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.

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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 am reading through the replies. Lots of great, thoughtful responses that don't all say 'you dick'.

I like the analogy about the London Marathon.

twitter.com/jon_hutchinson_/status/1293215312620519425

I could be wrong but I suspect Reach is probably a comparative judgement school.
I’d be surprised if the schools using comparative judgement hadn’t used that in some way, which might give some defence if they end up with egg on their face.

Just saw Big Gav say that schools will be the last things to close in a local lockdown. How are they going to staff schools if staff are ill?

Yes, it will be. But that would just give you a rank order? CJ schools often avoid grades.

I looked them up and it's their first year of A Level results so no prior performance.

Gav chats shit again. Surprise.

I've not read much about comparative judgement. I just don't understand how it can even work for Maths. Is it good for English?

I don't think it's meant for maths.

The thing is it's not new...in the days of proper coursework that's how moderation was done. Just didn't have a fancy name.

Oh btw, I know who reported that post and got it removed... twas the MN queen of data. She will not have conspiracy theories and reports anything which links to a conspiracy site.

@Piggywaspushed

Yes, it will be. But that would just give you a rank order? CJ schools often avoid grades.

I looked them up and it's their first year of A Level results so no prior performance.

I'm sure I read something a couple of years ago about using it to allocate grades. Would be interesting to see if they've got anything about how well that matched up to grades actually achieved at GCSE or a level.

I doubt it would work for maths or science herc. But it seems a reasonable system for anything essay based or with medium length answers.

I was wondering who it was piggy I just rolled my eyes and decided it wasn't worth even trying to reply to.

Who knew that the WHO would need MNers to explain CFR and IFR to them?

I might be late in the day with this but it’s basically pick your own grade?!

My year 11 is delighted!

The 'proper' CJ schools only allocate grades if they have to (at the one near me, last year 11 mock) , otherwise they either give a score, or a rank order , or both. They don't 'believe 'in grades if there is no standardisation model.

This works well after a few consistent years of results because they can then norm reference/standardise their kids' rank order against last year's actual results, based on prior attainment etc. It is a bit like what Ofqual did.

Some parents don't like it/ kids don't like it if they have known anything else but - really- in subject like English grades are a nonsense in marking. When I say 'I know Demelza is an A* and Dotty might not be' . I really mean Demelza is brilliant and Dotty is not quite so much. Where the exam board decides to place its grade boundaries makes all the difference to Dotty : it doesn't change her ability or her rank (second to Demelza). Of course, if the exam board ,for some reason (as happens in English!) thinks Demelza is a bit shit because she doesn't jump through their hoops, we have a problem..

@Enoughnowstop

I might be late in the day with this but it’s basically pick your own grade?!

My year 11 is delighted!

Glad it works for you, but it certainly doesn’t for everyone.

My Y13 didn’t do mocks-they were due to happen after lockdown but never did.

Yes @ohthegoats I keep thinking about this since Boris first said it last week - schools will be the last to close. What that will feel like - much more "critical workers" than some of us felt last time. Wfh, although of course difficult, could end up feeling like a luxury option.

But also whether that will actually be workable in any way. The scientists are now starting to say both that the risk in school is very dependent on surrounding community levels, and that children are quite good at spreading it (see the John Campbell podcast posted upthread quoting the American studies).

The former means, as you point out, that if staff are getting sick or at the least having to self isolate, it's not possible to keep schools open. The latter means that keeping schools open may be the very thing that fuels the rise in the community.

I don't know what conclusions I draw from that, and I need to make tea now (and listen to The Archers!)

So, in Wales students will not be awarded a grade lower than their AS grade. I really don't see this making a huge difference - I doubt many teachers will have given a predicted grade lower than the AS grade they already had.

I am just wondering whether Ofqual will ever explain why they have done what they have done to individual schools.

If the 40% of A Level grades altered is true, that's a lot.

I am was not expecting any of my A Level class's results to be changed because

a) a small class (8)
b) exactly the same results as last year (and last year was a weaker class on paper)
c) that aside, we changed exam board and there was no class the year before so no prior performance
d) their achievements at GCSE suggest they should have done at least as well as I predicted.(the A* I awarded had an A indicator/ target grade based on GCSE performance and all the rest were Bs with one C)

Will be an interesting case study tomorrow, if nothing else!!

The thing about teachers predicting grades that I’ve not seen mentioned while we’re all being berated for being bad at it is that:

Grades don’t describe anything. There is no way of accurately saying ‘this kid is working a grade 4 and this one is working at a grade 5’ because which kid gets a grade 4 and which gets a grade 5 is decided by their ranked position nationally. We set grade boundaries on a bell curve that is decided after the exams are sat, according not to the standards met by each child, but by how the cohort performed on the exam, and to ensure that the same proportion of kids pass each year.

We use mocks based on past papers, especially at GCSE using grade boundaries that applied to the previous cohort to get an idea, and also gut feeling and experience from having taught the kid and having taught other kids like them.

But there is no right answer that teachers have somehow ‘got wrong’. Teachers can’t possibly grade kids according to a national picture that they are unaware of.

Interesting story from Sweden:

www.tes.com/news/coronavirus-sweden-schools-concern-no-action-death-toll

When you read it, you will think 'sounds familiar'...

www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/news/18646556.glasgow-secondary-pupils-among-new-cluster-covid-cases/#comments-anchor

Not actually in the school but a close call.
I wonder how many people they would have been in contact with today.

Actually, that bonkers Scottish thread aside, most parents seem to suddenly think teachers are right!

They are suddenly realising education really isn't very fair and teachers are the good guys!

Must dig out that More Or Less guy explaining why English and history A Level results are wrong 50% of the time and potentially even wrong more often than they are 'right'. It was an excellent poke in the eye for UCAS, Ofsted and PM data obsessives but it seems to not come up often enough that an exam grade is not an 'actual thing'.

Nice evaluation of CJ thanks Piggy. I can see its merits for wordy stuff. It's pretty much how we judged Stats coursework.

I don't know the answer to making exam marking more consistent in English/History. The rubric things just make my head explode and still seem so subjective. However the subject is subjective so you can't have a tick list of stuff that should be in the essay as surely that kills the creativity?

Grades are a nonsense in Maths until you've been taught the full course. Until then they're just a fudge and best guess.

Jesus , I am reading the apparently moderated comments underneath that article!

Not that it matters but Bannerman HS is quite posh!

@Piggywaspushed

Interesting story from Sweden:

www.tes.com/news/coronavirus-sweden-schools-concern-no-action-death-toll

When you read it, you will think 'sounds familiar'...

Eek, yep, that sounds very familiar!

I think the More for Less guy says

A child could get a B or a C. Neither is necessarily right, neither is necessarily wrong. the problem is a year later a child with the exact same ability writing the exact same stuff could get an A, B , C or D.

It used to be a HUGE problem in history but coursework doesn't seem to be the answer there ,as our school keeps having its coursework savagely moderated down.