You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
Master OTS has done well enough (Nat 5s) to cost me a new guitar. How have your's gone on?
Five A's at higher....BOOOOM!
Good work PP junior.
ooof! kudos pp jnr.
Any idea what plans they have for 6th year (if that's preferred) and beyond ?
She wants to go to Glasgow Uni and do Primary Teaching, but she wants to do Sixth Year first as she’s still only sixteen.
Next years results will be a mixed bag when her less academically oriented brother sits his Nat 5’s
A well done to any STW kids who got their results today.
Initial reports suggest pupils from deprived backgrounds have been massively downgraded, I do hope it's just radio scotlands usual shite, and not true.
Middle_oab earned two C's at Higher and an A at Advanced Higher... 😎
deprived backgrounds have been massively downgraded,
As I understand it that's a result of how they awarded the grades, borderline pupils were more likely to get downgraded and pupils from deprived backgrounds are more likely to be borderline.
The news I heard on Radio Scotland lead with grades being up across the board and the R4 news lead with 125,000 pupils getting downgraded. Both true but a bit of a difference in emphasis!
Good effort mini_PP
Well done petit Perchy! Brains, university, teaching: great combo.
I imagine (I'm in England) the grades were a combination of teacher assessment, earlier exam performance and past school performance (as measured by the exam board) and then the grades are norm referenced.
good on her perchy!
I got pretty decent Highers (many years ago) and the 6th year bit was a no brainer really as I also was still only 16. Even then there were quite a few months at Strathclyde before actually turned 18.
Lewis got
B's for Art; English; PE
A's for Maths; Physics; Chemistry; Geography; Design & Manufacture; French
All apart from french and PE were as expected. Both French and PE are better than expected.
Advice for petit Perchy is to do a different degree then do the PGDE in primary. That gives multiple options for careers. Also means she is not tied into it if she doesn't like it.
Poah is right
Well done to all of your kids!
The news I heard on Radio Scotland lead with grades being up across the board and the R4 news lead with 125,000 pupils getting downgraded. Both true but a bit of a difference in emphasis!
That was the thing that stood out for me when my lad (here in England) was trying to figure out exactly what the conflicting headlines really meant
you can look at the SQA site for each of the subjects and see the difference between expected and given.
Shouldn't we be addressing the inequality in Scottish education at its roots and not just tinkering with an admittedly unfair exam system
They are a shambles in many cases. Our subject dux got a B, which means the SQA think he would have dropped from the 94% he got in the prelim to the 60's. He also got a B for Modern Studies, but has less reason to feel aggrieved as he only got 86% in the prelim for that. Mind you; somebody in the cohort with 68% got made up to an A, so maybe not. Going to be a busy building in Shawfair for a wee while.
Quite glad not to be involved this year tbh!
The results vs disadvantaged areas thing is complicated by a lot of the systems that are already in place to try to mitigate disadvantages- if you want to get into uni or college then you get extra places, extra clearing chances, and contextual awards (ie, generally lower grade demands because you've worked that much harder to achieve the same grade).
So if you're in the right qualifying group (mostly SIMD postcode derived), your grades go further. So dropping from a B to a C in, say, much of the catchment of Alloa Academy, would still for those purposes often be more valuable than getting that B, but losing those other benefits.
And of course it's not just this year's kids, to put them on an even playing field with last years' means basically disadvantaging them roughly the same as last years' from the same schools, then giving them all the same advantages in return to try to balance it.
Of course that's all just for higher/further education, doesn't apply to careers etc.
Kind of a shitshow tbf but there are good reasons for it to be a shitshow.
400 odd appeals at my school already
poah, interesting as there are no real appeals this year, my wife is an exam officer in England and doing her nut over the media talking about appeals.
