To Parents of 16 and 18 year olds

[Bob McC]

Of course back in the day you could work your way up in most professions from lowly starting positions. But not now.
If there is a profession already over loaded with highly qualified post grads than law I don’t know of it.
My daughter has only just, at 29, managed to get a training contract to finish her qualification as a solicitor despite a good B A hons, LLB, LPC, and four years experience as a legal exec.

 

[JensenHealey]

Universities are going to be seeing a shortfall in overseas students. As such, they will need bums on seats and most will be more flexible in filling their courses.

I would say that deferring this year is unlikely to be a good option. Most of the usual activities on a deferred year are just not going to be available. Overseas travel will be severely restricted, affecting all the volunteering programs like VSO. But if you stay at home it will hard to find a job. A year out really requires you to do something that adds polish to a CV.

So go to uni now. It will not be the usual experience, but for all those in it, they are all in the same boat. 3 or 4 years away and the job market may be in a better place than now.

 

[eisenach]

From the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/educati...lish-students-have-a-level-results-downgraded

Gavin Williamson, the education secretary for England, revealed that he has asked exam boards to encourage schools to appeal against their results if they feared disadvantaged candidates were being affected by this year’s system.
“There is sometimes a danger where you have an exceptionally high-performing child in a low-performing school to be in a situation where they don’t get the grades that they want to,” Williamson said in an interview with LBC.
“What we’ve asked the exam boards is, where they think there may be outliers, is actually to be contacting the schools to talk with them to make sure that appeals are put forward.”

So our great Secretary of State for Education is saying that the exam boards should contact schools to tell them to tell the exam boards that they've co**ed up ? That's going to happen, isn't it ?

 

[Heckyman]

My son is 16 and waiting for his GCSE's but got one result today, a B in Additional Maths. He thought it was about right.

 

[richardkendell]

Given that none of the various governments have covered themselves in glory on this subject what would have been the best way of establishing grades for the students whilst avoiding grade inflation? Having spent far too much time in my previous career in trying to balance staff appraisements (is everyone really better than average - it sort of redefines "average" doesn't it?) I understand well enough the difficulties but not the solution.

 

[ks.234]

From the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/educati...lish-students-have-a-level-results-downgraded

Gavin Williamson, the education secretary for England, revealed that he has asked exam boards to encourage schools to appeal against their results if they feared disadvantaged candidates were being affected by this year’s system.
“There is sometimes a danger where you have an exceptionally high-performing child in a low-performing school to be in a situation where they don’t get the grades that they want to,” Williamson said in an interview with LBC.
“What we’ve asked the exam boards is, where they think there may be outliers, is actually to be contacting the schools to talk with them to make sure that appeals are put forward.”

So our great Secretary of State for Education is saying that the exam boards should contact schools to tell them to tell the exam boards that they've co**ed up ? That's going to happen, isn't it ?

Any teacher will know what one of their pupils should get and the pressure for appeals will come from the Head of Department upwards. Schools are already familiar with the appeals process. Does Gavin Williams believe there are pupils, parents and schools are not aware that something is wrong and are currently sat on their hands waiting to be contacted.

We appear to have a Secretary of State for Education that does not know how schools work.

 

[gintonic]

Any teacher will know what one of their pupils should get

I remain to be convinced of that - IME predicted grades are mostly higher than actual achievement. But in this situation it is all we have to go on.

 

[ks.234]

I remain to be convinced of that - IME predicted grades are mostly higher than actual achievement. But in this situation it is all we have to go on.

Agree, but that’s not what I meant exactly. A teacher will often come under pressure to predict grades in line with school data despite individual circumstances, however, what I meant was that regardless of predictions, a teacher will know when an awarded grade is plain wrong and in such cases will be driving for an appeal.

 

[gavreid]

I read about a case this morning in Maths where the student was given a C but an A in Further Maths. It's pretty clear that they took the whole cohort and knocked them down a couple of grades. As I've said this BS won't hold up to legal challenge

 

[Weekender]

He's just emailed the Biology teacher and she said "An A is still a really good grade."

"They've given me a B."

"Oh."

He's just been given his CAG's - A*AAA, A* in Physics, so the drops are in Physics and Biology where he will appeal.
I'm just happy he has the first choice place at Uni...there's some horror stories out there.

His friend had BBB and got DDC. I say FFS.

 

[ks.234]

I read about a case this morning in Maths where the student was given a C but an A in Further Maths. It's pretty clear that they took the whole cohort and knocked them down a couple of grades. As I've said this BS won't hold up to legal challenge

What appears to be happening is that all grades in a school that has not achieved consistently high grades in the past, have been marked down a grade or two. This appears to be based on an assumption that teachers predicted grades are over generous. For this to be valid there would have to be a correlation between under achieving schools and over generous predictions? I do not know if such a correlation exists.

Regardless, it will be pupils from poorer backgrounds and/or schools that will be adversely effected the most.

