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

Well, fancy that 🤔

Full stats : smallest rise in grammar schools? Boggling...

www.tes.com/news/A-levels-private-schools-get-far-larger-aa-rise

[quote Piggywaspushed]Full stats : smallest rise in grammar schools? Boggling...

www.tes.com/news/A-levels-private-schools-get-far-larger-aa-rise[/quote]
Very interesting considering private schools had seen the worse decrease in As and A* in the year before.

Worst*

I was just reflecting on prior attainment. Obviously we, as teachers, are used to being based on our prior results as if they are a badge of honour or scarlet letter. But NEVER before have kids had to stomach or accept results as individual based on how their school 9 or the teachers in their school...) performed three years before. I know it gives statistical likelihoods but it seems very sad.

And I STILL don't get why my class of 8 has had such downward moderation. It looks like an attempt to match prior attainment by taking two completely disparate year groups and coming up with a middle, but even then they haven't managed that!

I (wrongly it seems) thought the PA was like an indicator or target grade thing and would work in my students'' favour. Nope.

Eventually Twitter are calling out spokespeople for that stat of 94% achieved their grade, or within one grade as if the latter bit is OK for all students.

It's very interesting to see people's reactions with this being done so publically. There's always been the 'fixing' of grades at certain percentages through the shifting of boundries but it's always been hidden away.

I'm disappointed because I was all for our CAG process and an algorithm. However the algorithm has been bluntly applied and does a disservice to students.

I firmly believe any students CAG as U should get it but no others.

I'm disappointed too. I actually had some faith.

But I do feel it is pretty wrong for students to suffer because of previous year groups in this way. It does tend to assume previous year groups have had crap teaching and will continue to do so. And teaching is not like that.

The A level class in my department - not my class - were mostly the same as the CAG. 3 down, 2 up, all by one grade. Seems fair enough to me although I think they’ve benefitted slightly from last year’s class (mine) who were a better cohort overall IMO. I have the results/predictions column without any identifying data at all but don’t know if it’s ok to post it...

I couldn't screenshot my bonkers data page that makes no sense.

I heard tell that media results were less affected than film overall?

I can hand on heart say I don't understand the exams results and concerns this year - mainly because I've not been working in a school long. Ie lack of knowledge rather than lack of care.

But; as someone who comes from an area which is classed as deprived overall due to low incomes overall and large numbers of immigrants with children in our local schools, I find it disappointing if students have worked their butts off to get decent grades but have been penalised by a system which averages them out nationally to lower grades. I don't understand how that benefits anyone other than those who gain marks. But this comes from a place of lack of knowledge. Hopefully you teachers are not feeling too disheartened that all your hard work during lockdown appears to count for little to the powers that be. I am sure your students are grateful to you.

My eldest daughter's school has proudly announced their first oxbridge student. I assume this is since the school got taken over as an academy and changed names. I have yet to see anything about the results for my school.

My y12 is our first cohort of Film as we’ve switched our A level offer from Media to Film so I don’t know. I can’t see why one would be more affected than the other - I find Film much easier to mark/predict for than Media! And I’d assume they’re similar sized in terms of entry?

Although it strikes me that on average Film students would tend to have higher grades on entry, if that makes any difference.

Blimey

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3994398-AIBU-that-we-must-accept-many-teachers-do-not-have-the-appropriate-professional-judgment-regarding-what-students-need-to-achieve-for-A-Levels

@Piggywaspushed the increase in A/A* at private schools compared to state schools has really got me on my soapbox this morning

Thankfully, my Y13 class results haven't been downgraded. They were based on solid attainment data so I am pleased, but, I feel so, so sorry for students/subjects/schools whose results have been downgraded. It's so bloody unfair.

I just hope exams go ahead as planned next year so we don't have to do this again

@Appuskidu at least most PP seem to be disagreeing with them

Mine haven't been downgraded but very small cohort (less than 5!)

Ah! First year cohort for film! How in earth coukd they change any grades!

I am wading through the Ofqual release, much odd which is advanced mathematics stuff but it does have stuff in the choices they made about a school in its first year of teaching something.

It also reveals that private schools also got the highest rise in A* to C grades!!

Some hints in there about next week .

It was a giant statistical exercise. They must have had such fun. They do pin blame in DfE within a couple of pages.

Who IS that darkwader pillock?? Is it that Hutchinson in disguise??

Oh, the grades we got were from the y13 Media class - the last Media group we’ll have. With a few really solid years of similar grades in the bag, which I assume helped a lot with this year’s. We haven’t had any Film sit exams yet - thank goodness!

Mine are BTEC so none of the submitted assignment units have changed but the exam results Pearson have allocated are utterly random. They have not used teacher ranking or predicted grades just based it very loosely on how they did in assignments. For example I have one student who got straight distinctions in her exam 1 mocks yet got awarded a pass. Others who were consistently pass students yet got Distinction. And then 6 students who all got passes only on coursework and were awarded a Near Pass in their only exam meaning they did not get enough points to pass the year so I have 6 total fails.

@IgnoranceIsStrength I don’t personally teach BTEC but am HO6th and have stopped being surprised by the myriad ways Pearson manage to fuck up every results day. We had issues with results appearing as Q yesterday even though we could see the correct grades in Pearson online. We rang them and they said it was all fine and the results had definitely gone to UCAS. We didn’t trust them so rang ucas to check... no results. Rang Pearson back who promised it would be sorted by today and suggested it was UCAS’ fault, even though this has now happened three years in a row for BTEC and never for any other qualifications. This morning... almost all the BTEC kids have no decision from their universities and none of the unis have their results. The amount of time spent sorting it was ridiculous.
They are a law unto themselves and it makes me angry that no one bothers with angry headlines when it’s BTEC students. No board could get away with fucking up on UCAS grades for A Levels on this scale, there’d be public outcry. I suppose we should at least be grateful that this year they just sent nothing to UCAS, two years ago they mistakenly sent Us to UCAS for a whole subject and were distinctly blasé about putting it right. Their attitude was that they’d corrected the results that the kids got in their envelopes and it was basically our job to convince all of the universities that there had been a mistake. There were a lot of tears.

For A level we were prepared for our grades to be moderated down. We had a really great cohort after a tricky few years. What we were not expecting was for so few concessions to be made for the difference in prior attainment and for the adjustments to be so extreme. It doesn’t feel fair at all. Our chemistry grades were utterly incomprehensible. We use ALPS which has 11 prior attainment bandings. In 2019 18% of Chemistry entries were in the top 2 bands and 40% in the top four. This year 70% were in the top 2 bands and 92% in the top four. That’s a huge difference, but they’ve only allowed the results to be marginally higher than last year and seem to have been very sceptical in particular of our number of B grades (with one moderated to an E and one C moderated to a U with the other twos C taken down to an E). Its like their model accepted results would be better but couldn’t allow for more than a modest rise despite a huge change in prior attainment. We had a few of our largest subjects (which have the biggest changes in PA because of a change in their entry requirements 2 years ago) adjusted like this and it seems desperately unfair on those kids.
We think we will, in all, be appealing at least 2/3 of grades (some based on whole subject appeals, with prior attainment and changes in leadership as our main grounds) and about 25% of those appeals that will be based on a better mock grade which we expect to be accepted without quibble. There could potentially be more of those depending on how they define a valid mock. If teacher supervision and an unseen past paper is enough then we’ll have more, if it has to be in the gym with invigilators then it will be a quarter of all our grades. I don’t know how the exam boards are going to cope with the volume of appeals.

Actually that 25% is of the whole cohort not of the number of appeals. So a huge number... which I hadn’t expected if I’m honest.