What the world can learn from the UK's A-level grading fiasco • Hacker News Board

Re: What the world can learn from the UK's A-level grading fiasco

#41

Post by BlackVanilla » Wed, Sep 02, 2020, 10:20 AM UTC

supernova87a wrote: post #22

This virus situation has (or will) produce a lost year of productivity. But people don't want to admit that and are still trying to operate under old constraints or processes. It will break somewhere. They want to keep schools running, and years / classes of students progressing through. But they also want to have some semblance of standards, without being able to teach properly or assess progress properly. All these…

It will be interesting to see if this lost year materialises in students. It seems true that as students have had less contact time with a teacher, done less work, or set less-rigorous work, then average attainment will be lower.

If students who missed half a year of good teaching are just as smart by the end of compulsory education than previous cohorts who were not affected by COVID, then this illustrates a massive failing of the education system.

I have a feeling that this won't affect the attainment of students in the long-run, as the education system is flawed. Perhaps, in place of usual teaching, students are taking control of their own education and focus on their weak areas, rather than being told to copy down 10 pages from a textbook verbatim in a lesson standardised for the whole class. Perhaps this can be a much needed demonstration of the education system's weaknesses and an opportunity for change.

Re: What the world can learn from the UK's A-level grading fiasco

#42

Post by simonh » Wed, Sep 02, 2020, 10:22 AM UTC

feintruled wrote: post #9

jonplackett wrote: post #2

The problem was not using an algorithm, it was that they used a crap algorithm that could award students grades that were higher than those even available on the paper that they sat, and made it impossible to get a high grade if no-one fromm your college got one before. I'd love to see the details of the algorithm itself. Surely it can't have been too difficult to put some guard rails in there to prevent it moving an…

And don't forget the totally illogical situation of awarding someone a higher grade for advanced maths then they got for basic maths. I had a passing thought of a different system - using basically the same calculation of a school's predicted grades, allocate each school a 'budget' of marks they can distribute as they see fit, based on whatever criteria they pick. Just to be clear, I don't think that's a particularly…

So then you'd get parents complaining about teachers picking their favourites and downgrading pupils for personal reasons, which still would have been the government's fault for implementing a system open to such abuse.

Re: What the world can learn from the UK's A-level grading fiasco

#43

Post by Dobbs » Wed, Sep 02, 2020, 10:22 AM UTC

makomk wrote: post #18

In reality, I think this fiasco has more to do with politics than algorithms. One of the big problems is that the alternatives had downsides which were largely glossed over for political reasons - for example the university growth cap isn't just an arbitrary creation, it exists to stop more prestigious universities siphoning off a disproportionate share of students and leaving less prestigious ones in deep trouble an…

> Another big problem is that private schools seem to have made more realistic predictions of their students' results than state schools

This might be partially true, but there are also issues in the algorithm that helped cause this skew. For example depending upon the size of the glass the teacher's estimates were adjusted more or less. Very small classes (~8 students IIRC) had no adjustment, small classes (= 20 students IIRC) had heavy adjustment. State schools almost never have small classes, while private and public schools (public != state school) were much more likely to fall into the small or very small class size buckets.

Re: What the world can learn from the UK's A-level grading fiasco

#44

Post by Aerroon » Wed, Sep 02, 2020, 10:26 AM UTC

remus wrote: post #38

makomk wrote: post #18

In reality, I think this fiasco has more to do with politics than algorithms. One of the big problems is that the alternatives had downsides which were largely glossed over for political reasons - for example the university growth cap isn't just an arbitrary creation, it exists to stop more prestigious universities siphoning off a disproportionate share of students and leaving less prestigious ones in deep trouble an…

It seems like a classic political no-win situation: if you go with an algorithm then anyone who gets a lower than predicted grade is going to complain (and of course has every right to, as any algorithm is likely to unfairly disadvantage some section of the population). If you give everyone their predicted grades then you're accepting massive grade inflation which makes the grades far less useful as a predictor of a…

There is another alternative though: do the damn test. Then everyone gets the grade that they earned.