All students can do is check what the school put in and if it differs from what the exam board awarded a check can be made that there has been no administrative cockups. Beyond that all you can do is claim bias which you will need to backup with proper evidence which won't include mr Smith doesn't like me. She's bracing herself for a shit storm.
can appeal in Scotland this year though
Am I understanding this correctly? If these downgrades hadn't happened the success rate would have been way in excess of the norm. Is that correct? So either this is a year of exceptionally gifted students or just perhaps there was a bit of an over-estimation of their pupil's abilities on the part of the teachers concerned.
400 odd appeals at my school already
Interesting. Is that 400 candidates, or more like 100 candidates with an average of 4 subjects each? How many of these do you think have a really compelling case? Who has the burden or preparing the appeal case - I assume it is the teacher? How many results are surprising in your school in a normal August? What doesn't quite make sense to me is that there seem to be a lot of "surprised" teachers - yet the overall grades submitted to SQA were substantially above the norm. I saw a tweet with the comp sci AH results earlier. IIUC the "predicted" outcomes by teachers this year were that almost no students would fail completely, compared to >16% in previous years, with similar disparity getting a D. Now there are possible weird phenomena because of falling numbers on that course, and a constantly changing syllabus - so perhaps only the most dedicated students would still be there or it got a lot easier(?) but the teachers estimated not far off half getting an A. If that is replicated across other subjects/levels then perhaps the issue is some teachers being unrealistic (I did see someone tweet yesterday that there is a phenomena where fewer SQA markers are found in the SIMD schools, and accordingly schools in wealthier areas may have either a better understanding of the likely grades or be better at teaching to pass the exam).
poah, interesting as there are no real appeals this year, my wife is an exam officer in England and doing her nut over the media talking about appeals.
There definitely are appeals in Scotland. IIUC England was proposing that students who were unhappy with the grade they get awarded could choose to take the exam in October instead? In some ways that seems fairer, but I am sure will have lower adoption than asking your teacher to fill in a form. Inevitably some Scottish students will still be disappointed after appeal, although no doubt some English students will still not achieve what they want after the exam (and might have been disadvantaged by remote learning).
As above poly, no consistency; pupil with 80's and 90's get a B and the pupil with high 60's gets an A. Whats that all about? We put the 68% pupil as an A because her draft assignment was excellent and she had improved, but why she got an A and the high flyer didn't? Love to see the justification for those individual grades.
Not what my wife says and she should know, you cant appeal the grade all you can do is appeal on the grounds of administrative cockup or bias from the teachers, same in Scotland as England. You cant appeal on the grounds you think your child would have done better if the exams had taken place.
As the grounds for appeal are based on bias it will be down to the student to provide evidence, not something most will be able to do even if bias was present.
In normal years some parents spend hundreds of pounds on reviews of papers (they think they are getting remarks) very rarely makes any difference.
I have been working on the fallout from this all day. The inconsistencies are incredible. More than 80% of candidates in a key subject were awarded grades one or more lower than predicted. As far as I am aware only one grade A awarded in the entire subject.
An area of significant deprivation. Shellshocked pupils, parents and teachers. There is no reasonable explanation. Currently this has just been a statistical exercise by the SQA without any examination of any of the supporting evidence - prelims, assignments, essays, practical - that we have to justify the predictions. I am concerned that the appeals process will be overwhelmed.
At the same time, we have kids who thought they were going to fail, and their teachers did too, being awarded a C! Some of the stuff on social media seems to be, literally, incredible.
How many of these do you think have a really compelling case
probably quite a few going by the percentage difference. you can see the differences between this year and the average on the SQA site. Some seriously bad shit going on there. The SQA are a shower of knobjockeys. They have really ****ed it up this year.
Teachers generally know their students and how they will exam for the most part.
Is that 400 candidates
assuming its appeals for a particular grade. Glad I don't have to deal with that but going to have to deal with the fall out.
I got an email from the SQA a couple of weeks ago asking me to participate in appeals, almost like they knew...( TL for marking and subject verification) Anybody else?
It was always going to be problematic. Teachers were effectively told to mark their own homework - how well have the kids that you have taught performed? An unfair position for them to be put in. A really difficult situation to unpick - and hilights why exams are so important.
