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.

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True hiptight but They still must have anticipated trouble ahead. It's the no plan B thing again.

@MrsHamlet

We did maths coursework. It was something to do with fields and ploughing. I have no idea why.

We did the height if the school using a Theodolite.

I did maths coursework for GCSE. Something about making 2D and 3D cubes out of matchsticks and finding equations to link the number of matchsticks to the dimensions.

I also sat modular exams. I think I was the second cohort to do the AS levels.

Another thing that’s been puzzling me. You know all these students who are devastated because they were predicted As but got Cs? How do they know what they were predicted?

I was the first year of GCSEs... remember studying using O level textbooks until about 2 months before the exams..

@HipTightOnions

Another thing that’s been puzzling me. You know all these students who are devastated because they were predicted As but got Cs? How do they know what they were predicted?

I suspect that it is their projected family fisher grade.

Thanks FrippEnos, I didn’t think of that. I did wonder whether they meant their UCAS predictions.

Either way, we know their “targets” and their UCAS predictions are ambitious. I hope they are not disappointed when they get their CAGs!

If they come out with the same grade they got on the mock but know you expected them to improve can they ask what their CAG was and appeal using that?

Not unless school does that for the cohort...

Our students don't know CAGs but they are given CONSTANT predicted grades plus a target grade so they will be referring to those, I assume.

Ours too piggy

I slightly wonder whether there will be stern grounds for appeal based on CAGs vs mocks.

So... I teach a girl who I gave an 8 to. Say she gets her 8 (good for her!). If she finds out she was CAGd an 8 but her mock was a 9, can she appeal, even though the school said she was not likely to get the 9 (what with being 1 mark over a pretty much made up grade boundary , it being a new spec and all and her NEA being not great...)

If so, they are saying in that case that the mock (marked by me) is a better judge than the CAG (awarded by me)...

Obviously I could have CAGed(new verb) her a 9 , but my data people wouldn't let me , because standards and parity! Now, ironically, she might get it!

That bit definitely is bonkers.

The thing about schools setting just one paper or question at a time for something like history or English is that it doesn't replicate the real thing where you have to write for longer and papers are back to back, day after day.

If a students sits ten-fifteen full mock papers in one week, they will definitely do worse than those whose mocks were spread out or part/half papers...

What a mess.

Ex Head of UCAS (Mary Keller Cook?) on R4 at present, says it might not be just a response to the Scottish problems, universities may have also been telling ministers that the grades didn't seem right (my paraphrase)....? As they have had them since Friday.

But she did seem a bit vague imo.

I blame a lot of this on UCAS always bleating about our 'inaccurate' predictions and then the media suggesting these are the same as normal predictions. I have zero sympathy for UCAS.

It does seem the wrong way round...

As far as I understand it, Scottish prelims are much more standardised than English mocks, plus they'd finished their coursework, so they could have been awarded prelim grades as a backstop.

The English CAGs system plus standardisation sounds like it had ended up with a more reliable result than the Scottish, from what we know so far, and appeals should have been allowed on an individual basis, not on totally non-standard mocks.

What a mess indeed.

It's more the having the experience of sitting multiple exams in a subject and writing at length for a long time, not just one question or one text/period of History. That's why just one part of an exam may not accurately reflect the deserved grade.

We've never really found that dangling because it's off set by them taking those exams more seriously.

Nearly al our kids do better in real exams than mocks.

@Piggywaspushed

We've never really found that dangling because it's off set by them taking those exams more seriously.

Nearly al our kids do better in real exams than mocks.

I can't think of one pupil that would want ot go by there mocks in my classes.

We are in the bottom bucket of progress 8 and the type of subject that parents and pupils will always say will come last in preparation for exams, especially mocks.

Piggy so do ours to be honest. It's just another reason why mocks shouldn't be the only thing looked at.

I've calmed down a bit since last night and if this ensures that students can appeal individually if they have been downgraded then it's probably a good thing.

I've calmed down a bit since last night

I’ve not. These are the people who are supposed to be ensuring that we return to school safely and in an orderly fashion and they’ve just confirmed once again that they are a bunch of shit-for-brains with literally no idea what goes on in schools and can’t even be bothered to ask.

I've calmed down a bit since last night and if this ensures that students can appeal individually if they have been downgraded then it's probably a good thing.

But they won’t know will they Piggy? All they have to go on is “I think I deserve better than that”. I suppose they then approach school and school decides whether to appeal, at which point the student can infer that the school’s prediction was higher!

I am assuming we are still not supposed to tell them what their CAGs were.

We are giving out CAGs tomorrow afternoon.

We are giving out CAGs tomorrow afternoon.

Oh, interesting. I wonder what we are doing!