Re: What the world can learn from the UK's A-level grading fiasco

#45

Post by asplake » Wed, Sep 02, 2020, 10:26 AM UTC

remus wrote: post #38

makomk wrote: post #18

In reality, I think this fiasco has more to do with politics than algorithms. One of the big problems is that the alternatives had downsides which were largely glossed over for political reasons - for example the university growth cap isn't just an arbitrary creation, it exists to stop more prestigious universities siphoning off a disproportionate share of students and leaving less prestigious ones in deep trouble an…

It seems like a classic political no-win situation: if you go with an algorithm then anyone who gets a lower than predicted grade is going to complain (and of course has every right to, as any algorithm is likely to unfairly disadvantage some section of the population). If you give everyone their predicted grades then you're accepting massive grade inflation which makes the grades far less useful as a predictor of a…

However, the unfairnesses of the two options are very different. On the one hand, you leave it to educators and employers to select candidates based on unreliable grades, versus excluding swathes of the population from opportunity. Leave it to decision-makers that seem to fetishise exam grades and you come to what I'm sure the vast majority of people regard as the wrong conclusion. Yes, there would have been fallout, but so much less toxic had they chosen otherwise.

Re: What the world can learn from the UK's A-level grading fiasco

#46

Post by rob74 » Wed, Sep 02, 2020, 10:29 AM UTC

Well, what can we learn from this? That it's not a good idea to simply assign a grade to someone for an exam they didn't take, and it's an even worse idea to base this grade only partly on their own performance? And, if you are going to do it, you'd better make sure that the grades exceed the students' expectations, otherwise of course there will be protests...

Re: What the world can learn from the UK's A-level grading fiasco

#47

Post by LatteLazy » Wed, Sep 02, 2020, 10:29 AM UTC

We know that university admissions is a very poor, deeply flawed process. That people object this year but didn't object last year is very telling. It shows that people will happily accept a bad system with poor results AS LONG AS they are given some small illusion of personal control over that system. As long as people can say "people like me are very unlikely to do well BUT I will be fine because I will work harder than people in my group do" they're happy, even though they are by definition wrong most of the time.

Re: What the world can learn from the UK's A-level grading fiasco

#48

Post by scast » Wed, Sep 02, 2020, 10:29 AM UTC

Serious question: Why weren't the exams taken?

Everything I have read about this glosses over this critical bit which I am very curious about. I understand there is/was a worldwide pandemic and all of that, but it feels to me that there wasn't necessarily a reason exams couldn't be taken in socially-distanced class rooms (with students wearing masks, as well as the teachers, of course) or if needed be in repurposed venues, like football stadiums (leaving plenty of space between students).

Was there a concern for fairness should the exams proceed? Or was it safety? Or did the government put their foot down on no exams? Or was it the teachers/unions? What happened?!

Re: What the world can learn from the UK's A-level grading fiasco

#49

Post by ivanbakel » Wed, Sep 02, 2020, 10:39 AM UTC

makomk wrote: post #18

In reality, I think this fiasco has more to do with politics than algorithms. One of the big problems is that the alternatives had downsides which were largely glossed over for political reasons - for example the university growth cap isn't just an arbitrary creation, it exists to stop more prestigious universities siphoning off a disproportionate share of students and leaving less prestigious ones in deep trouble an…

>... and this was portrayed in the press as proof that it was an attack on state schools because their results were disproportionately affected by the algorithmic downgrading.

While I won't dispute the point on prediction accuracy, the press complaints were actually about the algorithm itself, which benefited students in a smaller corpus[0]. Typically, only private schools have such small class sizes.

[0]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-53807730

Re: What the world can learn from the UK's A-level grading fiasco

#50

Post by rbecker » Wed, Sep 02, 2020, 10:45 AM UTC

asplake wrote: post #45

remus wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like a classic political no-win situation: if you go with an algorithm then anyone who gets a lower than predicted grade is going to complain (and of course has every right to, as any algorithm is likely to unfairly disadvantage some section of the population). If you give everyone their predicted grades then you're accepting massive grade inflation which makes the grades far less useful as a predictor of a…

However, the unfairnesses of the two options are very different. On the one hand, you leave it to educators and employers to select candidates based on unreliable grades, versus excluding swathes of the population from opportunity. Leave it to decision-makers that seem to fetishise exam grades and you come to what I'm sure the vast majority of people regard as the wrong conclusion. Yes, there would have been fallout,…

> On the one hand, you leave it to educators and employers to select candidates based on unreliable grades, versus excluding swathes of the population from opportunity.

That "versus" is unwarranted - unless everyone is given top marks, exclusion happens in either case. In fact it would happen in that case as well, as top colleges (practically by definition of 'top') cannot accept everyone. All you've done is changed who gets excluded, by not adjusting for differing school grading.

> decision-makers that seem to fetishise exam grades

Calling it "fetishizing" is a fine way to suggest there's something wrong with it, without stating what, or how to improve it. Would it be better if, instead of on the basis of grades, students were judged based on who they know, or how much they can donate to the college?