[Misc] Exam results

[chimneys]

A Level and GCSE's will revert to teacher assessed grades in England. Good luck to the universities working out who out of the 40% of top marked pupils will get to study which course at which university.

Moral of the story is that qualifications should be assessed mainly on coursework and set assessments throughout the course as opposed to relying on a final exam. Presumably the courses will need to be made harder if 40% are getting top marks too.

40% of A level students now get A*s?! Really? Can you show me where that is confirmed please?

 

[KZNSeagull]

40% of A level students now get A*s?! Really? Can you show me where that is confirmed please?

40% A or A* in Wales. 38% in England apparently. The Wales stat came out last week and they have mentioned the England stat on the news this afternoon.

 

[chimneys]

40% A or A* in Wales. 38% in England apparently. The Wales stat came out last week and they have mentioned the England stat on the news this afternoon.

The top grade is A*, brought in to differentiate between the very good and best in subject.

Got this from Further Education Week "The proportion of A* grades, the highest available, also increased from 7.7 per cent to 8.9 per cent." This was before this afternoon's announcement.

So top grade A* nothing like 40%, and does still give top universities a good steer on the elite, even when that percentage rises a little using teacher assessments.

 

[Doonhamer7]

Great news for all those students.

Had an email from Collyer’s 6th form college this morning, so despite having one of the brightest cohort ever (based on GCSE results) the students were overall marked down by 2-2.5% (A*-A down from 31.9% to 28.5%, And A*-B down from (58.3% to 56.3%, when you would have expected results to have gone up. The Principal stated in the e-mail “ In effect in just one year every student has on average lost more than 1/3 of a grade per subject”.

So algorithm didn’t work for an oustanding establishment so how did it work for poor performing ones

Bun fight two about to start - all those lost places at top Unis which have now given away at clearing - wait to see how this mess in unravelled, when some parent takes Oxford to court for giving away their child’s place.

 

[timbha]

Mine was, and the course work was very intense. I did well, but had to work hard.

Well done and this is how it should be.

I wonder how the teachers will be judged now they have marked their own homework.

 

[KZNSeagull]

The top grade is A*, brought in to differentiate between the very good and best in subject.

Got this from Further Education Week "The proportion of A* grades, the highest available, also increased from 7.7 per cent to 8.9 per cent." This was before this afternoon's announcement.

So top grade A* nothing like 40%, and does still give top universities a good steer on the elite, even when that percentage rises a little using teacher assessments.

Well we will see how much it rises, but A or A* was 25%ish in Wales after downgrades, 40% under teacher assessments. An elite of 9% is still very high imo, but that is another discussion.

 

[chimneys]

"A rare few centres put in implausibly high judgements, including one which submitted all A* and A grades for students in two subjects, where previously there had been normal distribution."-an Ofqual spokesman told The Daily Telegraph.

Oh to have done your A Levels at that school this year!

 

[vegster]

I wonder when the hard brexit u turn will manifest. I'm thinking December 24.

This really is the most craven imbecilic gorvernment in my lifetime (and I lived through Heath, Callaghan and Major, not to mention Dimbot Dave).

Sadly, they can't U turn on Brexit. 17. something million people voted to be worse off and they have to get their wish or there will be hell to pay.

I think that the disastrous Brexit will be a fitting epitaph for a man whose whole life has been a cluster**** of lies, disasters, deceit and fraud. I'm just wondering who of the previously sacked and reinstated Cabinet Ministers is due to preside over the next scandal?.... Not heard much from the back stabbing coke head Gove for a while?

 

[Diablo]

Give all the average students an A,(keep them happy) top 20% A* , and new A** for top 10%. That`ll work for a few years before everyone wants an A* !!

 

[Bold Seagull]

Well we will see how much it rises, but A or A* was 25%ish in Wales after downgrades, 40% under teacher assessments. An elite of 9% is still very high imo, but that is another discussion.

Are you sure you have this 40% figure correct? All over google 40% is about the figure for how many teacher assessment grades were downgraded across the board of grades. I can't find anything that says teacher assessments in Wales had 40% A grades and above.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

Sadly, they can't U turn on Brexit. 17. something million people voted to be worse off and they have to get their wish or there will be hell to pay.

