111–120 of 143 posts
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Presumably it'd be very difficult to set such an exam because pupils will have missed so much of the normal curriculum.
Why? High schoolers can read books and video chat.
Couldn't the UK just have a regular exam, just with the social distancing measures implemented? The exams were held in many European countries with these measures and nothing bad happened and the children has received a fair examination for the University
An obvious point not discussed is that the exams system was already biased to begin with. Previous years were already unfair as great kids at bad schools have much fewer chances than less great kids for which the parents can pay a great school. England especially is awful at achieving a fair system (that gives everyone a fair chance at good grades) because schools are so stratified - by design of funding rules, etc.
> ...is awful at achieving a fair system [...] because schools are so stratified - by design of funding rules etc.
I'd say it was more down to the culture of parents in the poor areas mostly not giving a shit about their kid's education (and the roots of that aren't that the parents are intrinsically bad, it's a mindset of apathy inherited from their parents and the daily pressures that come with permanently worrying about money).
There's no good answer here, the unfairness is an inevitable side effect of lockdown, along with people dying due to stopped cancer treatments and a host of other issues. Using teacher's predicted grades is stupid: teachers use predictions in whatever way they think will best motivate their students. If the student is lazy, they'll under-predict to shock them into revising more. If the student is not very confident,…
Mocks on the other hand are graded with a view to provide the desired psychological effect (i.e. either as a boost or a kick up the rear). So mock results may well be less fair. This is coming from my partner who is a secondary school teacher.
This was so foreseeable when they anounced the plans. One possible solution could have been if they do the same statistical estimation game and then offer a choice to each student: you can take your estimated grades or go for an exam. If you take the exam you get what you het there. It might go lower or higher than the estimate. This would have incentivised that only those who are certain of themselves and their esti…
The whole point is that it hasn’t been possible to sit exams.
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Of course children have been hurt by this is practice, there are numerous cases of children getting down graded from their predicted results so badly they're having University offer places withdrawn, and it's not by a point or two, we're talking straight A students getting demotd to Ds across the board because their school has a history of bad results, which are irrelevant to any given student right now. Oxford have…
To clarify this - as far as I've seen, so far, 3 of the 45 Oxford colleges/PPHs (Worcester, Wadham, and St Edmund Hall) are accepting all offer-holders regardless of results. (Oxford, along with Cambridge but unlike many universities, has the results of interviews and, for many subjects, admissions tests to assess to whom to offer a place. They make offers expecting that the vast majority of them will be met, rather…
Notable exception to this would be Cambridge maths, who over-offer significantly for Mathematics (last year: 541 offers, 253 acceptances). Quite a lot of people miss their STEP offer so colleges can choose on results day who to take based on STEP, UMS, interview, etc. Though STEP unlike A-Levels was sat this year, so they're still able to do that selection.
This was so foreseeable when they anounced the plans. One possible solution could have been if they do the same statistical estimation game and then offer a choice to each student: you can take your estimated grades or go for an exam. If you take the exam you get what you het there. It might go lower or higher than the estimate. This would have incentivised that only those who are certain of themselves and their esti…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's a write-up of the situation, shared on Facebook publicly, from a friend involved in careers at a UK Sixth Form college (where students take their A-Levels): ################### I've spent the last two days dealing with very upset young people who have had their plans ripped up. Some will still be able to go to university, but not the one they planned on and have been forced into clearing, some won't be able to…
You've described a system where, if an exceptional kid comes from a lower-performing school, there is nothing they can do to gain entrance to the top universities. I wonder if the effects are visible when comparing allocation of spots vs past years. Or is that what they are optimizing for? To achieve the same allocation across feeder schools as the year before?
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> it's hard not to be sceptical that this wasn't intentional and class-motivated. It's incredibly easy "not to be sceptical". The teacher's predicted grades are, on average, unprecedented . And represent many times greater than any previous yoy increase. This is far less true at top-performing schools where teachers are predicting far more consistent grades (by the very nature of being a top performing school). Teach…
Teachers predict grades all the time. It's part of how student progress is tracked. We are constantly being told what level our kids are at and predicted level at exam time. Part of the problem is that teachers often push the "prediction" slightly higher as a means of motivating the student. Now those predictions are being used as the real deal. I am pretty convinced that most teachers with more than superficial expe…
I don't think teachers, or anyone else, can reliably predict results. I got the equivalent of an A* in most of my of my AS exams, but because I had bad GCSEs my results were ranked down for my predicted grades to AAB. Only after complaining did they change them to AAA. In the event I got two A*'s and an A - a whole grade above all of my original predictions.
The entire system is asinine because there's no reliable way of predicting future results from past performance, because of the unfair discretion it gives teachers and schools, and because it demotivates students to achieve above their prediction (because they cannot be accepted by any course above that prediction). It should have been abolished long ago.