At the same time, we have kids who thought they were going to fail, and their teachers did too, being awarded a C!
in fairness though - that happens in normal years too - its just the teacher assumes that the pupil got lucky with the paper (they may be beneficiaries of adjusting to the curve in normal years too)! There are definitely some people who have won from this as well as those who have lost out.
Not what my wife says and she should know, you cant appeal the grade all you can do is appeal on the grounds of administrative cockup or bias from the teachers, same in Scotland as England. You cant appeal on the grounds you think your child would have done better if the exams had taken place.
Well you'd certainly like to think she should know, and to be very confident about before broadcasting that there's no point in appealing. I can't comment about England but the Scottish system explicitly is allowing appeals (or to be more precise in wording "post certification review") where examiners will review the evidence that supports the original teacher's estimated grade. https://www.sqa.org.uk/sqa/93800.html. It would be a real shame if anyone here was to advise one of their children not to bother based on your wife's mistaken assertion.
It was always going to be problematic. Teachers were effectively told to mark their own homework – how well have the kids that you have taught performed? An unfair position for them to be put in. A really difficult situation to unpick – and hilights why exams are so important.
there are ways of getting teachers to fairly assess their students and rely less on exams, but they do involve training, moderation, and standardisation, with evidence rather than just giving a score.
As above poly, no consistency; pupil with 80’s and 90’s get a B and the pupil with high 60’s gets an A. Whats that all about? We put the 68% pupil as an A because her draft assignment was excellent and she had improved, but why she got an A and the high flyer didn’t? Love to see the justification for those individual grades.
Those anomalies are the bizzare ones, and don't fit with the explanation of how it was supposed to work. Statistically adjusting the number of passes/grades happens each year - just normally nobody knows what the mark was on their paper as the starting point for that.
Poly, ok see what you're saying, you can appeal through the school if your grade is lower than the school submitted. I still don't think there will be much change on appeal, it's all a bit computer says no unless someone actually entered the wrong grade, ie an admin error, which I did say above was grounds for appeal. I think my wife was saying the only grounds for appeal against the grade the school submitted was on the grounds of evidenced bias by the school against the pupil.
It's not surprising students are getting a grade below what was submitted, if they had all got what was submitted the grades would have gone up 10% to 13%. As the moderating process takes into account previous performance from a school I can also see overly optimistic schools being dropped a grade on mass quite easily. The whole thing is a shit storm and England hasn't been announced yet.
This reminds me of when your doctor asks you "how much do you drink?" You halve the true answer, as you know they will think you are lying. They double your answer, but you know that, so you halve it again.... and so on.
So, all the schools over-estimate as they know it will be adjusted down, and they don't want to be the fools who estimated correctly.
I still don’t think there will be much change on appeal, it’s all a bit computer says no unless someone actually entered the wrong grade, ie an admin error, which I did say above was grounds for appeal. I think my wife was saying the only grounds for appeal against the grade the school submitted was on the grounds of evidenced bias by the school against the pupil.
This is not my understanding of how it will work in Scotland. Schools can appeal a grade if they have evidence that the SQA grade is wrong. So if I have a pupil who got 80% in the prelim exam and the SQA gave them a B then we would send that prelim exam as evidence and if the SQA agreed it was sufficient evidence of A grade performance they would upgrade that pupil.
My understanding is it's evidence based appeals. So two kids in same class can appeal but the one who has evidence to show "working at grade" and improvement most likely to get the appeal. This is why I have a pile of papers in a cupboard in my room, it's the evidence. Some of it is a could be used pile and a nope pile. I also have my list of we can appeal pupils and just shut up and take a pass list. (The latter list is the scrape a pass pupils, no one was entered for a grade/pass that wouldn't on a good day with a fair breeze achieve it, as per sqa instructions
Out of interest - what did the teacher's submit originally, just a grade or did they have to provide supporting evidence for each grade?
