Reply With QuoteWell done to them, interested in this choice...
Originally Posted by jpjsavage
Just want to send my congratulations to all our young people today who have received their A level examination results. I hope that the results allow them to progress in their education.
We had two sets of results in our family today. My nephew has acheived outstanding results to allow him to go and study at the Dyson Academy in Wiltshire (industrial apprenticeship). He chose this above a place to study Physics at Durham. My daughter has got what she needed in her A level results to study Biology at York. I'm delighted for her and very envious indeed. I love the idea of spending three years in York.
Don't believe all of the negativity in the press around this. The achievements of our young people should be recognised and celebrated. I don't want to get political but I find it hard to understand how what has happened in Scotland is going to built trust in their examinations in the longer term.
Many congratulations to our young people again for enduring a torrid time over the last few months and I hope today brings good news for you and yours in this respect.
Well done to them, interested in this choice...
I echo these best wishes.
Congratulations to your daughter on being accepted on to her chosen course. My brother, as well as his academic role, is Admissions Tutor at York University.
My daughter was given A* A* A. She was unhappy with that. Having got 7 9's & 2 8's in her GCSEs she was expecting all A*. However she has already had her admission to University to study Veterinary Medicine confirmed so that's the main thing. Try telling her that though. It's all been such an anti-climax to 13 years of schooling and the rug was pulled out from them just before they were due to prove their worth by doing their A levels
He chose that over a place at Durham to study Physics with Philosophy. I'm not sure I would have made that choice personally. But good luck to him.
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Very well done to them!
& best wishes to everyone else who's nearest and dearest have received their results.
I'm delighted for my own son, who received confirmation of his first choice Uni, English at York.
Strangely he was downgraded by two grades on one of his subjects where he has always excelled and had been predicted an A* and had always achieved an A* for previous work and his mock exam. He is appealing that grade, but thankfully he is being very pragmatic about it and is pleased to have been accepted to his choice of Uni.
Likewise I'm quite envious, as it looks like a lovely place to study for a few years.
It's just a matter of time...
My son got his place at Swansea (Business Studies with an overseas placement). He was bit miffed he was awarded a grade lower than his mocks for maths, but most likely will not appeal over it.
It’s seems that quite a few children were graded down from their mock results.
Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to hit it at all.
Friedrich Nietzsche
It's up to him but I'd appeal it if I were him. My daughter said that they have guaranteed you won't get a grade lower than that gained in the mock exam
It is purely my opinion of course but why appeal if the grades received mean the student still gets the place she/he wants? It will make zilch difference in the future and just add more work to a system that in all likelihood will be overloaded.
Sorry a bit of a thread hijack on an excellent news thread.
Just justice I suppose. I wouldn't hesitate, the system has caused the problems not the students
Whatever the 'system' was people wouldn't be happy, seems reasonable under the circumstances.
Sorry, but I completely disagree with your statement about school grades making zilch difference in future. Employers use school grades as part of the decision process when deciding who to interview or hire, particularly in the early career stages. I would encourage any child who believes they have a case, to appeal. This process should be free of charge this year.
Even after university?
A few of my colleagues were involved in the set up of the Dyson Academy, this was about 4/5 years ago, glad to see it has came to see daylight and it’s attracting great talent.
I guess it depends on what you want to do. If it’s further study after undergraduate level courses I’m not sure A levels actually mean anything at that point. Besides engineering... most decent science positions require graduate work anyway.
Im going to go out on a limb and say that cfor most specialist positions it’s the degree marks that count most... but I’m mostly involved in science so perhaps it’s different for other vocations. I’d genuinely be interested to hear what sectors use A levels above degree marks.
I have to admit my opinion is based solely upon my experience of my A levels not meaning diddley-squat once I had my engineering degree. And the assumption that the person would be going on to a degree course.
No intention to offend anyone.
It was a long time ago........
but........
I think it would be fair to say that my fellow classmates and I didn't take schoolwork too seriously. We did have an acquired skill which was to bone up immediately prior to exams, so that even though we appeared not to be concentrating on the subjects during termtime our results were to say the least acceptable.
If we had been clobbered with this nebulous algorythmic system of deciding pupil results without benefit of exanination results, we would have been totally and utterly forked. Our teachers would have (quite rightly) marked us well down based on our performance in lessons. Our obsession with fun, farming, fornicating, and fishing left little time for academia.
I do hope that no student has been caught out in the way that my cronies and I would have been caught out.
My daughter got the grades she needed to do Dentistry at Liverpool University. It’s been a tough year, I had no idea what a tough gig it was to get accepted onto a Dentistry degree course (and that’s before you get to the grade entry requirement). Very proud of her. Five years of university to pay for now...but at least I should be able to get some cheap false teeth when I need them in a few years!