I think that the disastrous Brexit will be a fitting epitaph for a man whose whole life has been a cluster**** of lies, disasters, deceit and fraud. I'm just wondering who of the previously sacked and reinstated Cabinet Ministers is due to preside over the next scandal?.... Not heard much from the back stabbing coke head Gove for a while?

I heard that Gove's hands were all over the latest exam row

 

[KZNSeagull]

Are you sure you have this 40% figure correct? All over google 40% is about the figure for how many teacher assessment grades were downgraded across the board of grades. I can't find anything that says teacher assessments in Wales had 40% A grades and above.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-53752765

See heading "What has been the problem":

"The qualifications watchdog found that the estimated grades by teachers had been too generous in Wales.

If you look at the last 10 years, usually about a quarter of grades are at the very top - last year it was around 27%, when record numbers of pupils got A and A*s.

But Qualifications Wales found if it had gone along with the estimates for this summer then more than 40% would have been A and A* grades."

 

[Mackenzie]

My daughter had all four of her predicted A level grades marked down so she’s very pleased with the change of policy and what it could mean for her future.

 

[Bold Seagull]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-53752765

See heading "What has been the problem":

"The qualifications watchdog found that the estimated grades by teachers had been too generous in Wales.

If you look at the last 10 years, usually about a quarter of grades are at the very top - last year it was around 27%, when record numbers of pupils got A and A*s.

But Qualifications Wales found if it had gone along with the estimates for this summer then more than 40% would have been A and A* grades."

Thanks, hadn't seen that. What a mess. Can understand adjustments to A* to A, A to Bs, but it's the grades lower down, especially when down graded by more than 1 grade appears to be where the model has perhaps punished people in an effort to model results.

This is a very human story rather than a statistical one. Teachers were always going to show confidence in their pupils, but that is not the pupil's fault and in these radically unique conditions, so a cohort year of statistically higher grades isn't and really shouldn't be the end of the world, but for some kids downgrading them on a stats model probably is.

 

[Bold Seagull]

My daughter had all four of her predicted A level grades marked down so she’s very pleased with the change of policy and what it could mean for her future.

As said above, it's not the pupils and students fault they couldn't sit exams. Punishing them because a unique situation generates better marks than normal is a dreadful approach and rightly a prompt U-turn ensues. What's happened here is those in charge have forgotten these are young lives and careers at stake, not an exercise in statistical modelling.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

If ABBA had been English they would have been called BCCB

 

[LadySeagull]

I heard that Gove's hands were all over the latest exam row

He caused the problem a few years back, by insisting on removing AS levels just for the sake of doing something called 'exam reform'; thus there is now (thanks to Gove & cronies at the time) no assessment or exam info to work with, for A level students in most cases. It was a stupid thing to to do and teachers said so at the time...

The 'predicted grades' were input by teachers and exams officers online in May - I used to do that job and it's never done sooner.

This year, all schools did it knowing full well the exams were cancelled and what each student needed...very clever. Predictably, this has resulted in hugely exaggerated predicted grades, overall about 50% higher than the best achievements in exams ever.

Exam boards were trying to avoid that because it's clearly skewed! i.e. predicted grades are laughable and this simply is not right, but without AS levels and with GCSE mock exams being unreliable (like marking their own homework, sometimes!) I have no idea what else anyone could have done.

But make no mistake, this year's exam year students have now been handed a huge advantage over other year groups and need to quit the whinging, IMHO. Many schools will have made it up as they went along and got what they wanted for their school figures and for their students. Nice.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

He caused the problem a few years back, by insisting on removing AS levels just for the sake of doing something called 'exam reform'; thus there is now (thanks to Gove & cronies at the time) no assessment or exam info to work with, for A level students in most cases. It was a stupid thing to to do and teachers said so at the time...

The 'predicted grades' were input by teachers and exams officers online in May - I used to do that job. This year, they did it knowing full well the exams were cancelled and what each student needed...very clever. This has resulted in hugely exaggerated predicted grades, some 50% higher than the best achievements in exams ever.

i.e. predicted grades are laughable and this simply is not right, but without AS levels and with GCSE mock exams being unreliable (like marking their own homework, sometimes!) I have no idea what else anyone could have done.

