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

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2/7 students in my subject down a grade on CAG. Fortunately neither lost a uni place so that's ok.

Other subjects at school not so lucky. Massive improvement in our 6th form this year, the yr13 were flipping amazing and didn't deserve this.

Anyone else already been given all their value added colour coded data for this year??!

madame my prior attainment for my film class was much higher than 2017 and 2018 and yet their results are now below those of 2018. It's bizarre. It was like 'no, you will not have an A* and an A : here , have an A and a B; it's the most you deserve. And as a result of our kindness, we will give one of your Bs a C and one of your Cs a D. So there.')

We use ALPs too. Or did. Not sure if we stopped this year.

There’s no evidence that my y13’s grades have been boosted by last year having a really good set of results.

Piggy I'd reply with 2 words to that email.... You can probably guess which. I think I'd take the disciplinary.

Is that because 2018 and 17 were not so great noble?

My 2017 large class size has skewed everything .

Maths was not reformed until 2018 either was it? I think it is unfair to include legacy spec data.

I am becoming increasingly fuming about the NEA issue.

Apparently, there are also some bonkers vocational results. Like 5 out of 6 units submitted as a distinction and then the final unit being estimated as a fail...

Lies, damned lies and ...

That ofqual algorithm document is quite something.

Only skimmed a few pages and seen flow charts on twitter.

Essentially their process was supposed to be robust but I think a lot of centres are so small that the statistical modelling was irrelevant. CAGs awarded to small entry may have been fairer (thinking entries above 5 but less than 20). However this would not be fair on students at a larger centre. It's all a mess really.

It's not the centre size though is it? It's the size of the subject? Perfectly feasible to have a smallish class in a large centre. What you almost certainly won't get , though, in any cash strapped state school is a class of 4 or less (fewer?). I think 6 might be regarded as out absolute minimum.

I mean , they admit several times In the document that things aren't all that fair and blame DfE right at the beginning. they obviously wanted to be more generous.

On the HE thread (and this isn't meant cattily) it does look like the pleased with results/my school got what they wanted are at private schools. I feel for them. It is difficult for the happy people to be happy and the sad people to really rant.

Oh , how I'd love to see Eton's results!!

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!

Me too - had a small, very bright, very hard working cohort this year. (for once) and they have all been dropped a grade, and in some cases two. (Under 15 pupils)

I've got kids that got an A* in their NEA (not counted) and their Mocks who have now been awarded a B grade with no explanation as to why. Last couple of years cohorts were large - over 40 - and full of kids who were D/E grades, and this appears to have impacted the students this year - none of whom would have got less than a C if they'd sat their exam.

I am raging on their behalf and instructed by SLT that I can make absolutely no comment whatsoever on appeals. I don't understand how a computer can decide with no evidence whatsoever what a student I've taught for the last two years is capable of achieving. It is an utter shit show.

Perfectly feasible to have a smallish class in a large centre.

Yes, and I’d hazard a guess that there are far more smallish classes in some subjects than others. For instance, a couple of local schools run really small physics A level classes, presumably because they can’t be seen to not offer it. Which would mean that centres with larger cohorts of physics students will be particularly hard hit. Because, again presumably, where the weighting towards CAGs applies to a significant number of centres the “balancing out” using larger centres as collateral will have a greater impact.

However, for the perennially popular subjects (eg biology, English lit etc) even small independent schools (like mine) will have decent sized cohorts.

Piggy yes sorry really badly worded! It's the size of the class for that subject.

I'm hoping GCSE will be better because they tend to be bigger. I'm worried for my small entry, not popular, no prior data subject however I think 'big' entry subjects should be ok.

It sounds like the algorithm is deeply flawed, perhaps even more than the Scottish one. I feel like a bit of an idiot now for believing that it would be something close to fair.

I don't think the algorithm is flawed from what I have read/seen. Rather I think it has been bluntly applied to small entry subjects where past results have more sway than they should. Schools with really tiny classes (independent) have benefitted as they haven't been adjusted. Schools with 30+ entries per subject seem to be less affected (based on twitter so only anecdata). It's the mid range classes of 6-15ish that have been screwed over. Prior data can (and has) fluctuated so much (because the groups are small) that the algorithm spews out results that seem bonkers to an actual human.

A lot of A level classes in state schools are 6-15ish size. So lots of students have been affected.

Interesting you should posit physics as a potentially smaller class size, Chloe. I don't know a single state or private school where each of the sciences don't have bigger uptake than English lit, these days.

The kinds of subjects which run in tiny numbers, even for state schools, tend to be MFL and possibly something like music (if it's a posh enough state school to want to be see to offer music).

Oh, our local news lady is going for Nick Gibb on Look East!!!

Hear hear herc !

Absolutely spot on!!

@Piggywaspushed

It's not the centre size though is it? It's the size of the subject? Perfectly feasible to have a smallish class in a large centre. What you almost certainly won't get , though, in any cash strapped state school is a class of 4 or less (fewer?). I think 6 might be regarded as out absolute minimum.

I mean , they admit several times In the document that things aren't all that fair and blame DfE right at the beginning. they obviously wanted to be more generous.

