Exam Results

[maggiebee]

Considering the debacle surrounding the Scottish exam results, you would gave thought that England would have learned from it. Apparently not.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/aug/11/pressure-grows-on-government-over-england-a-level-results-mess-coronavirus

[fiction-factory]

Would I be right, andy, to say your solution would have just been to give the grades predicted by the teachers, even though overall it shows a significant drift upwards from previous years and although previous studies have shown that in the past there was a noticeable tendency to over-predict (I think TheCorbeyloon gave some good stats earlier)

[Mozz71]

My question is if they weren't going to take the teachers at their word as to the predicted grades, why both asking them in the first place?

[fiction-factory]

Erm- because otherwise you'd have absolutely nothing to go on, Mozz

[fiction-factory]

teachers give predicted grades every year (and it's known there is a tendency to be overoptimistic). These predictions are used to determine grades for students who are too unwell to take the exams or have a broken arm or take them while ill, or where papers get lost (does happen), but they are not taken at face value then- the predictions are standardised in some way against actual results of others using an algorithm. It usually works okay as the numbers involved are not huge

[Peter Pedant]

nope nothing to learn
we had a 91% failure rate in accountancy (basics) 2017 and the examining body said AAT - it is meant to work like that.

what nice Mr Mark Farrar of AAT didnt realise was that there was no progression and so only 9% of the year cd progress to - - - paying nice Mr Farrar and AAT a fat wadge for level 4. (3k).
There was an unusually well worn path for those taking the exam as a university prequisite and after the results I understood why.

I did write to mr F and point out that a modular course - pass-pass-good pass-pass-final and overall: bad fail
showed there was something wrong with Mr F's assessment scheme and not the candidate. But he told me that was not the case.

I imagine that this will occur this year. The big fallacy is that A level results predict anything - no even degree grade. You just need to get in
But even reading Bot in Exeter is no worse than Bot in Bristol - or York.

In 1965 - they let in just about everyone somewhere- and some uni - s had a chuck out rate at the end of THEIR first year of 40%

secondly
the scots minister has power to alter A level results which they dont further south
and as the Brits say - shouldnt have. the educational measurement system should be independent. It is an effect of devolution
London said that they would have to give the idle tassers in Edinburgh something to yak and mawl over - oh I know - exam results ....

it will all blow over
there are very few things that WRECK your life at age 18
and I suggest that getting a C instead of a B isnt one of them

[New Judge]

//Some of these youngsters will have their hopes of a university place dashed, there's just so much competition.//

Is that true, Maggie? Last year some 541,000 people began an undergraduate course in the UK. There are currently around 760,000 18 year olds. Even if Mr Blair’s ridiculous target of 50% of them attending University was met, that would mean "just" 380,000 of them would be applying for places.

Quite honestly many young people would be far better off applying for a job than a place at University. Of the jobs in the UK, only about 10% to 15% truly require a University education. This means large numbers of young people leave Uni with a huge debt, a fairly worthless degree and very little chance of getting a job which would pay them substantially more that if they had begun a career at 18 by working. This has been going on for years. When I last took a detailed look at this matter (which I think was in about 2010 or 2011) “Forensic Science” was the most popular degree course. I discovered that there were about five times as many students studying that subject than there were positions (not vacancies, positions) in the entire industry. An absolutely ridiculous state of affairs and one which I doubt has altered much.

Universities want bums on seats. With the exception of the “proper” universities, they don’t care too much how well educated those bums are. Young people are being deceived into thinking a degree in “Media Studies” from Barstoneworth University will be their passport to a glittering career. It wasn’t true up to last year and it certainly isn’t true now that the economy has been slaughtered by the poor handling of the Covid outbreak.

//there are very few things that WRECK your life at age 18
and I suggest that getting a C instead of a B isnt one of them//

Absolutely spot on from Peter. Those who are "devastated" need to get a grip on themselves and get on with their lives.

[andy-hughes]

FF - // Would I be right, andy, to say your solution would have just been to give the grades predicted by the teachers, even though overall it shows a significant drift upwards from previous years and although previous studies have shown that in the past there was a noticeable tendency to over-predict (I think TheCorbeyloon gave some good stats earlier) //

Yes, in these exceptional times, I think that is the only solution.

I accept that some teachers may be 'optimistic' in grading, perhaps assuming that a B student can get an A on the day.

I would not for one moment accept that a teacher would take a C student, and predict an A* grade for them, which would put the student into academia will beyond their level, and would lead to all manner of tall questions being asked.

I don't believe that any teacher, and we are talking professional people here, who do this for a living, would upgrade a student to such a ludicrous degree.

Yet the government is perfectly happy for a computer to downgrade a student by the same measure, ignoring a predicted A* grading by the student's teacher, who must by definition know the student better than a computer, and offering a C grade instead, based on the student's school rating, which is no reasonable basis of grading that anyone with an ounce of common sense could support.

