And as I keep saying in this thread; the figures - where adjusted -- rely on the teachers being perfectly accurate in ranking students.
Not just that - even if you assume that the teachers rank their students in an accurate and unbiased way, it assumes that the kids in each cohort in each school have the same distribution of ability, and that is vanishingly unlikely to be true.
What my Dear Old Dad would have called SNAFU - or even worse FUBAR! My history teacher son is celebrating for one of his students, an exceptionally gifted young lady, whose A* prediction was down-graded to a B on the grounds that her council estate comprehensive school has never had an A* in History before.
What my Dear Old Dad would have called SNAFU - or even worse FUBAR! My history teacher son is celebrating for one of his students, an exceptionally gifted young lady, whose A* prediction was down-graded to a B on the grounds that her council estate comprehensive school has never had an A* in History before.
Some of the individual stories were quite shocking in their injustice.
Success! U turn means teacher assessments will be used in England.
Let’s hope the next announcement is a removal of the cap on university places so there is room for everyone who has now been awarded the grades they needed.
Well, quite.
Spare a thought for university administrators in the coming weeks. Not only are we about to be swamped by a mass of students who suddenly made their offers when less than a week ago they’d missed them, but some of the students who have confirmed they’ll be coming to us will now have good enough grades to go elsewhere instead. And if they don’t lift the cap we may even have to tell some students who have been given places that their places no longer exist due to this (though that’s a very unlikely thing indeed).
The most likely outcome is they just ditch the cap, leading to a mad scramble by the more elite universities to poach as many students from the less well-ranked ones as they can. All very unedifying and stressful. I’m glad I don’t work in admissions...
This lot resign?! I think that porcine aviation is marginally more likely.
I don't envy university staff one jot, and I hope that the government will find both those institutions with extra students and those who have suddenly lost people again equally, but fairness wasn't being served by the way they'd done it.
I would expect that sensible GCSE Maths and English teachers erred on the positive side for those on the "passed for functional purposes" borderline, so those students will get the results they need.
This government has succeeded in none thing - abolishing "resigning issues".
It is good news that the teacher assessments are to be taken. But yes, it is too late - they should have done this a week ago. Then the results would have been out on the right day.
When this cabinet (and their SPADS) have fucked all the way off to GN-z11 they need to keep going.
I've seen it suggested that many lower-ranked universities will now fall into great financial difficulties as they will now lose many students to higher-ranked universities. Is this likely to be the case?
I’m glad the bbc reported on the BTec students still awaiting grades. They are already made to feel second-class to A-Level students but many work so hard & complete work experience placements to achieve these qualifications & these students are often more employable.
The whole shambles has exposed a whole government department as being completely unaware of how things operate on the ground & even up to the regulators.
It strikes me that in general, finding accommodation for an additional 10% or whatever of students might be more challenging than accommodating them into a lecture schedule. But perhaps the lack of foreign students makes up for it partially.
If a teacher consistently misjudges pupils performances it reflects badly on the teacher both professionally, and in terms of their relationship with pupils as their tendency to get it wrong becomes known.
There’s no mileage for the teacher in overestimating grades which are not subsequently matched by exam performance.
It strikes me that in general, finding accommodation for an additional 10% or whatever of students might be more challenging than accommodating them into a lecture schedule. But perhaps the lack of foreign students makes up for it partially.
I think there are all sorts of answers to this problem - lack of foreign students, private accomodation - most of which are easily solved if there is time. Which is another reason that making these changes much earlier would have helped.
I have read that teachers have been over predicting for a number of years.
"Teachers are inaccurate at grading students" sits badly alongside "Teachers can perfectly rank their students".
If a teacher's gradings are poor, it reflects badly on the teacher. I guess that's why many of them exaggerate the ability of pupils.
I'd be interested to see where the 'many' teachers exaggerating the ability of their students is documented? How 'many'? Who are these teachers? Which pupils? Attending which schools?
Some teachers no doubt might be tempted to be generous where it isn't deserved. Some might even be dishonest enough to give in to the temptation. However, I'm willing to believe that, generally, UK teachers are people of moderate integrity, and keen to do a genuinely good job without lying about their pupils.
