Could you appeal the schools approach to assessing GCSES this year?

[Decafteabag]

Reading the JCQ guidelines for GCSEs this year, it states that
Schools and colleges also have the option to set tests for you in order to gather further evidence. Teachers can develop these tests or use assessment materials provided by the exam boards. Importantly, these tests are not formal exams, nor are they designed to play the role of exams

What if a school only used formal exams in the exact form of GCSEs and marked in the exact same way a normal GCSE is with grade boundaries with the dcs teacher not having any say in what grade they think a dc is at? Subsequently the marks at this school are lower than other schools in the area despite it being a high performing selective school.

So they set a past GCSE paper? How was it marked? What did the methodology state?

They set papers using the exact format of GCSEs from past papers from 2020. This is the methodology
The assessments will predominantly be either past papers unavailable to students, e.g. the 2020 paper, exam papers where the questions have been adjusted and updated to include questions from the examination boards to ensure students cannot predict potential questions

The marks generated for each candidate number will be collated and compared to grade boundaries to establish grades

Were you aware of the school's method prior to the tests/exams though?

The school’s policy had to be checked and approved by an exam board. Their policy was approved, and therefore an appeal on the grounds that you disagree with the policy won’t succeed. Schools did not have to run an exam-like assessment series, but lots chose to and it was seen as a valid way to arrange assessments. Sorry, I know that’s frustrating, but the system was deliberated designed to be flexible and have schools doing different things. It was claimed that this was so schools could account for differences in provision caused by Covid but I personally think it was to save the government from having to come up with a workable consistent system and to make sure that people blamed schools rather than them if they weren’t happy with what happened.

Yes and thought it was extremely harsh at the time when hearing what other schools were doing. As a parent you are pretty powerless though. We were hoping that teachers would have some involvement in deciding the grades though.

@MadameMinimes thanks that’s what I thought. If lots of parents appealed would there have to be an appeal or would it make no difference?

It would make no difference. That is a perfectly legitimate way of doing grades, and almost every school I have heard of has done exactly this.

No difference that I can tell. I have a colleague who is working on reviewing appeals for an exam board and this wouldn’t be something that they would consider grounds for changing a grade. She’s done 17 so far and none have been successful. In some she thought she might have expected them to give a more generous grade, but they had grounds for the grade they gave and so the appeal was not upheld.

@QuarantineQueen really? All other schools I know of have used multiple mini assessments done in a non formal classroom situation.

@MadameMinimes thanks for the information. Sounds like there’s no point pursuing.

Yes, really. All my teacher friends (from training and former jobs, now dotted at different schools around the country) did final assessments like you describe.

@QuarantineQueen that’s interesting no other schools in my area did this. How did they decide their grade boundaries?

If they used past papers (usually the 2020 ones that weren't published so students couldn't see) they used the grade boundaries from that year.

It sounds like your school have done a good, thorough job. You can't appeal that other schools haven't, unfair though it may be - that's the DfE/Ofqual's fault for the mess of grades this year.

If it helps, the grade boundaries from nov 2020 were extremely low (exam boards in their training to teachers advised not to use the 2020 grade boundaries for this very reason but instead to use 2019 ones) so they were at an ‘advantage’ there at your school in that respect.

We also did final assessments like you describe (not done in classrooms) and as long as it was consistently applied within the school/college, then nothing untoward has happened.

Do note that the JCQ guidelines you have quoted state ‘can’ not ‘must’ and the use of ‘formal’ in a public exam sense is different to your interpretation (I assume you mean that pupils sat their final assessments in halls with formal supervision or similar, as opposed to exams formally marked by exam boards (which is what the JCQ guidelines mean) and therefore, the school was perfectly fine to run assessments in that manner.

By all means appeal if you wish to but do keep in mind that the school would have been moderated in their processes by the exam boards a couple of months ago and do remember that the exam boards released publicly the exam questions for the 2020 papers to all students on the exam board websites, so if those were the ones used, the pupils at your school should have been well prepared.

@QuarantineQueen yes school have actually admitted they’ve shot themselves in the foot with their approach. It’s very galling for us parents and the dc who feel they’ve been given no credit for the fact there’s been a pandemic and everything they’ve been through. I really wish exams had happened in the normal way so at least it would have been fair.

@ChicChaos or dc left school in April for exam leave and only went back for exams so were not really given the opportunity for the school to prepare them, given they were at home until March! I’m so angry about the way they’ve been treated but I know it’s futile.

Our grade boundary wasn’t based on the 2020 papers. It was done on the numbers of 9s,8s,7s etc in a ‘normal’ year. Sorry for the rant.

That is the approach that most schools have used. We had to have reliable evidence to support our grades which is why most did exams of some sort even if they weren't externally marked.

@Decafteabag

Our grade boundary wasn’t based on the 2020 papers. It was done on the numbers of 9s,8s,7s etc in a ‘normal’ year. Sorry for the rant.

That’s what they were supposed to be doing, if their grades were out of whack with previous years then they’d have been up for full moderation.

Seems an awful lot of 8s and 9s at the other local schools which it surely unusual compared to normal years.

Is this school in Herts, OP? if so I know which one you are talking about and I know several students there who are v upset.

@noblegiraffe is right though. We were meant to compare with previous years and it couldn't be wildly out.
There are things in which you can appeal on but doing what they were meant to do isn't one of the things.
There will be students in every school who are disappointed with what they got. Such is the way of things.

We did as your school has, alongside some further classroom tests (though these were unseen and done in exam conditions). We used an average of grade boundaries for the past 3 years for guidance and then made sure it was in line with % for previous years.

What your school has done seems both entirely reasonable and the best course of action...

I agree with the last poster. This was the right way of doing it and the best way for the students in my view. Our school did this too - study leave, formal exams (with a bit less content for most subjects), grades that mirror previous cohorts (but not last year).
From the results I've seen from DC"s friends they appear to be what one could and would expect from a normal year of exams. Some have exceeded expectations, many are disappointed but only because they have dropped from a predicted 8 to a 7 or 9 to an 8 in most cases.
Having a child in the same school in 2019 I'm very well aware that those same disappointments were playing out on results day then as well.
This year's results seem very similar to 2019 and the cohort is very similar so that seems reasonable.
It also gave our children practice at revising hard and doing exams under pressure - I'm glad they won't be doing that for the first time at A level.
I do agree though that some other local schools have just handed out predicted grades with very little effort to ensure that those were deserved. I get that that's galling. (It's also not doing a service to those children who will struggle next year).
It's also galling that my dc's very good results this year will be considered to be part of grade inflation and not as impressive as they are even though they are totally deserved (and they absolutely worked their damnedest for them).
Either way people can be disappointed.
Personally I'm glad our school did it this way and I think it shows integrity on the part of teachers and leadership - particularly as our school could probably have justified higher grades had they tried to. (I also think they would have had even more anger and dissatisfaction from the sharp-elbowed brigade had they done it on "teacher assessment of capability" rather than "teacher assessment of achievement").
Honestly though I think lots of schools did do it this way and it's those who didn't who should be criticised.