Aibu to think that if an entire cohort does badly in an exam compared to last year's cohort ...

[lassoed]

... it's probably either because something has changed in the teaching, or the teacher is playing mind games?

DS transferred from a comp to a super-selective sixth form, doing 3 STEM subjects, plus Economics. He's finding it all a "step up", though is generally holding his head above water. However, following a recent Economics exam the entire class has been told they've done much worse than last year's cohort. He's worried about this, but I can't help thinking that either the teacher has somehow messed up teaching recent topics, or else may just be trying to spook them into doing some extra work before their summer mocks. To be fair, if it's the latter then it may be working as DS is certainly spooked ... but whether it'll have a positive outcome remains to be seen - my DS always has a very narrow sweet spot between being too laid back and throwing in the towel. Fingers crossed!

Any insights welcome. 🙃

It could be the exam set was just not as suited to them. Equally likely the teacher says that every year to put a firework up their backsides to revise.

If it happens in externals, they adjust down. Eg if no one gets more than 69 percent then that becomes the new A* grade.

At uni we had a german ethics teacher who gave us large booklets of photocopied books.
I actually did ok but others did badly they raised the marks up.

In statistics we had a not great teacher but i guess some kids still did ok and that wasnt adjusted.

Its possible last year the students were better at working at home to do extra?

Also dd school have say 7 sets and each one has subjects on different days so say inset days missing lessons different to other classes, end of term different etc. So logically one year to the next there would be differences.
If you think one year or 12m we had the Queens funeral and Charles coronation then several strikes etc.
Even a teacher being off sick falling on your days of triple of that subject.

Not necessarily. I know my Y13s will not do anywhere near as well as last year's cohort, to be honest. They are just generally not as academic and aren't as conscientious and putting as much work in as last year's lot did.

Funnily enough the Y12s are likely to do really well. Year groups often run like this, I don't know why.

It could genuinely be this year's class aren't the same level as last years

Sometimes this happens with year groups or classes. Some cohorts are just more able / harder working than others. Every class is different.

The beauty of teaching is that no one student is the same as another. Or one class. Or one intake. Or one lesson to the same age groups.

I've had years 100% passed, years when they didn't. Last year I had 2 from each of my 2 A' level classes fail. 3 were not unexpected, 1 was totally unexpected.

I've got two A'level classes this year. One will do better than the other. I know that already. The next two year groups are both looking pretty smart. Then the class that's now 14, well, god help us if something doesn't change before they get to A level.

My teaching changes every year slightly. I'd hope that all teachers tweak, modify, and change things when the students start to interact with the lessons and the materials. It's one of the things we underline when training new teachers (which is something I'm involved in) don't teach the subject, teach the kids.

Of course, it's possible that something has gone very awry with the teaching. But unlikely.

Exam board boundaries will also come into play remember. Look out for the hundreds of posts mid August complaining that their children haven't been taught properly or that exam boards have been wankers.

No.

For example, when gcse grade boundaries are set by exam boards, one of the things they use are the national reference tests which are the same tests each year on a sample of the cohort. If one year a cohort does badly on the national reference tests they are as a year group less good than other years, and this feeds into grade boundaries.

You also get it at a much smaller level in schools. If you have a small school and your sixth form classes say in Latin are 5 students, one year they could all be amazing and the next year not so much.

Small groups in particular vary a lot.

They are probably a weaker cohort. It happens.

If this is only based on the teacher telling them, I'd wonder if it was actually true or some attempt at motivation.

I'd also wonder
-how many students in the class? If it's quite small, then one or two students doing less well makes a huge difference to overall results
-as this is a superselective, whether the teacher means the difference between "doing very very well" and just "doing very well", rather than that the latest cohort being ridiculously weak.

Not so often in a super-selective, and their other subjects are holding up, which suggests otherwise.

But it was only one exam. Let's see what happens in Aug 25.