Employers really will compare. I couldn’t give a stuff about which Undergrad degree an applicant has studied, for the most part, (although our ACA trainees in one group company will have achieved a good grade from their degree), as long as the grade is ok, but I’ll go over GCSE and A level results. Previously I’ve relied on further education, but when you are employing graduates that can’t write properly or add up, then you’re fighting a losing battle.
Last edited by Omegamanic; 15th August 2020 at 20:33.
It's just a matter of time...
That excellent news, on the false teeth lol, but seriously, great news that she has got in to her desired course.
It's just a matter of time...
I played golf today with a Maths teacher from a quite large local state school.
Their grades have been hammered under the current system, The school are organising mass appeals and having to deal with a lot of distraught kids.
He was of the opinion that all the predicted grades should stand, Uni places should be honoured and this year's results ignored in future stats.
Next week GCSE results are due and it will a massive cock up.
GCSE Maths and English are a basic requirement for almost anything people want to do
He was asked to list 430 pupils in order of ability, I asked him how could he possibly decide who was 273rd and who was 274th?
Another friend who is a Chair at a major University said
"As there is zero relevant information in the issued grades and the Universities make offers on the basis of predictions there must be grounds for Class Action litigation both against the Government and any University that has made decisions based on the issued marks. I know my institution is not in clearing since yesterday afternoon so either we honoured all our offers (which I think is the morally correct approach) and ignored the “official” grades or we hoovered up all those who were declined their offers by their first choice, or both."
So even among Universities there is no consistent approach.
I can see the government back tracking pretty quickly on this.
Last edited by Kevin; 15th August 2020 at 22:19.
Some teachers at some schools will have been over-estimating grades and some realism needed to be brought into the process. Highly unlikely that any teacher will be under-estimating grades. Difficult to see what else could have been done.
Some students aren't happy but some wouldn't have been happy with an actual exam grade. We can only hope they are (mainly) the same students.
University place offers are made on predicted grades every year. I wonder how, historically, do these compare with actual grades and were they taken into account in the actual grades awarded. Maybe these are only given to students applying to university (I don't know TBH) but it would at least be a check on the objectiveness of the process.
The Scots haven't found it difficult.
The accountancy/finance firms historically placed great emphasis on this. You could have a first class in finance from a post 92 but still struggle getting in to KPMG/PwC.
They have largely changed tact now and place greater emphasis on aptitude tests and assessment days in the recruitment rather than the previous X number of ucas points.
They've erred on the side of the students/teachers and will probably give this year an advantage over others.
Heard on the radio, based on analysis of historical data, something like:
15% grades accurately predicted.
75% over predicted.
(Ps. I reckon the source must be research undertaken by UCL Institute of Education)
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Last edited by BillyCasper; 16th August 2020 at 10:12.
I think that what Scotland did was a disaster - 20% grade inflation in one year. This has devalued the results of all the A level students there from last year and next year (and probably for years to come). Doing the same in England would be crazy. There needed to be a moderation system of some sort, and I do think the Government has dropped the ball in not establishing a good appeals system for individuals (not schools) right from the outset.
Then teachers should take a lot of the blame for the current mess.
Not sure that's as simple as it sounds. Sure, teachers want the best outcomes for their students. But the system itself puts schools in competition with each other and exam results are a key accountability mechanism. The position of a school in a public league table is only going to encourage school leaders to insist on the 'best' outcomes for individual students.
I also think some kind of historical approach was probably right in terms of a school's previous results. But if you have small classes of students who have always achieved A or A* grades, then you will have an easier job predicting outcomes compared to a large mixed ability class where you have differentiate between C and D (often only a few percentage points). Some teachers have a much harder job than others in this respect.
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Yes, teachers want the best outcomes for their students this year but they've been doing it with predicted grades every year which won't affect league tables.
Agreed. If Scotland really have inflated grades by 20% this year that means Scottish A levels are now worth less than A levels from elsewhere. It also means you have two effective grades, an A and nothing, because lots of people have A’s and employers can be choosy.
In my business (research physics) I don’t even look at anyone with less than a 1st class honours degree preferably from a top tier university, because I want the best and the best is getting harder to distinguish due to the sheer number of people with top grades. Usually I can find multiple candidates with either a masters or a PhD and some relevant experience. Some might say I’m missing out on good candidates with other more varied skills but grade inflation means that there is an abundance of good candidates with other varied skills that also come with firsts. In years gone by, some of these people would have got 2.1s or even 2.2s.