The grades (A-D) are sub divided into numerical bands (A1+2, B3+4 etc). This is always the case. This year we further subdivided those numerical bands into 2 or 3 smaller bands then where there was more than one pupil at a given band we ranked them best to worst. This gave an overall ranking of a year group or class that the SQA could then work their statistical magic on.
No evidence was required but we did record what evidence we had. I don't know if that info was considered though.
My son is going to appeal his Maths Higher.
He scored 78% in his last prelim and was predicted an A by his teacher.
He was obviously downgraded by the SQA and was justifiably annoyed about it.
How long will the appeals process take? Presumably it is going to be longer than normal this year because of the volume of appeals.
@Ho hum have a look at the SQA website for that info if you haven't already. They've got a pretty good FAQ.
Hels - it’s a little like that. The “uproar” is not that the doctor assumes you we might all be underestimating but that he assumes people like you might be underestimating more than people like me and applies a bigger correction. Of course, you could argue that someone who provides a clear credible answer that fits with the doctors past experience might be more believable and less subject to adjustment anyway - so a smart school might well have taken the grades it was going to submit and sanity checked them against the sort of performance they typically achieve to make sure their story was credible to start with.
Stumpyjon - I believe you are wrong and there will be a significant number of “corrections” not just for admin errors. (It’s too high profile for there to not be some big corrections; and it’s politically a sensitive time and sensitive subject so doubt they’ll want to face the same storm in 6-8 weeks time again). I’m also quite sure when those results come out there will be a lot of disappointed pupils too - and of course there will be people in both Sqa and government keen to avoid it being seen as a huge mistake. My guess is <1:10 of those downgraded will actually get Upgrades - (so perhaps 1:4-1:5 of those who appeal - because presumably there will be a fair number who don’t care or accept that the result they were awarded was not entirely unreasonable).
Did most schools tell the pupils what they had predicted? My son’s school didn’t tell him - although there are general report card/parents night type predictions throughout the year they don’t face the scrutiny that you’d expect when they come to submit a grade.
Do schools normally predict a grade for sqa? I don’t see what purpose it would serve but something before the results came out implied that they submit similar (but less specific) detail and the robustness of those predictions was expected to avoid the situation they now face...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-scotland-53740588
A squealing U-turn... Nicola's comments last week suggest a proper cock up at SQA & Scot Gov, and she isn't happy. (Rightly)
This rather calls into question the current examination system.
I get why they've done that, but huge can of worms. If Ofqual don't do the same then there's massive potential inequality between Scottish and English /Welsh/Northern Irish students 'competing' for places for the autumn. If Ofqual follow suit (I don't actually think they will because Scotland... but you never know), then students from any schools that did try to game the system get a massive advantage.
Best solution I've seen is the suggestion that all 2020 UK certificates show two grades - moderated grade (school awarded grade), and institutions/employers can then make their own mind up.
I am no fan of the SQA, but I thought they did a reasonable job, given an impossible situation. I fear this U-turn, will render this year’s results near worthless.
Nicola’s comments last week suggest a proper cock up at SQA & Scot Gov, and she isn’t happy. (Rightly)
It would seem to me that the responsibility lies with Swinney and ultimately Sturgeon herself.
but huge can of worms
Just effectively devalued my daughters five A's.
I'd imagine that the Universities and colleges will just up their entrance requirements to compensate for the increased grades.
I think questionable rather than worthless.
If those with the highers can get into the universities they’ve chosen and those with Nat 5s can progress how they want to, then they have done their jobs.
Edit Maybe Junior’s Computing D will be upgraded to go with the 6 As he got 🤞😆
but huge can of worms
Just effectively devalued my daughters five A’s.
I’d imagine that the Universities and colleges will just up their entrance requirements to compensate for the increased grades.
I did not congratulate your daughter before - but her results were very impressive! They were for Higher iirc, perhaps the Unis will look to Advanced Highers now, more than giving unconditionals based on Highers in S5?