As a result of this U-turn, it is highly likely that some students may receive educational opportunities they might not otherwise have had, had they sat their exams. Oh, the horror, an unmerited free break. Surely, a privilege only the well-heeled and highly connected are usually permitted. So which path is likely to do the more damage to the nation's youth? A year's license where an arguable number of kids get a break, for once? Or bowing down to the algorithm which has been undoubtedly and impartially assigning bright, hard-working state school kids duff results and shutting down their avenues for career and life opportunities?
There's no perfect solution. But it seems clear that one of those two pathways is concretely the least desirable.
I've seen it suggested that many lower-ranked universities will now fall into great financial difficulties as they will now lose many students to higher-ranked universities. Is this likely to be the case?
Yes, that is likely to be the case - depending on how easily John and Jane can extricate themselves from a hasty engagement with Peckham Polytechnic in order to fulfil their recently re-enabled appointment with destiny at a Russell Group institution. Think of it as University Admissions run like freshers week - you made some unwise friends (Wayne and Tanya) on Monday and Tuesday - can you ditch them fast enough to hang out with Justin and Imogen by Friday lunchtime?
Justin and Imogen are surprisingly up for new friends, since Wang Fang and Zhang Wei aren't coming this year after all. Meanwhile Wayne and Tanya are reminding you how much fun you ever-so-recently were planning to have together; fun which W & T are anxiously consulting corporate lawyers about, in the hope that most of it will be in some way contractually-enforceable.
Of course, you know that with Wayne and Tanya, you will have a lorra laffs, imbibe large quantities of alcohol, and have your trousers off on a regular basis. Educational, innit?
I have read that teachers have been over predicting for a number of years.
"Teachers are inaccurate at grading students" sits badly alongside "Teachers can perfectly rank their students".
If a teacher's gradings are poor, it reflects badly on the teacher. I guess that's why many of them exaggerate the ability of pupils.
If the teacher is so swayed by personal feelings, they are as likely to be in their rankings as in their exaggerating of grades.
Some years back some former classmates and me took our former Maths teacher out for a drink, the topic of stack ranking came up as a number of us had experienced it professionally; Our former teacher found it ridiculous and commented on how if he had had to differentiate between some of us he could have done no better than to toss a coin - I imagine that experience isn't unique.
I used to try to make reasonably sure that the thick bloke who nevertheless turned up every week and asked questions, was pretty certain to pass. And I could probably have guessed the top two out of a class of 20. Beyond that I'd have been struggling.
I'd be interested to see where the 'many' teachers exaggerating the ability of their students is documented? How 'many'? Who are these teachers? Which pupils? Attending which schools?
There's some anecdotal, I can remember some teachers being nicer and others safer.
There's some in the offqual and this year's results (realistically this year's results should match last year's).
The problems are:
Mistaking cause and effect, this year's results "show" that the independent schools were better at guessing the final grade. But that was because the results were based more to use their guess and not match previous curve. And it's not surprising their guess is the same as their guess.
Relatedly compensation for that bias has led to the college's getting their worst results. So some of the difference is because ofqual was off (20% in the exteme).
Psychologically I get confused between 40% of students, all grades (the actual stat), students in a grade, and 40% of marks.
The net effect per student is about half a grade in each subject (which is significant if it loses opportunity, but much less than the difference between them being lucky and unlucky, it's not that there's any less capable students, just possibly more of them, so they should cope)
That assesment of identical exams differed in as many cases (source ofqual)
That the statistics on a group don't relate directly to an individual.
I'd be interested to see where the 'many' teachers exaggerating the ability of their students is documented? How 'many'? Who are these teachers? Which pupils? Attending which schools?
There's some anecdotal, I can remember some teachers being nicer and others safer.