Ultimately, grade inflation does no one any favours.
Last edited by Groundrush; 16th August 2020 at 10:03.
I've not had first hand experience of this but I can appreciate how difficult it must be. From a parental point of view, I've always told my kids to educate themselves to the highest possible level. I did my PhD back in the late 1990s and finished it in 2004 (part-time). Apart from a great opportunity to study something to a high level, I think that one qualification has had a bigger positive impact on my career in the music industry and higher education than anything else I have done.
Sheer / Shear. Smile.
The report concludes that it’s a near impossible task (not sure why, didn’t get that far) yet it still forms a cornerstone of the process.
Only 8% underestimated and there’s a tendency for these to be high performing kids in comprehensives in deprived socio-economic areas.
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I am reading that 40% of predicted grades have been downgraded by the 'moderators algorithm'
Ofqual published an appeals procedure where mock results could be used in an appeal.
Hours later they suspended the appeals procedure they had just published
A total shambles
What was the qualification out of interest?
My PhD.
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If the 97% of GCSEs will be set by an algorithm then questions need to be asked. My wife is a teacher, was an AST and a moderator. She spent a lot of time preparing all the predicted grades being scrupulously fair and of anyone is going to get them bang on she will. Sounds like she may as well just put her feet up given she worked her “parts” off during lockdown doing all this as well as covering a colleagues maternity leave.
The algorithm will use your wife's grades - whilst she might be fair, others may not, hence the need for it.
Congratulations to our young people and thank you to the teachers and key workers too
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Algorithm ignores the grades set by teachers. It only takes into account the ranking order.
No it won’t. It will use the rank order the student is put in, and the school’s previous year’s grades.
This approach is fraught with problems - hence the complete debacle now unfolding.
Teachers had no sensible option but to give students the benefit of the doubt this year - to do anything else would be immoral for the simple reason it is not possible to predict with any significant confidence precisely which students would give themselves the proverbial kick up the backside after mocks or between Easter and Summer of Year 13, thus the only reasonably fair course of action is to assume the large majority would.
I have seen countless committed dossers really knuckle down and pull it out of the bag in this period over the years, and a few capable students have meltdowns and chuck it all away.
If ever a year group deserved some lenience it is this one given the situation they have found themselves in through no fault of their own.
What the Government has done is grossly unfair to many thousands and simply given them a further, completely unwarranted and pointless kicking.
The country needs these young people to go forward and overcome the disadvantage the pandemic has caused them for the good of the nation as a whole. As one anonymous Tory backbencher has put it today, “if some students get some better grades than they might otherwise have done, who cares?”
So clever my foot fell off.
As long as there are places for everyone at the universities if they’ve all got the increased grades, then indeed, “who cares”.
It’s a shambles though.
It's just a matter of time...
The universities desperately need them, as they were already facing a collapse in overseas students (who pay a lot of money) as a result of Brexit and now the pandemic has compounded the problem.
So clever my foot fell off.
I would suggest this excellent analysis of the A-level results in comparison with previous years:
https://wonkhe.com/blogs/a-level-res...ty-entry-data/
That is excellent analysis.
My take from it.
1) Grades are in-line and slightly higher than last year.
2) Independent schools have had a disproportionately higher allocation and improvement of A grades than comprehensives. It would infer that independent schools have had less downgrades applied than state schools. This seems unfair.
Fair enough, but the poster’s wife’s efforts still won’t have been wasted.
Would have thought the hardest part would be the ranking.
Could be that the independent schools have been more realistic.
Last edited by Kingstepper; 17th August 2020 at 09:02.
It does seem like a complete mess. While i agree that massive grade inflation, as the government have claimed they saw, isnt what we want and isnt fair on previous or future years the grade calculations they have used may be fine on average but have clearly massively screwed over a number of students.
From what ive read it also seems to be higher performing students in disadvantaged areas/worse performing schools that have been the worst affected with their results being lowered closer to the school average.
It could be life changing for some of those students and that seems very wrong to me.
I'm taking it from the stats.
Grade A and above allocations:
Independent schools
2018 45.8%
2019 43.9%
2020 48.6%
Comprensive Schools
2018 21.3%
2019 19.8%
2020 21.8%
Academies
2018 24.9%
2019 23.6%
2020 25.3%
Sixth form colleges
2018 21.6%
2019 20.5%
2020 20.8%
Grade C and above also shows disproportionate increased improvement allocation to independent schools.
A significant increase is an anomoly. I do not think it is because independent schools have been more realistic. I think they have been less scrutinised or penalised, or rather given favourable treatment.
Well done to our future. It provides hope in these strange days
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