On the HE thread (and this isn't meant cattily) it does look like the pleased with results/my school got what they wanted are at private schools. I feel for them. It is difficult for the happy people to be happy and the sad people to really rant.

Oh , how I'd love to see Eton's results!!

We actually had one class of two and one of three. Their results were untouched even though the prior data suggested they probably were on the high side...

danglingmod, I teach physics so it tends to be the first one I think of! In my last school English lit was huge, physics was growing but the biggest cohort when I was in a state school was 12. And the school I attended (round the corner from where I live now) only has physics classes of 5-10, but it’s girls only so that may skew things.

Our physics class is 2, English 10.

I taught further maths so had five students and their CAGs stood. We had larger cohort of maths and think algorithm applied to them. So two who got A* at Fm we’re downgraded to As in Maths.

Those two this year definitely would have got A* in both.

We tend not to award any A* in ‘mocks’ before they finish the course and then only if they get 100% - it’s a sort of running joke with them each year. We do predict some though.

Next year do we need to be much more lenient with mocks just in case? Then if exams go ahead is that going to cause problems because students think they are better than they are?!?

I saw a really good explanation shared on fb about ‘over inflating’ have you seen it? I’ve found it really useful to share with people who read the papers and the rubbish printed in them...

Here:

You will read a lot this week about inflated A-Level grades with teacher's predictions and how teachers have deliberately exaggerated grades for their own gain.

Think again. We haven't. Let me explain.

Let's take five members of an A-Level class who are all slated to get B grades overall. They have been progressing all through the course towards those grades and look pretty good so far.
Now let's take a NORMAL examined year. Your five sure-shot B grades go into that exam room and sit those papers. Now let's go to August and you get the following:
Students 1 and 2 get B grades as expected
Student 3 spends extra hours revising, practising and practising, manages to revise the one question that comes up and gets an A
Student 4 drops to C because they were one mark off the higher-this-year boundaries. Any other year would have been a B.
Student 5 missed either one question/one text/one case study/one equation and dropped to a low C or even a D. Yup they screwed up, either by accident/stress/personal circumstances and there's at least one every year in every class who does.

Now let's take THIS year. Your five sure-shot B grades are back again, only now you have to predict their grades. They have all been consistently working to this level.

Do you give them all B's? Of course you do because that's your evidence. Which student becomes your scapegoat? Which one do you 'assume' will be the screw up or victim of boundaries? Student 1 who had that one bad assessment? Student 2 who has bad attendance? Student 3 who works at B grade but it is really low in the band? Student 4 who has major family issues? Student 5 who is actually capable of more but doesn't revise and blags assessments? No. You don't. Because you don't let (you are also forbidden to let) bias cloud your judgement. So they all get B's sent off, including that one student who may have managed an A.

So grades go up.

Teachers haven't exaggerated grades, instead we are working against:

• Previous years boundaries that go up and down, sometimes quite dramatically. I have had students get A's one year and C's in another with exactly the same mark.
• Not knowing what is on the paper (e.g. mine only get examined on 2 out of 3 possible topics and if one particular one comes up, some students will do better)
• Each year also brings 'bad' papers and 'good' papers - you get one bad paper/poor question/poorly worded section and that's your cohort all down - teachers have been asked to predict against this too.
• Giving students the benefit of the doubt because you know they COULD and have demonstrated in assessment that they CAN so why not give them the grade?
• Exam marking is notoriously unpredictable, inaccurate and uneven - particularly in essay based subjects even in regular years.
• Also I cannot speak for other teachers but this year's group for me have been one of the most able I have had - and having a student's personal progress judged against previous who may have been less able/more disadvantaged/more scuppered by course changes seems ridiculous.

Also, quite bluntly, predicting and ranking exam candidates for teachers has been hellish. I don't think anyone would like to be asked to rank a group of people on their POSSIBLE performance knowing that the grades they give will make or break a student's future.

And finally, students WORKED for these grades. Teachers didn't magic them out of thin air. We based them on eighteen months of evidence, assessments and grades. And every time someone declares 'oh they aren't real grades' you belittle their work and achievements.

Save your judgements for the govt who turned schools into exam factories which means it's all on one or two papers at one moment in time.

(EDIT: This example can also be applied to the upcoming GCSE results too)

EDIT 2 - Also this year's grades will not be included in schools progress/judgements and league tables so it is literally in no teacher's interest to inflate grades artificially.

That’s interesting because we had 4 very badly affected subjects and they were some of our largest with the smallest of the 4 being 13, our largest subject was one of the 4 too but still has less than 30. The classes of 6-12 were all relatively OK. We have 5 subjects of 4 or fewer students and they were obviously untouched.
There were some real injustices today though. For example we had two students who had both been predicted AAB who highlighted the problem. One ended up with A*AB, the other with CCE. The second was unlucky enough to be doing the three most adjusted subjects, the first did smaller subjects (albeit ones that performed better last year) with classes of 6 -10 and was one of a tiny number that increased a grade.

This is interesting

I didn't realise how few centres do English Language compared with Lit!

What does all the tapered adjustment etc mean?