Although the assessments that were supposed to be produced this year shouldn't have been down to single teachers, but be the output of all the relevant staff working together to correct individual bias and also any systematic bias such that the overall school results would be consistent with previous years and any trends in results. If the maths teacher said "I think John would have got an A if he'd sat the exam" and the physics teacher says "he can't solve differential equations, how could you say that he's that good at maths?" the system will correct the biases (which could be that John is that good at maths, he just can't relate the maths to the physics problem). It does the student a disservice to give them an inaccurate grade - understate their ability and they fail to attain their potential, give them too high a grade and you set them up to fall when they get to university and the foundation of their A levels isn't good enough. I can't believe that teachers don't care about their students and wouldn't put in the effort to produce the best prediction of grades that they could (and, 'best' being most accurate not the highest grade they think they can get away with).
Another depressing aspect of the whole cock-up affair is the thought that, even if Williamson were to fall on his sword, and resign, Cummings* would only replace him with yet another inept nonentity.
*The 'official' Prime Minister having apparently disappeared off the face of the earth - not that that is in itself a Bad Thing.
(Scotland, if you are holding the Lord Protector in durance vile, please continue to do so...).
I've seen it suggested that many lower-ranked universities will now fall into great financial difficulties as they will now lose many students to higher-ranked universities. Is this likely to be the case?
Yes. It's thew whole reason why the government put in a student number control (now removed) in the first place.
If I was in a post-92 university I'd be very worried about the future right now.
If I was in a post-92 university I'd be very worried about the future right now.
Some will do better than others. Thinking of the ones locally, some have been struggling for a while now, and even one older institutions has had recruitment issues, but the new universities with strong applied offerings are much healthier.
(Scotland, if you are holding the Lord Protector in durance vile, please continue to do so...).
Grant us the right to hold an independence referendum, or else ... you'll have him back.
Yes! O yes! Do it as soon as you can - and vote The Right Way this time...
When you're independent, you may deport Him (as an undesirable alien) to any unpleasant country you may care to choose...apart from England, that is...
I have read that teachers have been over predicting for a number of years.
"Teachers are inaccurate at grading students" sits badly alongside "Teachers can perfectly rank their students".
If a teacher's gradings are poor, it reflects badly on the teacher. I guess that's why many of them exaggerate the ability of pupils.
Well for normal predicted grades this is not the case, since the pupils eventually get real exam results and it is those, if anything, that teachers are judged on.
I think there are all sorts of answers to this problem - lack of foreign students, private accomodation - most of which are easily solved if there is time. Which is another reason that making these changes much earlier would have helped.
Universities, quite rightly, want to accommodate freshers in university accommodation. First time away from home and all that. Which probably means that they end up having to kick out higher years that they have already promised accommodation to.
And I absolutely agree that the shambolic statements, back-tracks, re-tracks, and general confusion has made it very much worse than it had to be. This is not an unusual feature of the current government.
Although the assessments that were supposed to be produced this year shouldn't have been down to single teachers, but be the output of all the relevant staff working together to correct individual bias and also any systematic bias such that the overall school results would be consistent with previous years and any trends in results. If the maths teacher said "I think John would have got an A if he'd sat the exam" and the physics teacher says "he can't solve differential equations, how could you say that he's that good at maths?" the system will correct the biases (which could be that John is that good at maths, he just can't relate the maths to the physics problem).
Maths and physics are rather more intimately connected than the average pair of A-levels, and even then I'm not sure there's that much overlap, given that A-level maths isn't required to take A-level physics, and that nothing like a differential equation appears anywhere near an A-level physics paper. In practice, I suspect that "all the relevant staff" basically means a single teacher. If the English teacher says "most of John's essays have been solid Cs, with nary a hint of a B", how is the French teacher placed to argue with him? And if the English teacher is biased against John, so that many of his "solid C" essays have in fact been B quality, who is going to know?
I await, with bated breath, the emergence of Cummings to announce that Gav the Gaffe has the full support of the Prime Minister. That, as we know, is the signal that the knife is about to be plunged into the back...
Well, when I did Physics at A level it was a requirement that I also took one of the Maths A level options (the school offered pure & applied maths, pure maths and statistics, or pure maths and applied maths as separate courses). And, we did use differential equations in the Physics course. It's almost impossible to do physics at that level without a greater level of maths (especially applied maths) than you would have had at O level (which dates when I was at school ...), probably could have managed the first year of the course but not the second.
