concur totally with this. It’s only if procedures have not been followed that any changes will happen- resitting is the best bet if grades really aren’t acceptable.

School are meant to give us some info on the marks/grades of the items they used for their process though aren't they?
Emailed DD's school and got a very waffley answer back just pointing us to generic info and the appeals form.
But I need to know what data they used to know if we want to appeal...

@52andblue

I have finally been given the literature from our School re the Appeals process (not inc in results envelope as stated and not emailed to us).

It's a stitch up basically. You can only appeal on the basis of them not following procedure / not awarding grade on evidence that 'any other reasonable teacher' would. The evidence is not reassessed by the exam centre at all. We should be able to appeal. My child had exams on parts of the course that were never taught. part of his practical work for his DTech course was stolen by another child and broken and he was downgraded as he was never given time to repair it, 'catch up lesson's were scheduled after school (20 miles away) when no school bus / public transport ran for him to attend them. I was given no receipt for the letter I wrote re his extra exam concessions (he has Autism AND Dyslexia / Dyspraxia / Dyscalculia) and was told verbally by SMT that he would not receive these. None of this is reasonable but how the hell do I prove it? My feeling is that if we contest the results they will lower them out of spite (I have seen how they treated a former teacher who 'whistleblew' about conditions there, won a court case but still nearly had a breakdown over the sheer malice from school)

It might be safer to stay schtum. How appalling.

This is basically how I feel about the whole thing, better to keep quiet or risk getting even lower grades, it's so wrong. I've heard of other kids at DD's school who were predicted good passes (5's & 6's) had conditional offers for the school sixth form to find out on results day they had much lower grades, one of them failed all but 2 subjects after being on track for passes across the board, how is that fair or using 'holistic judgement'?!

And how can any of these kids re-sit the full exams when the whole issue is that they haven't been taught the entire syllabus due to covid disruption which is why the exams were cancelled in the first place.

@Phineyj I have no idea if there were official arrangements or just informal ones agreed by staff, the school are being really uncooperative with supplying any evidence of anything. I'm just so angry, DD managed to track down 2 bits of evidence that were used (coursework) where her class teacher gave her a 6 on one and 5 on another, yet she ended up with a 4, it just doesn't make any sense.

@TeenMinusTests

School are meant to give us some info on the marks/grades of the items they used for their process though aren't they? Emailed DD's school and got a very waffley answer back just pointing us to generic info and the appeals form. But I need to know what data they used to know if we want to appeal...

I've been told two different things by DDs school on this today. One has said that we can see the evidence used at stage 1, the centre review. The other person said if after the centre review has been carried out and the grade has been upheld we can then go in to view the evidence and be talked though the decision before deciding if we want to continue to stage 2.

"And how can any of these kids re-sit the full exams when the whole issue is that they haven't been taught the entire syllabus due to covid disruption which is why the exams were cancelled in the first place"

As @AzPie says. The option of re-sitting is window dressing at best.

This years cohort were entirely at the mercy of their Schools.
There IS no actual Appeal possible (other than window dressing).
Those at Good Schools will be fine. Those at sink Schools will not.
The Govt have washed their hands of it.
But, hey, they are pushing Latin in 40 more Schools so that's fine.
I despair.

Appeals definitely are possible. I am a senior examiner for an exam board and have been placed on a reserve list in case there are a lot of appeals. My understanding is that we will review all of the students work, and then compare it to see if the grade awarded is fair.

[quote kackle]@MrsHamlet thank you. Mitigating circumstances were accepted by the school and a couple -% awarded.

But they have failed to take account of JCQ guidance

Page 35 categorically says

As the range of evidence is flexible and can be tailored to an individual student according to coverage of the specification, then instances of special consideration should be limited. Centres should be able to select work completed by a student where they were unaffected by adverse circumstances.

Their TAG policy makes mention of substitution of evidence ( I know they have class tests etc as I have copies of them with my daughters marks)

My point is - they don’t appear to have followed the JCQ rules ( so they have to follow them?) and substituted evidence

Is it likely that if school don’t play ball, I can tell the exam board they haven’t followed procedure and they will review?[/quote]
My daughters center appeal was upheld today. School asking the exam board to up the grade.

Any exam officers about? Any idea on exam board timescales to turn this around? I am presuming because it’s a TAG that the school had free reign to assess / award there shouldn’t be an issue.

Anyone any ideas?