I think questionable rather than worthless.
Yes, sorry - worthless was a rather large exaggeration. However, I bet for a long time children will get a “but that was only because of COVID”. Especially from other children just a little older or younger.
Perchypanther increased grades are not being rescinded, so your daughters 5 A's still stand. Extra places are also being provided by colleges and universities to compensate
It would seem to me that the responsibility lies with Swinney and ultimately Sturgeon herself.
Indeed. I know a few of the SQA, Scot.Gov. Education dept and Education Scotland people. There isn't as many as you might think, and they all work pretty directly with the minster for Education. They're all being very tight lipped having asked one today about it...
I agree with Perchy - this upping of grades devalues those who were awarded grades. Our lad got two C's at Higher and A at Advanced Higher - and lives in a good postcode. He's now going to have 125000 others with similar grades which may or may not have been awarded fairly - a reverse but similar situation to before...
There still is anomalies here - schools where this year's grades at Prelim and put forward to SQA were way above average for the past 5 years for a similar cohort in that school. Will SQA reinstate that anomaly of no fails and much higher grades? Then next year the school is back to 'normal'.
The relative value of the teacher vs revised grades relies on the revision method being fair and trustworthy. From what I can gather, the SQA's process was designed to favour a notion of 'robustness' over fairness and I think there's a good case to say that it didn't provide an accurate picture of the results. Can we trust that a 'revised' grade A is any more valid than the teacher's grade for a randomly selected student? I don't think we can.
FWIW, I'm reasonably impressed with how it's been handled. ScotGov tried their best with a really tricky situation and when they realised they'd messed up they held their hands up and did their best to fix it. I'll reserve full judgement on this until they've reviewed the exam system.
Can we now appeal every previous year where exam results did not match the teachers assessment?
(Asking for a [s] friend [/s] daughter.)
Very interesting to see what happens in GCSE's in England now. They have a week to review their algorithm, so i wonder if they will come out with a closer match from the start or do another shitstorm and backtrack.
I can't help feeling results that are >10% higher then previous years can't be correct, that doesn't happen.
But my daughter is almost the poster child for the disadvantaged in this scenario. She has had good assessments throughout, good mocks, and we assume good predictions. However the school's overall results have been deteriorating since she joined, but it has just in the last 18mo started to quickly reverse that trend with a massive change to SLT, teachers and curriculum. OK, 18mo is a short time to have an effect but for those kids that got on board and responded it has. She was a kid who always worked hard, supported by us, her parents to close gaps that opened as a result of poor teaching, and now we add good teaching to the mix the standard of work, and understanding and marking has improved beyond recognition.
So to assume that her and classmates like her have had their grades boosted and now need pulling back because the school under a previous regime wasn't very good is very unfair. Particularly if you also assume 'good' schools wouldn't have boosted their grades so to reduce the pass rates you pull the lower performing schools down further.
But who goes to good schools.... and who are they likely to vote for. So will Gav GAS about the good pupils from less well off families, as much as the SNP did?
Can we trust that a ‘revised’ grade A is any more valid than the teacher’s grade for a randomly selected student? I don’t think we can.
Well what we do know is that significantly more people will have got higher grades than previous years. I mean it’s a terrible coincidence that this year’s students were so much better than other years just when there weren’t any exams to prove it.
Just give everyone a prize for taking part.
There's been a lot of outrage in the media over this and a U-turn. But I'm not sure what any other solution should have been. It's a very nice statistical problem: You have multiple predictors (subject, gender, age, past performance, past school performance, location, eye colour...) and you have outcome - grade. You also have staggering amounts of data to build a model for prediction. The law of large numbers is really working in your favour here. Any algorithm will have been rigorously tested for performance on previous years data, including a training set and a validation set. One doesn't just make these things up on the fly! Only then is it used to make predictions for the new data. The issue is what happens when this year's predicted grades look so different to past years (and they will have been compared). Of course there will be a discrepancy from the past predictions because statistical algorithms predict within the range of observed data. It wold be nice to see the validation work done to demonstrate that the model was fit for purpose. But then nobody cares about details.
