Most liked posts in thread: Exam results

I see the private sector and independent schools have done very well from this system, No disruption for those with breeding or money

 

Yeah he/we are absolutely delighted.

 

Teachers have ridiculous pressure in England to make sure that this year's cohort beats last years cohort. It's ridiculous because a cohort can be so variable. A rolling 5 year mean average might be sensible showing improvement but that's unsustainable.

This is a balls up from the top but I'm not sure if it will make too much difference overall. If people go to uni and get the degree then they definitely deserve it because they're not a walk in the park.

 

As your post they will have overestimated slightly but that is to be understood, After all they care for their students future, As you said if they get to Uni based on these they will still have to work hard to achieve decent outcomes, All the teachers have done is give them that chance which in my opinion they should have, The rest is up to them

 

In Basildon you'd get 20% for spelling your name correctly, 25% if it's on the right paper

 

I'm not a secondary school teacher so I can't speak for them but as I said earlier, pupils are tracked year in, year out, so they should be a reasonably accurate picture.

However, I think for most subjects coursework carries a proportion of the overall mark with the final exam(s) having the most weighting towards it. The teachers don't know what will be in the exam or how it will be presented. There is also the pressure of the exam for the child to contend with.

That's no different to other years though so you'd imagine that some conclusions could be found from the years of data we have .

Seems that brighter kids from Shit Street will get crapped on but less academic kids from Lovely Land will get a leg up.

 

That's life, brother. There's always something that's not fair. It will equalise over time.

 

Hope he is happy with them, Cannot help but think a lot of this has been whipped up by a media and political storm

 

Rubbish! Socio-economic factors are by far the greatest barrier these children face.

 

We trust teachers with our children's education and care, We should trust their judgement on the standards attained by the students, The teachers know them well and should be trusted in the absence of examinations

 

I agree but I wouldn't be surprised if teachers have predicted children's grades on the optimistic side of realistic rather than pessimistic.

 

In response to @Tolly856, in primary school we try to avoid putting pressure on the kids, as the SATs are an exercise in measuring the school not the individual.

However, conversations are had with parents as to whether their children are performing below, at or above age expectations.

With regard to the main debate here. I'll say this. I worked for five years in a University, including the management of admissions and clearing. Of course there is variability, but I don't remember huge differences between predicted grades and actual results.

From a teacher's perspective, they need to have credibility with their bosses, peers and most importantly parents. That provides a significant incentive to provide predictions which are based on what they know about a student and what can be attained. They will have the conversations about capability, current attainment and what needs to be done.

The major problem with the using algorithm approach is that it is taking a global view to predict an individual's outcomes. Exams do the other, they are based on an individual's endeavours in comparison to the global cohort.

There is a serious lack of data points to use about an individual's historical performance as the basis to inform what they are likely to achieve. This is what a teacher does.

The algorithms being used may use large data sets about performance in certain post codes, schools etc and use statistical analysis to produce a most likely outcome. However, this approach would never predict Leicester winning the league a few years ago, for example.

My friend is a headmaster of a school in Norfolk. It was in special measures but he is now turning it round after a couple of years. Lots of his A level students were downgraded significantly. As he said, he has thirty years of experience and knows a good group of students and would not sign off on unrealistic expectations or grades.

The right decision has been made to go back to expected grades. Not perfect, but way better than the alternative.

 

I left school during the financial crash, made it difficult to get a job, near impossible. People leave schools when we have recessions, people leave when we have financial peaks. It’s just one of those things, kids have it very difficult at the moment they shouldn’t be punished for not being able to take the exams. Give them the predicted grades and move on, if anyone is to blame it’s the teachers for the grades they give, but no chance should any kid suffer because of it. It’s not a level playing field, I got worse results than my predicted grades as I was poor under exam conditions, I’d have done far better now but tbh I couldn’t care less and best of luck to them all because life’s going to be tough for a while they deserve a bit of it.

 

How would you feel if you were an 'A' student your whole life but because your school had to have results downgraded you ended up with a 'B' overall? You'd be devastated.

Maths and averages and algorithms are great but this is people we're talking about. Individuals, not cohorts.

 

The names Bond, Basildon Bond

 

The class of 2020 will be notorious but it will even out. Even those that don't go to uni will probably do some sort of training or vocational qualification. It's always the highest qualification that you've got that matters. My teaching degree got me my job, not the U and E I got in GCSE Technology and R.E respectively.

 

So if my son gets a grade 7 at maths and so does hooray henry at Bradford Grammer -hooray has worked harder to get it? Is that what you are trying to say. Cos that's bollocks.

 

Maybe he just doesn’t want to interact with you. Which makes sense to me.

 

Well just got my sons results and the government and school grades were almost identical. In some cases the government grade was higher.