Cheers

@52andblue

This years cohort were entirely at the mercy of their Schools. There IS no actual Appeal possible (other than window dressing). Those at Good Schools will be fine. Those at sink Schools will not. The Govt have washed their hands of it. But, hey, they are pushing Latin in 40 more Schools so that's fine. I despair.

I completely agree!

And if you have raised complaints in the past then there is that unfavourable bias towards your child. The team who decided on whether mitigating circumstances were granted are the same team who I have had to complain about numerous times including bringing a whopping great stack of legislation in showing how they were discriminating both directly and indirectly towards DD. They reluctantly backed off on some of the things they had been doing but did their utmost to prove she was a bad kid rather than a disabled child struggling due to lack of support. Which included lying about her, example - detention was issued for 'disrespecting a staff member', I emailed twice asking for details as DD denied any knowledge of such an incident, they wouldn't give details and just insisted she go to the detention or she would be put in isolation. However they messed up because the date they said this incident happened she wasn't in school, she was off ill, when I challenged it, they backed down and made some waffley excuse about admin error and she didn't need to attend a detention after all (no apology for blatantly making stuff up). So yeah the people who had already lied multiple times about DD, discriminated against her, did not offer support...they were the ones deciding if mitigating circumstances were granted, what a surprise that they were denied.

I’ve emailed my dd’s school to ask for evidence used for her Re,History and Science Gcse as for Re she was predicted a 5 and got a 2 ( in the last mock she took the class were messing about and talking even playing music on their phone and a supply teacher was covering the class who couldn’t control them.Dd had a panic attack as couldn’t concentrate and was told not to worry as she could retake the paper.She asked when this would be and was told someone would be in touch she kept asking and she never got to retake it.I am still waiting for a reply to the 2 emails I sent before the end of term and a reply to the numerous phone calls.The head of the school has now left due to ill health after being there for 2 years and totally ruining what was a great school (it is now an academy) as have a high number of teachers including her Re teacher.
Her history she was predicted a 6 and got a 3 and her science was predicted a 5 and got a 3/2
She was hoping to go to college to do A levels but hasn’t got enough grades.We are waiting to hear from her college about her options.

It’ll depend on the grounds for appeal. If an admin error it should be fairly quick as it’s easy enough to send a screenshot of what the grade should be. If it’s a more in depth one it’ll take longer as the exam board may ask for more evidence.

On the appeals FAQs they’re saying priority appeals should be back by 8th September. Non priority will be 42 calendar days from when they are submitted.

This guide is fairly comprehensive: www.jcq.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/JCQ-Student-Appeals-Guide-2021.pdf

[quote Misssugarplum12764]It’ll depend on the grounds for appeal. If an admin error it should be fairly quick as it’s easy enough to send a screenshot of what the grade should be. If it’s a more in depth one it’ll take longer as the exam board may ask for more evidence.

On the appeals FAQs they’re saying priority appeals should be back by 8th September. Non priority will be 42 calendar days from when they are submitted.

This guide is fairly comprehensive: www.jcq.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/JCQ-Student-Appeals-Guide-2021.pdf[/quote]
It’s a procedural error, wrong grade used in TAG pool.

I’ve got a copy of the upheld appeal with the rationale behind it.

I’m so anxious waiting for it to be changed and my little one can relax and smile again

Looking for help. Started by trying working out why our DS had a grade of B and this was the lowest on the evidence list. School have been shushy shusy about any questions since March. So I stopped work on Tuesday to investigate.

I have done 7 days now without a break and am completing an appeal for my DS.

Trouble is I have uncovered extensive issues where the school has not followed the JCQ guidance for determining grades. They have also used a calculation that has generated incorrect results like my DS has got. The list is endless of mistakes. Even a culture of fear with the key teacher.

Every day I find out a new problem. Our school didn't get the class teacher involved in the process of determining the TAG or even formally validating.

Lots of DCs upset and I know why. Difficult to cope with the worry of my own DS let alone the fact I feel awful. I can see a way to resolve but this takes time. Ideally I want to speak with another head teacher at a good school to compare the processes and confirm my find.

Anyone can help? Pls

Send them a subject access requesting asking for everything they have on your child.

Appeal and if it goes to stage two — say in it that appeal is subject to anything further from access request ?

We are completing the appeal right now.

The same teacher in charge of this mess actually deals with FOI!!

Will look at what you suggest. Thx

We've decided not to appeal. We have had some info from the school that has allayed some of our concerns, and we really just need to close the door on school and focus on college.
Good luck to anyone going ahead, especially those who didn't get special considerations they should have.