What significant event may have led teachers to increase their predicted grades in 2020? It's more likely to be a failure of teachers to be consistent than algorithms to make poor predictions.
Well done to those who worked hard and got what they needed. Mine are both past this stage but one is off to a self-funded course in Ireland in a month. It is likely there will also be more places due to a collapse in foreign students. Roll on England and Wales next week.
Well what we do know is that significantly more people will have got higher grades than previous years. I mean it’s a terrible coincidence that this year’s students were so much better than other years just when there weren’t any exams to prove it.
Which actually calls into question the competence and/or honesty of the teachers.
I'm going to take a punt and bet that the First Minister and her Education Secretary knew about the revised grades before they were published to the public. They were good enough then. Published them and suddenly panicked and sadly will lead to the perception that all grades have been inflated - regardless. From an academic point of view, can someone in the Scottish Government please explain to me why this years student body is so much better than last years.
I feel sorry for the students and their parents who have been used as a political football (although given the First Minsters current disgust of footballers this may not be an apt phrase). Perhaps a better solution would be to invite students who were unhappy with their grades to sit the exams later and then take the best of two. I suspect that logistically may not be possible.
From an academic point of view, can someone in the Scottish Government please explain to me why this years student body is so much better than last years.
You mean better than every year?
Like excess mortality data, what matters is the distribution. It is fair to decide that this year's results should match a recent distribution. At the population level, nobody would think that inequitable. But the sheer difference in this year's predicted grades really left them no choice.
The plots on that BBC page are awful - based on the algorithm with teacher predicted grades (assume most other covariates are unchanged from previous years), the Highers had a prediction of 88.8% compared with a recent historic mean of 76.5% and a 10 year range of 74-79%. If this was a health outcome there would be an inquiry. As it is, they settled on 78.9%, which is still at the peak of the ten year range.
Everyone is already disadvantaged because of Covid due to less teaching. If kids got 'A's that didn't 'deserve' it we will never know who they are but there will be enough uni spots for everyone so i don't think it matters at all.
Once they get to uni they either pass or fail and will be judged based on that.
The kids who would have had straight A's regardless will be against wee timmy who would have failed if he had to actually take an exam. If timmy gets a good grade at uni then why would that be a bad thing?
Of course this is just looking at the uni side of things rather than other oppertunities but i think the same thing applies
Don't think there was ever any short term solution to this. I'm glad that my kids are old enough to be unaffected.. almost unaffected one of them is a teacher. Maybe it would have been better to let the results stand, after the appeal process has run its course and to address the inequalities in education at their root. Address the effect of poverty in our communities and scrap the tax breaks for private schools
Which actually calls into question the competence and/or honesty of the teachers.
Not so sure (but then I am admittedly bound to say that)...
Submitted grades won't have been what teachers suggested. They will have gone through the lens of Heads of Department and Senior Leadership Teams. I have no doubt that in some schools the grades submitted would have borne precious little resemblance to what individual teachers submitted.
No matter how honest and conscientious teachers were in their grades (I'm pretty confident that very few, if any, of my colleagues in our school - incidentally with a catchment in the biggest deprevation index - tried to game the system or were anything but honest in their grading), I suspect there has been a subconscious element of 'these grades are going to be brought down and that's not fair on the kids' thinking. I know that school leaderships will then have also factored this and whatever glimpses of the exalted algorithm they could get into their revisions.
TLDR. Too little transparency and trust in the system for it ever to have worked smoothly. Questioning the teaching profession is exactly what DomCum wants out of all this - look at his time at the DfE with Gove to see his gameplan.
Best solution I’ve seen is the suggestion that all 2020 UK certificates show two grades – moderated grade (school awarded grade), and institutions/employers can then make their own mind up
The trouble with that is that the moderated grade doesn't tell you much about the individual's abilities just whether or not they fell foul of the statistical process.
