| Prof Wind Up Merchant
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| 936404. Fri Aug 31, 2012 12:07 pm |
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The current situation is not good. We are all for improving standards in English and Maths. The current problem with changing the grade boundary mid year shows poor judgement by exam boards.
Michael Gove has been shown to be weak. Also the withdrawing of funds from free schools shows that the education policy is faultering.
Who has been affected by this? |
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| Jenny
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| 936426. Fri Aug 31, 2012 2:58 pm |
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| I'd be interested to know if it's affected your school, suze. |
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| barbados
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| 936435. Fri Aug 31, 2012 4:09 pm |
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According to the news this evening, the problem is not in the latest set of exam results, but the exams that were sit in January.
Surely if they are going to correct the fault, shouldn't they correct the ones that were marked incorrectly? |
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| suze
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| 936442. Fri Aug 31, 2012 4:55 pm |
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| Jenny wrote: | | I'd be interested to know if it's affected your school, suze. |
I've been trying to avoid posting about this particular subject, because it's dangerously close to being work and it's the holidays! But I become Acting Head of English in about one hour from now, so I suppose I do have to think about it!
My school is a grammar school. As such, it's quite common that nobody fails to get C or better in both GCSE English and GCSE Mathematics. (The headteacher told me that this has been the case in seven of the last ten years, and since I can't be bothered to check out years of league tables I'll take her word for it.)
It is not the case this year. I'm probably not at liberty to give numbers here, but it's fair to say that some girls have received a grade in English which is one grade lower than had been expected.
There have been long 'phone conferences involving headteachers and Heads of English, but I was excused on the grounds that it's not my job yet. There was also a meeting of Heads of English yesterday, which I attended even though it's not my job yet.
It's fair to say that we at the grammar schools are not affected as badly as a lot of non-grammar schools. There are two main reasons for that:
1) Without wishing to boast, most of our girls (about three quarters) get A or A* in GCSE English. That has been the case this year as every year.
2) The vast majority of our girls who have just taken GCSEs proceed into our own sixth form. And if necessary, we can be a little bit flexible re entry requirements.
It is supposed to be a condition of entry to sixth form that girls have a C or above in English and Math. But we can stretch a point if someone is one grade down in a subject that they are not in any case planning to take for A level. (Although in such a case, we will "strongly recommend" that the girl retakes to get a C or better. The sort of "strongly recommend" which actually means "insist".)
Even so, there is an issue. Not an issue in which I'm going to need to get heavily involved - the headteacher is willing to own it because of the special circumstances. But there absolutely are a handful of pissed off girls and disgruntled parents wanting to know what is going to be done about it.
To which I shall come in a moment, when I respond to barb's post. |
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| suze
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| 936449. Fri Aug 31, 2012 5:12 pm |
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| barbados wrote: | | According to the news this evening, the problem is not in the latest set of exam results, but the exams that were sit in January. |
Yes, that's right. The specifications which have been examined this year are new ones, so there is no direct comparison with last year's exams. January's exams were thus the first exams based on the new specifications to be sat.
Not all that many people take GCSE exams in January - according to the BBC, only 7% of people who have attempted GCSE English this year did so in January. So we have a fairly small number of people attempting a new exam, and so the examiners have no option but to guess a bit about where the grade boundaries should be.
(To pre-empt. Yes, there were pilots - some pupils at some schools attempted a dummy exam based on the new specification before January. But the numbers were small, and in any case neither pupils nor their teachers tend to take dummy exams very seriously. So in effect, the January exam was the pilot for the the June exam.)
After the January exam had been taken and marked, Ofqual determined that the grade boundaries were too low - in effect, the exam had been too easy. But there's no way that an exam board can revoke exam results which it has already issued, so there can be no question of downgrading anyone who took the exam in January. (It has emerged that Ofqual did consider, several years ago, a system under which all January grades would be "provisional" until June. That would have avoided the present situation but created all sorts of other situations, and was rejected as unworkable.)
For June, then, the grade boundaries were adjusted - and adjusted quite severely, according to the BBC and The Guardian. Unfortunately, the exam boards didn't go out of their way to tell anybody that this was going to happen - which is why everyone is acting all surprised now. |
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| RLDavies
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| 936489. Sat Sep 01, 2012 6:35 am |
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I fail to understand what everybody is making such a fuss about.