Would I support teachers who know their students, over a computer who knows how to analyse irrelevant data?

You bet I would!

[mushroom25]

// over a computer who knows how to analyse irrelevant data? //

It's a machine. It doesn't get peeed off. It doesn't get happy, it doesn't get sad, it doesn't laugh at your jokes. It just runs programs.

[Cloverjo]

I totally agree, NJ. ( oh my goodness, again?;)

50 % of young people going to university means there will be average and below average people there. A really stupid aim by Blair, and I’m a lefty.

[weecalf]

I’ve said it afore I’ve said it in Brighton ....

[jim360]

I suspect that what has happened has been shaped by, among other things:

a) trying to be fair to the students in 2019 and 2021, who have sat or will sit exams as normal;
b) trying to be fair to the age group as a whole, and;
c) projecting in a way that may be reasonable globally, but horrific locally and individually.

The other problem is that this is obviously hurting people more at some schools than others. Again, the history of the institution is impacting on the future of the individual, making it wholly unfair that, say, there has been a 4% rise in top grades at independent schools, but almost no rise at all at sixth form colleges. I think it's safe to assume that the method uses to assess predictions has, in effect, said that the system trusts teachers at Independent Schools more than those at sixth-form colleges.

It's a mess. I don't think it will have been practically possible to resolve this beforehand to everybody's satisfaction, although presumably working with the schools in question as much as possible -- being more transparent, in other words -- would at least have made people feel better about it.

[woofgang]

yup...I went to a good school which is now a very good school. It was pretty good in my day....encouraged a love of learning, got us thinking for ourselves and so on....but exams.....exams, they said are a tool. They get you on to the next place where you want to be...no more no less. So much so that they had actual classes for folk with no aptitude who needed to pass stuff like English and maths for college or uni entrance and they put their very best teachers to teach those classes. Good exam results were celebrated yes but they were kind of viewed as a side issue to REAL learning.

[Peter Pedant]

// 50 % of young people going to university means there will be average and below average people there.//

oh dear - we werent concentrating on the day we did averages did we?

take a data set ( oh whoopsie I have lost the majority of my readers so far)
{1,2,3,4, 1000} - the average is 202 and here are four on one side and one on the second.
the statistic you are referring to is median - and here 3 is median value, partitioning the set into equal halves.

just picking - again

[Ellipsis]

It looks like if you were a smart kid in a crap school, you were disadvantaged.

Does anybody know ... are the GCSE and AS papers dug out to assess how capable the individual pupil was at that stage in their lives? Or is their grade simply a function of teacher prediction and school past performance?

Maybe a solution would have been for the SCHOOL to be awarded a big pool of UCAS points to dish out as they saw fit.

[THECORBYLOON]

CJ, the 50% going to university could be only the top 50% so they would be the better ones.

[fiction-factory]

//I appreciate that predicting grades can be tricky, but for an A* predicted student to receive a C should surely ring alarm bells somewhere, and there are many many of them // (Andy-Hughes)

We agree that a downgrading from A* to C should have raised alarm bells. I think anything more than a downgrade (or upgrade) of more than one level should have either been ruled out, or at least reviewed independently and/or discussed with the school.

However I am not sure what evidence there is that " there are many many of them". How many is "many many"? Yes, some cases have been highlighted in the media but there haven't been hundreds or thousands of A* to C cases have there?.

[diddlydo]

Andy Hughes - it is naive of you to think that all teachers are beyond reproach. As a GCE Examiner, every year I encounter blatant cheating by teachers who want their students to get better grades than they are capable of because it affects the teacher's performance management.

[jim360]

// However I am not sure what evidence there is that " there are many many of them". How many is "many many"? Yes, some cases have been highlighted in the media but there haven't been hundreds or thousands of A* to C cases have there?. //

I think there are supposed to be 3% of all predictions that were downgraded by two or more grades. If NJ's right about there being about 750,000 18-year-olds, and just naively assuming they all sat A Levels, then that translates to about 20,000 students.

I'm going to call this an upper bound. Still a lot, though.

[THECORBYLOON]

In the study that found 74% of A-Level predictions had been over-predicted, they gave five points for grade A and reduced it by one point per grade, giving one point to grade E.

It found that of those who got three points (EEE) the majority had been predicted to get eight points (CCD).

That means in those cases, the teachers were wrong by a margin of two grades.

[AuntPollyGrey]

My youngest was lucky to do his A level exams last year and his GCSE's in 2017. We found the teachers erred on the side of caution with their predictions - for instance in GCSE English Lit my son was predicted a B, got a C in his mocks and an A* in his exams. In A levels he was predicted B,B C/D and got AAB. The only fair way is to do the Exams. I feel so sorry for all the young people affected and hope the government will see sense and let those who wish to sit the exams do so.

As for the comments about -better get a job than go to Uni -good luck with that one!