And, of course, the teachers who could contribute to an assessment, at least a check, include those who taught the student in previous years. A history teacher would be able to judge written English to check what the English teacher thinks, all teachers will know if someone was likely to coast through and not do their best or knuckle down to work hard to do the best they can etc.
Well, when I did Physics at A level it was a requirement that I also took one of the Maths A level options (the school offered pure & applied maths, pure maths and statistics, or pure maths and applied maths as separate courses). And, we did use differential equations in the Physics course. It's almost impossible to do physics at that level without a greater level of maths (especially applied maths) than you would have had at O level (which dates when I was at school ...), probably could have managed the first year of the course but not the second.
Unfortunately, they've changed the rules since your day. A-level physics is not permitted to require A-level maths. I'll agree that you need mathematical fluency to be able to readily apply the GCSE maths you know to physical situations correctly, but examiners were not permitted to require maths beyond the GCSE syllabus.
When I took A-levels (I was one of the early GCSE cohorts, so I'm a little younger than you)
there was a question about radioactive decay on one of the physics papers, which required logarithms to answer (the answer wasn't an integer number of half-lives). Several people in my year took Physics / Chemistry / Biology at A-level, and didn't know how to answer the question. I was told, subsequently, that there had been an appeal over that question, that had resulted in most of the marks being awarded for the 2-point comment at the end, and almost no marks for the calculation, which was ruled outside the syllabus.
The Special paper required calculus and differential equations, but not the A-level.
Well, when I did rmPhysics at A level it was a requirement that I also took one of the Maths A level options (the school offer.
In ours iirc (just AS/A2), you kind of had them, but derived/shown independently (constant Accel came straight from the graphs, and just the simple cases (I think we must have done driven shm, and seen delta v).
In any case, it was news that there was such collaboration, so thanks.
Well for normal predicted grades this is not the case, since the pupils eventually get real exam results and it is those, if anything, that teachers are judged on.
It does buy time and you do get the very naive new teachers who (think it will all come together, or otherwise) and then get found out.
This year, they won't.
But of course if they are actually rubbish they don't get found out by the rescaling method, either.
(And as said, the ones actively predicting unusually high will get spotted by the other teachers)
Unfortunately, they've changed the rules since your day.
*Mutter* *Mutter* It was better in my day *mutter*
A-level physics is not permitted to require A-level maths. I'll agree that you need mathematical fluency to be able to readily apply the GCSE maths you know to physical situations correctly, but examiners were not permitted to require maths beyond the GCSE syllabus.
Which doesn't make sense. *mutter* why did they need to change things? *mutter* it was better in my day *mutter* why can't we go back to the old system? *mutter* nothing wrong with O Levels
Oh shit. Much more of this and I'll be mistaken for a Tory.
We had some lecturers who would deliberately hand out incomplete printouts of the slides, in the hope that this would force students to actively take notes, and so pay attention. I have no idea whether it worked or not.
We had a lecturer who asserted (more than once) that lecture notes were the way to get the subject from the notebook of the lecturer to the notebooks of the students without going through the brains of either!
My guess is that Universities with a good reputation, like Birmingham, and Oxford now have to take in extra students.
Universities in the middle have to balance those they lose up and those they gain
While those at the bottom (in the 92), the ones they normally reject dont go to uni. (I'm not sure how that works out, as it potentially just means extra students),but if they lose students they lose money.
Comments
Not just that - even if you assume that the teachers rank their students in an accurate and unbiased way, it assumes that the kids in each cohort in each school have the same distribution of ability, and that is vanishingly unlikely to be true.
Yes, yes, I know...
Well, quite.
Spare a thought for university administrators in the coming weeks. Not only are we about to be swamped by a mass of students who suddenly made their offers when less than a week ago they’d missed them, but some of the students who have confirmed they’ll be coming to us will now have good enough grades to go elsewhere instead. And if they don’t lift the cap we may even have to tell some students who have been given places that their places no longer exist due to this (though that’s a very unlikely thing indeed).
The most likely outcome is they just ditch the cap, leading to a mad scramble by the more elite universities to poach as many students from the less well-ranked ones as they can. All very unedifying and stressful. I’m glad I don’t work in admissions...