Which actually calls into question the competence and/or honesty of the teachers
They were estimated grades based on a variety of different info, is it really a surprise that they didn't match the long term averages? And is it really a surprise that where there was doubt teachers gave pupils the benefit of that doubt? No playing the system, not incompetence or dishonesty but if anything more likely a slight bias towards wanting the best for pupils.
And is it really a surprise that where there was doubt teachers gave pupils the benefit of that doubt?
Which is why it was correct to moderate the results
Which actually calls into question the competence and/or honesty of the teachers.
Please excuse what may sound as bigheadedness:
I’m not sure how good a teacher I am, but I have an uncanny skill for predicting pupils percentages in exams. Also one of my many flaws is that I am too honest...
There are a number of issues with teacher predicted grades. Some are dishonest and will bump everybody up a grade. Others lack the experience to accurately predict the grade - it is much more difficult than one might presume. But many I fear were just ‘too nice’ and gave their pupils too much benefit of the doubt, if in any doubt over a pupil who was borderline between two grades they inevitably went for the higher grade.
Robust evidence is also a minefield. Many teachers give hints to their pupils before prelims, some blatantly so. Class tests are often poorly supervised. At the end of the day, every other year pupils have had the level playing field of a final exam. I’m sitting here this evening feeling that I have failed my pupils somewhat by accurately predicting their results, whilst others I fear (know) inflated theirs.
Which is why it was correct to moderate the results
Which was also inequitable because it was not based on pupil ability.
I don't think there was a solution to this that could have kept everyone happy. Postponing exams would have been fair (or as fair as exams ever are) but would have thrown all sorts of other things out of kilter.
Personally I think the pitchforks should have been reserved until after the appeals process which would likely have yielded a set of results somewhere between teacher estimates and moderated grades.
And of course one person's embarrassing climbdown is another's having the humility to admit you got it wrong.
Which is why it was correct to moderate the results
I agree.
The severity of the moderation and (more importantly) the disadvantaging of a pupil by postcode is the issue for me.
The severity of the moderation and (more importantly) the disadvantaging of a pupil by postcode is the issue for me.
I agree, I’m still unsure how this happened.
I don’t think there was a solution to this that could have kept everyone happy.
Indeed, it was an impossible task. There were pupils who were a ‘guaranteed’ A grade whatever the exam paper had looked like. But many pupils would have managed an A on some days, but a B on perhaps a more difficult or even easier paper. Similarly with other grades, the idea that each pupil was destined to get a certain grade as comes across in the media, is silly. Every year some pupils are disappointed in their results.
This rather calls into question the current examination system.
The current examination system is utter crap and the SQA should be junked
I agree, I’m still unsure how this happened
I think it was an artefact of the process rather than anything more sinister. Amongst other things pupils from disadvantaged areas are more likely to be borderline at a grade and therefore more likely to get downgraded.
Which is why it was correct to moderate the results
The severity of the moderation and (more importantly) the disadvantaging of a pupil by postcode is the issue for me.
This exactly. It seems unfair that 'lower performing schools' ie, from worse catchment areas have been assumed to have done most of the grade inflation so instead of lowering the distribution they tilted it to achieve the same average.
The current examination system is utter crap and the SQA should be junked
This.
The SQA are very good at some things but they have grown far beyond their original role as an exam board and now exert an unhealthy influence on Scottish education.
One problem of appeals would be the time it would take to do them all. Check prelim and then paper for suitability. Then any unit assessments, any other pieces of work such as essays/ folio/ assignment if it was done before lockdown. Repeat the process X many thousand times. Been the strangest year in education,hasn't it?
Amongst other things pupils from disadvantaged areas are more likely to be borderline at a grade and therefore more likely to get downgraded.
Genuine question - how come? Is that because less disadvantaged schools have more A & B grades rather than across the whole range? When we do our first prelims we often get results from 0% through to 97 or 100% - the modal mark often being 0%!