Universities and employers are going to be intelligent enough to look at when a student took exams, and judge accordingly. |
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| Neotenic
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| 936494. Sat Sep 01, 2012 6:59 am |
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I don't really pay much attention to matters educational, but from what I have seen can be summarised as
Grades keep going up: Loads of people have a massive shitfit about exams being too easy
Grades go down: Loads of people have a massive shitfit about exams being too hard.
It just feels to me that when exams results are announced, people have to find an angle to be angry about them, whatever it may be. |
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| Spud McLaren
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| 936499. Sat Sep 01, 2012 8:11 am |
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| RLDavies wrote: | | Universities and employers are going to be intelligent enough to look at when a student took exams, and judge accordingly. |
You're very trusting, RLD.
Even if they were up to speed <severe doubt, in the case of many employers>, if you've set your criteria based on the January results it's going to look a little strange if you change them to take account of the later ones.
As suze says, a regrading of the January sitting isn't going to happen. But in the interests of consistency the later sitting should be re-marked/regraded, effectively deferring the changes for a year. |
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| Moosh
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| 936501. Sat Sep 01, 2012 8:35 am |
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Yeah, the basic issue is that having a grading change mid-year is much more problematic than having one between years.
If you're in the 2012 cohort then it can be fine that your results shouldn't be directly compared to the 2011 cohort, people can deal with that. The problem is when people in the same cohort don't have comparable results. And this change could, and indeed should, have been brought in to avoid this problem. |
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| barbados
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| 936520. Sat Sep 01, 2012 11:11 am |
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I have a feeling that most people agree that the marking in examinations needs to be looked at. If results improve from this year to next then it can be put down to the quality of student/teaching. If however, as has been happening, the results are improving year on year on year, then the marking needs looking at - and it doesn't matter when it is done it will look as though the results have been skewed.
Most people should be getting a C in most subjects, those that are getting As and A*s should be those students that have excelled in the subject, not those that have performed along with the majority.
When those that hire this years output will be well aware that the C attained will be the same as a B attained by someone last year, then once they forget about the tightening in marking tose that are affected will have something much more important than their GCSE results. They will either have tertiary examination results or experience, so where is the problem? |
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| Moosh
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| 936529. Sat Sep 01, 2012 11:53 am |
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That would all be absolutely fine, if it wasn't for the fact that the change in marking occurred mid-year. That really is the only problem here. Because if, in years to come, you're looking at a job applicant's CV and it says that they got their GCSEs in 2012, you don't know which exams they did in January and which they did in June. So you have no way of distinguishing between two people who have the same qualification but were marked to different criteria.
I'm not saying that the change didn't need to happen, it's just the way it was done was stupid. |
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| barbados
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| 936538. Sat Sep 01, 2012 1:06 pm |
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| So what are these students going to be doing between now and applying for jobs? |
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| CB27
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| 936573. Sat Sep 01, 2012 6:35 pm |
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Some of them will have to look at retaking some of their GCSEs if they want to take their A levels, which has a knock on effect on going to universities. Many will now look at your GCSE results as well as your A level results.
Some of them will not be going for further education, and be looking for apprenticeships, and there are changes to the rules regarding apprenticeships which are affected by GCSE results (this situation could now put off some providers).
Some will be looking for work immediately, and will be relying on the best results they can have so they can apply for the best jobs possible.
The way these grades are marked has a huge impact on students. |
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| bobwilson
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| 936581. Sat Sep 01, 2012 7:12 pm |
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| RLDavies wrote: | I fail to understand what everybody is making such a fuss about.
Universities and employers are going to be intelligent enough to look at when a student took exams, and judge accordingly. |
Classic! It's my experience that employers aren't even intelligent enough to check whether the exam results included in a CV are real (God knows I've invented enough first class passes in subjects that don't even exist on my CV) - let alone when the exams were taken. As for Universities - I have no direct experience - but I imagine the basic process is a simplified system of entering reported grades into something like a spreadsheet. I can't see anyone beyond the occasional nerd (like myself) going through the exercise of distinguishing based on dates. |
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| bobwilson
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| 936584. Sat Sep 01, 2012 7:21 pm |
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| barbados wrote: | | So what are these students going to be doing between now and applying for jobs? |
In the words of the song - They are young, they are free, keep their teeth nice and clean - I hope they're all going to go out there and enjoy themselves while in the first flush of youth (and remembering that any indiscretions can be shrugged off easily later). |
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