School exams - help me please statisticians!

[Alittlebitweary]

Hello. I'm about to ask a series of dumb questions. It will sound like humble bragging but it isn't. That's all I will say on that topic and I'll just get rid of the thread if I get a load of crap for it! I just want to try and understand something and I know there are a lot of education professionals and maths whizzes here who might be able to shed some light.

DC is at an academically selective school. Done well in exams and got several in high 90's and in some cases 100%. I am not as clever as DC and struggle with the way the school works out the standardised result. The 100 for example translates to a standardised score of 88 against a backdrop average of 70 for the cohort. Does this mean they have compressed the scores or just shit loads of people got 100?! Anecdotally, that doesn't seem to be the case but obviously I can't know. As someone who is not a statistician, 18 points above average doesn't sound that significant when the raw score was 'perfect'.

DC worked so hard and feels a bit deflated by the standardised scores. Because I'm a bit dumb I can't really help frame the numbers. The report comes with no commentary and not really had any feedback from teachers. I have asked chatGPT to help me but I'm a bit lost with the answers there too 😂I'm a little frustrated with the school as people with lower marks have had praise and points etc. I get that their marks might be a bigger achievement for them and it's important the school recognises that, but that coupled with these numbers have left DC feeling like the effort is all a bit lost. Obviously we have emphasised this is not the case! Can anyone illuminate the numbers for me a bit so I can help, and also for my interest?! I don't want DC to feel like there's no point. They are not obsessed with it/ struggling with perfectionism or anxiety or anything like that! Just tried hard, and left a bit flat by the numbers that have been served without explanation.

I think it's a bit daft when a school uses a statistical model and doesn't explain it properly - I'm not the only person who doesn't really understand it! Raw scores are easy for a non-expert brain to understand (although I can see less 'useful') but standardised is much harder. TIA

in-school exam scores are a bit meaningless for comparison; if the exam set was easy then everyone should pass. If too hard then it may be only a few will get as high as 20%. All it really shows is if you understand the material tested in the test which means if taught well everyone should get a high score or even a ‘perfect’ score.

Yes as @Soontobesleeping says, there's mot much any of us can tell you about the % grades in an exam set by the school.

I could have set my year 8s a French exam that they would all score a perfect mark in. Equally I could have set them one where no one would get more than 10%. Not really much point IMHO in either of those. Ideally I would set an exam that tested the group on the material covered that term or that year; I would expect some to do very well, some to be in the middle and some to do less well. This was a comp though. Things may well be different at a selective school – as in, there may be an expectation of better understanding.

It’s great that your DC did so well in the school exams. They clearly understood the material that had been taught and that teachers wanted them to learn and grasp.

I don't think it really matters for these kinds of tests where they are or how well others did. What year are they in? If it's any year in KS3 the results of in-school tests are not very significant anyway. If it's year 10, then I would ask the teachers how the exams matched up against GCSEs to give you and DC a bit of a better steer.

I dont know, our state one does scaled scores. But theres 300 kids a year so has a range.
The standard here seems pretty high as dc is only getting top 20% or 1/3. However its not showing if the other higher kids are getting 1 mark more or 100% correct.
on assessments the kids are getting 60-90% which seems high. Some kids are getting full marks on art etc.

we start gcses next year so hoping the scores are clearer.

we put a lot of effort into some geography/history tests but school only predicying 4-5 for those

I can’t quite understand your post. Standardised scores usually have a mean (average) of 100 and one standard deviation from the mean (15 points). Do you know what the lower and upper limits were?

What did the school say when you asked for clarification on how they arrived at the standardised score, and that your DC was feeling deflated by their 100% raw score being converted to a standardised score of 88?

I don’t think anyone here can know exactly how the school has concerted raw marks to a standardised score when we don’t know anything about their process.

The simple fact is that your DC got full marks or close to full marks on all the tests and so could not really have done much better. Isn’t that an excellent result for them whatever the standardised scores are calculated as?

You might do better to ask which quartile ( quarter of the year) you DC falls into so they can understand how they performed against everyone else top (100-75), upper middle (74-50) lower middle (49-25) bottom (24-0). But also remember they are not competing against everyone else. The most useful piece of information is what projected GCSE grades this indicates then your DC knows if they are on track or need to work a bit harder.

But being place at around 80% of his year group tells you very little without also knowing where your year group sits in the population and how relevant the tests are to achieving GCSEs.