But make no mistake, this year's exam year students have now been handed a huge advantage over other year groups and need to quit the whinging, IMHO. Many schools will have made it up as they went along and got what they wanted for their school figures and for their students. Nice.

Indeed. I also gather from the radio that colleges have been ordered to accept all students who meet the grades, meaning that, where I work, the already unweildy first year intake of 600 biomed students will balloon to thrombotic proportions, assuming there aren't to many deferrals (I encourage deferring because we simply can't deliver decent teaching if it is all going to be online till January - which it is where I work).

Where I work (I posted on this before) we had our students write exams at home on their PCs and upload via a portal. I always pre-circulate my essay questions - they are challenging and not cut and paste-able from the internet. My exams have 3 essays in 3 hours from a choice of two per section. I disclose 3 per section so students must prepare 6 essays in order to be able to write one per section on the day. So I did what I always do. Instead of memorising 6 prepared essays and frantically writing 3 in an exam hall, one essay per hour, the students prepared 6 essays at their leisure and uploaded 3 on the day. I marked to my normal standard. We used Turnitin to detect plagiarism. There was no cheating and the marks average and distributions were exactly the same as the last 3 years. It is that simple - set decent questions that depend on understanding not memorising.

Meanwhile other colleagues who set piss-easy rote-learning essays (as they do) and don't pre-circulate had students writing exam essays unseen from scratch on the day. The college, however, felt it unfair to students who for whatever reason (family, living overseas) had limited internet access in the 3 h window, so they set a 24 h window to write and uploade the essays. For all students. FFS. Needless to say all my colleagues (all of them) reported marks inflation by 10-20%. Overall, then, I would not take seriously any student graduating this year who had less than a 65% average mark over 3 years, and frankly would focus only on students with a first. Where I work final year contributes about 60% to the final mark.

I plan for eventualities and take my job seriously. Through dimness or slackadasicality, others don't. Who knew?

All the best, and thanks, as ever, for the top parking ticket advice (worked a treat a year or so ago for Mrs T)

 

[Hastings gull]

He caused the problem a few years back, by insisting on removing AS levels just for the sake of doing something called 'exam reform'; thus there is now (thanks to Gove & cronies at the time) no assessment or exam info to work with, for A level students in most cases. It was a stupid thing to to do and teachers said so at the time...

The 'predicted grades' were input by teachers and exams officers online in May - I used to do that job and it's never done sooner.

This year, all schools did it knowing full well the exams were cancelled and what each student needed...very clever. Predictably, this has resulted in hugely exaggerated predicted grades, overall about 50% higher than the best achievements in exams ever.

Exam boards were trying to avoid that because it's clearly skewed! i.e. predicted grades are laughable and this simply is not right, but without AS levels and with GCSE mock exams being unreliable (like marking their own homework, sometimes!) I have no idea what else anyone could have done.

But make no mistake, this year's exam year students have now been handed a huge advantage over other year groups and need to quit the whinging, IMHO. Many schools will have made it up as they went along and got what they wanted for their school figures and for their students. Nice.

I taught in secondary schools for 35 years and you are absolutely correct. I once wrote to an exam board about a GCSE paper which was ridiculously easy and was told by the school management team that they didn't want this to happen, as I would want a good grade for my children. I replied that all parents would want that but that it should not be manufactured, but they didn't want to know. Impressive grades are valued by everyone -parents, pupils, teachers and schools -the universities pick up the pieces when the pupil then struggles with academic rigour.

 

[Recidivist]

Pretty well every politician, pundit and student I’ve heard today has trumpeted that they/we have now got the grades they “deserve”.

Really!? Unless this year is the brightest intake on record that sounds very much like twaddle to me....

Clearly a unique situation and appallingly handled by both the government and Ofqal but a little more realism and humility all round might be in order?

Fat chance with this shameless and incompetent government of course but I’m beginning to despair of the quality of our leaders!

Perhaps the problem lies much further back in their education where knowledge of the classics is apparently regarded so much more highly than the more analytical subjects such as maths, science, engineering etc.

Bet we’d have got better control of the pandemic if the politicians had a proper understanding of these subjects, so vital in a world where technology and science are changing the world so fast.....


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