 

[eisenach]

We appear to have a Secretary of State for Education that does not know how schools work.

I think all he knows about are fireplaces and, maybe, tarantulas. He certainly doesn't seem able to string together coherent sentences.

 

[eisenach]

I remain to be convinced of that - IME predicted grades are mostly higher than actual achievement. But in this situation it is all we have to go on.

In my experience as a French teacher, my colleagues' (and my!) predicted grades were 95% spot on. The others did better than predicted, with the odd flop.

 

[Brown Bottle]

My son got his place at Birmingham to Study Politics and International Relations. His offer was ABB and he got ABC but they've taken him anyway.

Cheers BB

 

[Rana]

My 18 year old is really nervous and he has hardly spoken for the last 5 months. He had expected to do well in his final exams, but fluffed up his maths mocks in January. My reassurance is not making much of a difference as SWMBO is equally nervous - which does not help.

We are very grateful with the outcome, so son is finally talking and even cracked a rare smile this morning - in fact his face looks completely different. He will be off to read Economics at Exeter - bit far from us, but gives me the chance to pick up bits of "stranded" (read: pick up only) hi-fi whilst travelling there and back .

A very good friend's daughter was unfortunately not so lucky and has been downgraded from her predicted grades and thus not being accepted.

 

[Joe Hutch]

Had my A level results been based on my predicted grades, I'd have got DDD & F, if I was lucky. By some miracle (and not last-minute revision), I got ABBB. It still meant I had to wait a year before starting university, because I obviously got no offers on the strength of my predicted grades.

 

[ks.234]

A head teacher on R4 just now saying that because someone in the last 2 years at her school got an E, then someone this year also had to get an E, so their lowest attaining pupil was downgraded from C to a E.

At a time when this government is talking so loudly about the moral duty of teachers, how can it be right to punish one pupil because of the attainment of another?

 

[gavreid]

A head teacher on R4 just now saying that because someone in the last 2 years at her school got an E, then someone this year also had to get an E, so their lowest attaining pupil was downgraded from C to a E.

At a time when this government is talking so loudly about the moral duty of teachers, how can it be right to punish one pupil because of the attainment of another?

As long as Tarquin and Jemima are ok, seems to have been the only criterion. I think Williamson must have done it himself - it just couldn't be any worse

 

[Paul R]

A head teacher on R4 just now saying that because someone in the last 2 years at her school got an E, then someone this year also had to get an E, so their lowest attaining pupil was downgraded from C to a E.

It's not as simple as this, it is also necessary for the school to have assessed 'too many' students as 'C' or higher. And if the school can show that the 'C' grade rankings were very close using test results or mocks then that would seem reasonable grounds for an appeal in line with the recent advice.

At a time when this government is talking so loudly about the moral duty of teachers, how can it be right to punish one pupil because of the attainment of another?

Bear in mind that the reverse also happens, with students getting rewarded because of the accomplishments of their predecessors.

And I think the cohort GCSE results have been used to adjust their A levels, AFAICT not individually, but as a whole. So if a school had a good year for GCSE two years ago it should have a good year for A level now. And vice versa. Over the whole country it looks reasonably generous, and doing a Scotland will simply mean that anybody who cares what A level results a 2020 student got will have to apply a discount and use other means to judge, which is definitely going to disadvantage those from poorer backgrounds or schools.

Most importantly remember this whole mess is the fault of Piers Morgan and others who clamoured so loudly for the unnecessary closure of schools'.

 

[ks.234]

It's not as simple as this, it is also necessary for the school to have assessed 'too many' students as 'C' or higher. And if the school can show that the 'C' grade rankings were very close using test results or mocks then that would seem reasonable grounds for an appeal in line with the recent advice.


Bear in mind that the reverse also happens, with students getting rewarded because of the accomplishments of their predecessors.

And I think the cohort GCSE results have been used to adjust their A levels, AFAICT not individually, but as a whole. So if a school had a good year for GCSE two years ago it should have a good year for A level now. And vice versa. Over the whole country it looks reasonably generous, and doing a Scotland will simply mean that anybody who cares what A level results a 2020 student got will have to apply a discount and use other means to judge, which is definitely going to disadvantage those from poorer backgrounds or schools.

Most importantly remember this whole mess is the fault of Piers Morgan and others who clamoured so loudly for the unnecessary closure of schools'.

Don’t disagree with much of that. There will of course be winners and losers, but the picture emerging from today’s results is that poorer kids and poorer schools tend to come out worse, while better off schools benefit. The top grades have increased overall, but independent schools in England saw the greatest improvement on last year - up 4.7 percentage points. It seems that better off kids from better off schools are somewhat less likely to be part of the 40% of student who’ve had their grades marked down.

Also agree that Piers Morgan is the root of all evil, but while even he might make a better Education Secretary than any we’ve have for a decade or so, I doubt he was responsible for lockdown