The SQA are very good at some things but they have grown far beyond their original role as an exam board and now exert an unhealthy influence on Scottish education.
Difficult to agree more with this.
Darren McGarvey made a good point about the equity/attainment gap issue, to paraphrase; the inflation of grades that would have resulted from awarding teacher estimates was seen as threatening the integrity of the awards and many disadvantaged kids took the hit on that. But the inflation of grades by the things wealth and privilege can provide does not threaten the integrity of the awards and is in fact seen as normal.
Hmmmm
Not feeling very comfortable with this - and my last act in a English school before starting in a Scottish school is to work the phones and 'triage' pupils and parents on A level results day so awaiting a shit storm on Thursday. If Boris does not do the same for A levels there will be holly hell to pay for the tories.
There is always moderation of results - it's just not as blatant or in the news. My subject is Design Technology. 60% of the grade came from centre assessed coursework. I would assess it and give it a grade. A moderator would a assess it, congratulate me on my assessment and agree with my marking. UMS would then swing in and downgrade about 40% of the results. Every. Single. Year. This is nothing new.
Teachers are optimists!I know - hard to believe isn't it! On average the forecast grades for a UCAS application are 1.5 grades (over 3 A level- so half a grade per subject for every student) higher than the actual results. Every. Single. Year. If you had a kid's future in your hands as a subject HoD last May and you were in two minds between two grades - and that will be pretty much every HoD with every student in every subject - only a complete arse would have plumped for the worse of the two options. As I said - teachers are optimists. They also tend to like the kids they work with.
If you are at a successful school where kids get high grades you had nowhere to go with your grade inflation. You could not invent another higher grade above A*. If you worked at a less successful school with traditionally lower results and the kids in front of you were destined for B-Ds, there was plenty of 'headroom' to whack a grade or two on top and think sunny thoughts. Sadly less successful schools tend to be in less affluent areas. I very much suspect these school have had their results 'massaged' more because teachers had the ability to over estimate more than the high flying school could. Because maths.
Another factor I have not heard in training sessions, webinars, or the eduction press is the concept of bad luck and cockup. In my old job I was looking after one hundred 18yr olds and would hear the tails of woe as the students returned from their exams. Every morning and afternoon there was some kid who would come back from the exam hall saying they had forgotten to turn over the paper and read the last question, had misread a question and answered the wrong way, had taken a punt and not revised a topic that turned out to be a huge part of the paper, that their girlfriend broke up with them the night before and they could not concentrate etc etc. Back luck and cock up massively outweighs good luck and fortune in exam sitting and plays a part in the final grades when looked at holistically. This year no one got that bad luck as they didn't sit the exams - so if you want the grades to look broadly like results every other year you have to engineer the bad luck back in. As the schools have been asked to rank order the students in their school per subject it stands to reason the bad luck gets given to the student at the bottom of the ranking in each grade boundary.
Whatever - having a system and then dicking about with it when the inevitable downgrading came is good for no one in having any confidence in the system.
But the inflation of grades by the things wealth and privilege can provide does not threaten the integrity of the awards and is in fact seen as normal.
Amen.
Can we now appeal every previous year where exam results did not match the teachers assessment?
(Asking for a friend daughter.)
Yes, but only if we can retrospectively cause a global pandemic that causes her exams to be cancelled.
Darren McGarvey made a good point about the equity/attainment gap issue, to paraphrase; the inflation of grades that would have resulted from awarding teacher estimates was seen as threatening the integrity of the awards and many disadvantaged kids took the hit on that. But the inflation of grades by the things wealth and privilege can provide does not threaten the integrity of the awards and is in fact seen as normal.
Surely they are different things though.
It was pointed out on radio 4 that increasing the numbers who receive good grades is unhelpful for disadvantaged children, because employers etc then rely on ‘soft skills’ like hobbies and clubs etc to determine who should get a job.
Nice post Convert.