The Fifteenth Republic - A Level and GCSE Results storm coming!

[StaffAssociationRepresentative]

You are most welcome to this school staff support thread to get us through stressful times. It is meant for school staff. Baiters and bashers can jog on somewhere else.

If you are NOT staff and just have a general education query please start your own thread.

You can play here only if you are a member of one the following groups-

-ABBA - anti bashers and baiting association
-SWAB - school workers against bashers
-SWOT - school workers opposing teacherbashers
-STARS - schoolworkers together against ranting + slurs

Other requirements for staff room entry include the ability to find the staff room, the ability to find a clean mug in the staff room, knowledge of the photocopier codes, and the ability to sniff out where the toffee vodka is hidden.

If you are fed up with cakes and biscuits there is now a cheeseboard on offer

If you come with a stick to beat us with then please do so elsewhere and not in the staffroom

I also predict that next years mock results will be stellar. Will make a change since the vast majority of students don't give a damn about them usually.

@Mrs Hamlet - that is why I wrote 'powers that be' rather than pin it all on the exam boards. But you would have thought that given all the time they had that there would have been an anticipation of the current fiasco, and that a plan b would have been considered - not a decision seemingly made with less than 24 hours to go.

I know that DS’s school has always told them there’s nothing ‘mock’ about the mocks. And that they need to be ready to take their main exams the term before they happen “in case of flood, plagues or other natural disasters”. I don’t think they ever thought that would ever be true!

Scottish students will still do much better. The number of students who get a calculated grade lower than their mock will be tiny. As a teacher if you think your mock process is valid you are hardly going to predict kids lower than that. In most cases kids getting moved down will be the lower ranked kids who got a lower mock grade but the teacher believes would have turned it around. I think this has been done purely to avoid overblown headlines about individual outliers. It’s going to create a lot of confusion and work for schools though.

Am I imagining that - back in the day - if a candidate missed an exam for some reason, we were asked to send the mock papers of that candidate and the ones on either side so they could work out what they would have got?

Any response from the universities? Or are they still WTFing?

I was thinking that too, Madame, it’s a way of looking like they’ve made a concession without actually making a concession. Teachers know kids make an improvement from the mocks so their CAG will be higher and we’ve been told the vast majority of results will be within one grade of their CAG.

The only times a result will be lower than a mock will be the aforementioned cheaters and Gav is hoping that centres won’t validate those.

But what it is going to do is put teachers in the position of being the one to tell parents and kids that they won’t give the mock grade because the kid cheated. And I know some will swear down that they didn’t.

Nasty situation.

Had a quick look - not a single one of my students would be better using their mock exam rather than my predicted grade.

Don’t remember sending mock papers, MrsHamlet but we had to send the names of a couple of kids who were better and a couple of kids who were worse than the kid who missed the exam to estimate their result.

Maybe that was it @noblegiraffe. I remember doing it for a student who got run over on his way to the exam.
On results day, when he got his very good grade, he jokingly said his devious plan had worked. SLT were not amused.

Makes me wonder by how much they've downgraded the CAGs, noidea, if this is supposed to help a significant number of pupils.

@TranCow I read they downgraded 40% of them.

sorry - @ThrawnCow - I believe they downgraded 40% of them.

Me too, but by how much? Think you might have given me my next username

@MrsHamlet

I actually also feel sorry for the staff at the exam boards in all this. They got their exams dropped unceremoniously with no notice, had to scramble a system to collate data they'd never needed before, have spent weeks working on that data, and less than 12 hours before the first set is going out, they find out that quite possibly none of that matters either. Everyone involved in this at the pupil end had been treated with absolute contempt under the pretence that it's 'for the kids'

I'm struggling to feel much sympathy for AQA having been hung out to dry with no pay at all (senior examiner). This is all going to come back on teachers who will be seen as unreliable because the grade inflation was the reason AQA moderated theirs down in the first place. It's a real slap in the face because I know mine would have been an improvement this year (I'm not yet two full years in this post) but had to submit cautious grades as we knew they'd be moderated down.

There was one girl in my class who got an A on her mock after having got Cs all year. I wasn't allowed to predict an A. Done with a controlled paper in exam conditions. I want to email her (I won't) and say "just use your mock!"

mrs we didn't send the actual papers, just the names of candidates of similar ability. I had to do it for a girl who decided to get appendicitis!

www.google.com/amp/s/www.tes.com/news/exclusive-warning-40-gcse-grades-may-change%3famp

This is where the 40% came from. The words maybe and could are doing a lot of heavy lifting. I'm not inclined to believe it until we have some actual data from the exam boards.

Foolishly had a Facebook rant. Cue comments from idiots who think this is a good idea.

SaltyAndFresh: I feel your pain there (and my bank balance certainly does). I did mean the individuals who will now be having to deal with this shitstorm rather than the head honchos though. Must ask our exams officer if we ever got any of the fees back.

Bloody wish the school hadn't forced us to lower predicted grades now

I saw a pearson tweet which I can no longer find which said they were refunding something but it wasn't much, maybe 15%? Not sure on the others.

My brain says 23% Herc. No idea where I got that from though.

Haha. My DH is one of those idiots
He doesn't think anything is a good idea but he thinks this will mean notvas much grade inflation.

To be fair, he pointed out that this system might work for those schools that say their cohort is much better, presuming their evidence for that is mocks.

This was rapidly followed by 'stop talking to me about it. I couldn't give a fuck.'

He doesn't like teaching much. Or children...