The Seventeenth Republic - The Pick Your Grade Show continues as we edge towards INSET days.

[StaffAssociationRepresentative]

You are most welcome to this school staff support thread to get us through stressful times. It is meant for school staff only – a sort of room of requirement. Baiters, haters, goaders 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 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
Do not give ‘The Every twat for Themselves mob’ the staffroom password as a number of them are operating in an alternative reality.

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 goad us then that is not allowed in the staffroom. Close the door quietly on your way out

@Piggywaspushed

The great back to school campaign is really insidious. Is this how the 21st century campaigns? Where is the honest campaigning with posters and TV ads?

Why hide it in articles that appear to be factual news?

I find that really scary on so many levels.

Who are the SM influencers? Surely they don't mean MN? that would break ethics codes.

No it's targeted at the children so it likely means that they will be paying well-known tiktokers and youtubers to talk about the importance of being back at school.

Not heard of anywhere that didn't have some kind of check from SLT/data.
Given HTs had to sign off on the data, you'd think they would have checked it!

I know ours did MAT level statistical modelling on the CAGs.

Did the guidance not mention that ofqual would use prior years data when standardising? I remember a twitterstorm about it at the time. Possibly an ofqual/DfE email if it wasn't in the original document. Going to hunt it out now and see.

This from the first document to heads of Centre.
Exam boards, using a model developed with Ofqual, will use a statistical model to standardise grades across centres in each subject. This model will combine a range of evidence including:
• expected grade distributions at national level
• results in previous years at individual centre level
• the prior attainment profile of students at centre level
This statistical standardisation process will not change the rank order of students in a subject within your centre. Nor will it assume that the distribution of grades in each subject and/or each centre should be the same.

Seems pretty clear that prior data will be used.

This is from the guidance to centres.

"For each centre, in every subject, exam boards will use historical performance data

*to determine the proportion of students who achieved each grade in previous years.
*They will check this against prior attainment data for this year’s students compared
to the prior attainment of students making up the historical data. The predicted grade
distribution for the centre in the subject might be adjusted upwards or downwards
according to the prior attainment distribution of the 2020 students, compared to
previous years. Exam boards will then overlay the centre’s rank order of students
onto the predicted grade distribution and allocate grades to students, without
changing the rank order. This will have the effect of amending the centre
assessment grade in order to align it with the predicted grade distribution meaning
that, for some students, the grade they are allocated will not be the same as the
centre assessment grade that was submitted."

Yes, I found that too. But they are correct in saying that schools were not instructed to do anything with prior performance and data. I have trawled through my emails and there is definitely an obsession with avoiding grade inflation so we didn't get into 'trouble'.

I am noting the some and lolling.

That's true, schools weren't. But it doesn't take a genius to work out that if they are going to use prior data, it's worth a check that your data roughly fits. Some schools will have over inflated. The standardisation should have identified those schools and manually reviewed them. Instead we now have a differently unfair system.

Ken did an awful lot of work on the arts in schools and education and a lot of campaigning for a broad curriculum. He also researched equality and access to education. He was mostly known for the TED talks lately but his work was taught to those of us of an older vintage in our PGCE, and he gave several lectures at the Institute of Education when I was there that were illuminating. He was rather more academically rigourous than the cartoon you mentioned suggests. I suppose a bit old school now in the days of the Twitterati eduexperts.

@Piggywaspushed

Perhaps more 'monitored' schools have taken a more data led approach (and read the guidance properly!).

But what DID the guidance say. The lawyers are saying the guidance did not say anything about data and that this came from ASCL training and advice. I am not sure that they aren't right here, actually.

I’ve just looked back through my emails. Funnily enough, all the links to JCQ, AQA and Ofqual guidance are now ‘page unavailable’

@Piggywaspushed

Can I just clarify, I wasn't asking if anyone knew of grade inflating schools (although again I don't actually know of one), just any that out in what they genuinely thought (which may have shown some apparent inflations) with no intervention at all from data teams and SLT to change them. so, if you like - optimistic but honest and clear of any data bias.

This is genuinely what ALGI believes Ofqual directed us to do : 'predict your grades and we will do all the adjustment.' I now no longer know whether that is true or not but it certainly wasn't the interpretation my SLT had. I don't think we were at the extreme end of 'fitting things to data' either (or certainly not as religiously as Ofqual did).

Our school was the same as yours. Me and my HoD also fuming for same reason - we had students grades we predicted out down by analysis by SLT from 7 to 5 in some cases. There are definitely a couple of friends who I know had their grades left and who were explicitly told if unsure to give the higher of the two grades. I think we can see the history of the changes in SIMS as we entered our data there then it was downgrades by school. I think our school are now using our original predictions in some cases to allow students back to our sixth form. Feel awful for our students.

@MrsHerculePoirot yup.

Apologies for my awful grammar there 🤣🤣🤣

Goodness me, there’s a good one on the ‘I think I agree with everything Chris Witty said’ thread. Teachers can just leave if they don’t feel safe and schools can employ graduates to fill the gap as that’s what private schools do.

I think, sadly, I may be too old for Ken , rather than too young!

You’d have liked him, Piggy because he was a bit Michael Rosen.

I totally disagree with Michael Rosen (and Ken Robinson) about creativity in schools but I’ve come to realise it’s because I am the least creative person in the world and they have an entirely different worldview and skill set.

Michael Rosen is being verycross and fighty at the moment. I'm so glad he's well enough to be furious again!

PHE report released just now. 67 cases in schools in June, mostly staff, all primary.

@noblegiraffe

You’d have liked him, Piggy because he was a bit Michael Rosen.

I totally disagree with Michael Rosen (and Ken Robinson) about creativity in schools but I’ve come to realise it’s because I am the least creative person in the world and they have an entirely different worldview and skill set.

As a fellow uncreative type, I used to feel quite resentful about all the accolades awarded to drama, music, arts and sports, while my carefully nurtured nerdy types were ridiculed by the peers and not celebrated beyond our departments. I think the balance is hard to get right!

Argh. Awful grammar there. Can I blame being hassled by my 4yo...?

I totally disagree with Michael Rosen (and Ken Robinson) about creativity in schools but I’ve come to realise it’s because I am the least creative person in the world and they have an entirely different worldview and skill set.

I'm with you noble.

I am sure the guidance on CAGs told us (centres) to take account of the trend. I'm going to have to trawl my emails now.
We definitely did, because our first round showed a huge increase on last year, and version 3574 was much lower.

@phlebasconsidered

PHE report released just now. 67 cases in schools in June, mostly staff, all primary.

No doubt there will be those posters arguing that the staff could have caught it anywhere, after all it doesn't spread in schools. Also it will be interesting to see the data for secondaries after the first few weeks back in September.

Please tell me if I'm going all conspiracy theorist here...
I've just had the awful thought that maybe the gov was relying on teachers striking - they've stirred it up, have obviously made schools even more under budget, and not given any proper guidance etc etc.
Do you think that maybe they were hoping the teacher unions would actually call for a strike, so that they could then blame everything on us...?

I have spent most of the morning checking (and got lost fo 'page unavailable' too)BUT I did find advice from OCR and Eduqas and AQA. None of them mentioned schools' role in trends. That was not our job. It is pretty clear that that bit was their role.

I have also found several potentially damning emails from within my own school about not inflating grades and making sure we don't lose sight of the data,and one that says stuff about needing to reduce the number of 5s to match the statistical likely outcomes.

Yes, whynot.

Even DH thinks primary schools did not fully reopen in June because of the unions.