I'm wondering who will be the first to go - the evil Belarussian dictator, or Gavin Williamson ...
(Bets currently on Lukashenko, who at least has a degree of self-awareness ...)
This lot resign?! I think that porcine aviation is marginally more likely.
I don't envy university staff one jot, and I hope that the government will find both those institutions with extra students and those who have suddenly lost people again equally, but fairness wasn't being served by the way they'd done it.
I would expect that sensible GCSE Maths and English teachers erred on the positive side for those on the "passed for functional purposes" borderline, so those students will get the results they need.
It is good news that the teacher assessments are to be taken. But yes, it is too late - they should have done this a week ago. Then the results would have been out on the right day.
When this cabinet (and their SPADS) have fucked all the way off to GN-z11 they need to keep going.
The whole shambles has exposed a whole government department as being completely unaware of how things operate on the ground & even up to the regulators.
Again.
But it really is a case of better late than never. Only just though.
AFZ
If a teacher's gradings are poor, it reflects badly on the teacher. I guess that's why many of them exaggerate the ability of pupils.
Do you not think there is some inherent unpredictability in exams?
There’s no mileage for the teacher in overestimating grades which are not subsequently matched by exam performance.
I think there are all sorts of answers to this problem - lack of foreign students, private accomodation - most of which are easily solved if there is time. Which is another reason that making these changes much earlier would have helped.
I'd be interested to see where the 'many' teachers exaggerating the ability of their students is documented? How 'many'? Who are these teachers? Which pupils? Attending which schools?
Some teachers no doubt might be tempted to be generous where it isn't deserved. Some might even be dishonest enough to give in to the temptation. However, I'm willing to believe that, generally, UK teachers are people of moderate integrity, and keen to do a genuinely good job without lying about their pupils.
As a result of this U-turn, it is highly likely that some students may receive educational opportunities they might not otherwise have had, had they sat their exams. Oh, the horror, an unmerited free break. Surely, a privilege only the well-heeled and highly connected are usually permitted. So which path is likely to do the more damage to the nation's youth? A year's license where an arguable number of kids get a break, for once? Or bowing down to the algorithm which has been undoubtedly and impartially assigning bright, hard-working state school kids duff results and shutting down their avenues for career and life opportunities?
There's no perfect solution. But it seems clear that one of those two pathways is concretely the least desirable.
Yes, that is likely to be the case - depending on how easily John and Jane can extricate themselves from a hasty engagement with Peckham Polytechnic in order to fulfil their recently re-enabled appointment with destiny at a Russell Group institution. Think of it as University Admissions run like freshers week - you made some unwise friends (Wayne and Tanya) on Monday and Tuesday - can you ditch them fast enough to hang out with Justin and Imogen by Friday lunchtime?
Justin and Imogen are surprisingly up for new friends, since Wang Fang and Zhang Wei aren't coming this year after all. Meanwhile Wayne and Tanya are reminding you how much fun you ever-so-recently were planning to have together; fun which W & T are anxiously consulting corporate lawyers about, in the hope that most of it will be in some way contractually-enforceable.
If the teacher is so swayed by personal feelings, they are as likely to be in their rankings as in their exaggerating of grades.
Some years back some former classmates and me took our former Maths teacher out for a drink, the topic of stack ranking came up as a number of us had experienced it professionally; Our former teacher found it ridiculous and commented on how if he had had to differentiate between some of us he could have done no better than to toss a coin - I imagine that experience isn't unique.
There's some in the offqual and this year's results (realistically this year's results should match last year's).
The problems are:
Mistaking cause and effect, this year's results "show" that the independent schools were better at guessing the final grade. But that was because the results were based more to use their guess and not match previous curve. And it's not surprising their guess is the same as their guess.
Relatedly compensation for that bias has led to the college's getting their worst results. So some of the difference is because ofqual was off (20% in the exteme).
Psychologically I get confused between 40% of students, all grades (the actual stat), students in a grade, and 40% of marks.
The net effect per student is about half a grade in each subject (which is significant if it loses opportunity, but much less than the difference between them being lucky and unlucky, it's not that there's any less capable students, just possibly more of them, so they should cope)
That assesment of identical exams differed in as many cases (source ofqual)
That the statistics on a group don't relate directly to an individual.
*The 'official' Prime Minister having apparently disappeared off the face of the earth - not that that is in itself a Bad Thing.
(Scotland, if you are holding the Lord Protector in durance vile, please continue to do so...).
Yes. It's thew whole reason why the government put in a student number control (now removed) in the first place.
If I was in a post-92 university I'd be very worried about the future right now.
Yep.
Some will do better than others. Thinking of the ones locally, some have been struggling for a while now, and even one older institutions has had recruitment issues, but the new universities with strong applied offerings are much healthier.
Yes! O yes! Do it as soon as you can - and vote The Right Way this time...
When you're independent, you may deport Him (as an undesirable alien) to any unpleasant country you may care to choose...apart from England, that is...
ISTM that there are a number of local economies that are heavily dependent on large influxes of students that should also be fairly worried.
Well for normal predicted grades this is not the case, since the pupils eventually get real exam results and it is those, if anything, that teachers are judged on.
Universities, quite rightly, want to accommodate freshers in university accommodation. First time away from home and all that. Which probably means that they end up having to kick out higher years that they have already promised accommodation to.
And I absolutely agree that the shambolic statements, back-tracks, re-tracks, and general confusion has made it very much worse than it had to be. This is not an unusual feature of the current government.
Maths and physics are rather more intimately connected than the average pair of A-levels, and even then I'm not sure there's that much overlap, given that A-level maths isn't required to take A-level physics, and that nothing like a differential equation appears anywhere near an A-level physics paper. In practice, I suspect that "all the relevant staff" basically means a single teacher. If the English teacher says "most of John's essays have been solid Cs, with nary a hint of a B", how is the French teacher placed to argue with him? And if the English teacher is biased against John, so that many of his "solid C" essays have in fact been B quality, who is going to know?
And, of course, the teachers who could contribute to an assessment, at least a check, include those who taught the student in previous years. A history teacher would be able to judge written English to check what the English teacher thinks, all teachers will know if someone was likely to coast through and not do their best or knuckle down to work hard to do the best they can etc.
Unfortunately, they've changed the rules since your day. A-level physics is not permitted to require A-level maths. I'll agree that you need mathematical fluency to be able to readily apply the GCSE maths you know to physical situations correctly, but examiners were not permitted to require maths beyond the GCSE syllabus.
When I took A-levels (I was one of the early GCSE cohorts, so I'm a little younger than you)
there was a question about radioactive decay on one of the physics papers, which required logarithms to answer (the answer wasn't an integer number of half-lives). Several people in my year took Physics / Chemistry / Biology at A-level, and didn't know how to answer the question. I was told, subsequently, that there had been an appeal over that question, that had resulted in most of the marks being awarded for the 2-point comment at the end, and almost no marks for the calculation, which was ruled outside the syllabus.
The Special paper required calculus and differential equations, but not the A-level.
In any case, it was news that there was such collaboration, so thanks. It does buy time and you do get the very naive new teachers who (think it will all come together, or otherwise) and then get found out.
This year, they won't.
But of course if they are actually rubbish they don't get found out by the rescaling method, either.
(And as said, the ones actively predicting unusually high will get spotted by the other teachers)
Which doesn't make sense. *mutter* why did they need to change things? *mutter* it was better in my day *mutter* why can't we go back to the old system? *mutter* nothing wrong with O Levels
Oh shit. Much more of this and I'll be mistaken for a Tory.
We had a lecturer who asserted (more than once) that lecture notes were the way to get the subject from the notebook of the lecturer to the notebooks of the students without going through the brains of either!
Never.
I promise.
AFZ
[/sarc]
A Google search tells me what a post-92 university is, but can you explain the rest of that sentence please?
Universities in the middle have to balance those they lose up and those they gain
While those at the bottom (in the 92), the ones they normally reject dont go to uni. (I'm not sure how that works out, as it potentially just means extra students),but if they lose students they lose money.