Here’s something else to throw into the mix about Teacher predictions. Isn’t it the case at A-Level now that the A* grade was introduced that was specifically determined not by performance in the exam, but (top) performance relative to the entire year’s exam cohort? How were teachers supposed to predict something which by definition is beyond their capability to predict?
Exam boards publish exact grade boundaries for all grades including A*, so I don’t think that’s right.
Agreed, but on the older modular schemes A* was awarded on the basis of performance in A2 units only at grade A standard, so it had no boundary score.
You needed an A overall and the 90% in the A2 units. It left little room for error.
Anyway, this is the government that will be in charge of a No Deal Brexit post 1/1/2021.
The algorithms determining which firms are allowed to import and export, who gets medicines and how food will be distributed should be an absolute hoot. I can hardly wait.
It's going to be fun. I'm waiting for more obvious things like what export forms look like so we can being computerising them..
It doesnt occur to you that life's going to be so different anyway that what happened in 2016 is at the margins ?
Everyone seems desperate to throw OFQUAL under the bus, but I think the Gov't should stick to it's guns. If pupils want to get a better grade they can sit an autumn exam.
Are you offering to pay their salaries for the lost working year?
What is odd is that no ministers spotted the huge political elephant trap -- another sign of Boris's inexperienced Cabinet?
Everyone seems to want airy fairy artificially inflated grades. The young man I refferred to in my previous post went to a standard comp not some tiny cohort private school - my guess is actually the algorithm is rather better than most people like to think it is.
These days A-levels exist mainly as a gateway to university -- the number of university places is the important thing, and if I were Boris I'd pressure the universities to speed up the acceptance process. Almost no-one cares about A-levels beyond that.
I keep hearing this and it simply isn't true. I'm 37 with an 18 year track record of employment of one sort or another in a wide variety of fields, and when I apply for jobs employers still want to know my A-levels. That even included Bristol and Bath universities, which was a pain as their forms took ages to fill in.
Everyone seems desperate to throw OFQUAL under the bus, but I think the Gov't should stick to it's guns. If pupils want to get a better grade they can sit an autumn exam.
Are you offering to pay their salaries for the lost working year?
What is odd is that no ministers spotted the huge political elephant trap -- another sign of Boris's inexperienced Cabinet?
Everyone seems to want airy fairy artificially inflated grades. The young man I refferred to in my previous post went to a standard comp not some tiny cohort private school - my guess is actually the algorithm is rather better than most people like to think it is.
I don't want artificially inflated grades. I want every student to at least get what they should have got.
The algorithm is good as an average, but average isn't good enough. If we know that one person in a class of 20 is a murderer and then we without a trial semi at random pick one of the 20 and imprison them for murder without a trial or evidence of their actual guilt then would that be OK?
Every single person should get what they should have got. The only way to achieve that is to give them the benefit of the doubt, which means having some inflation. Some inflation is better than major deflation for those who miss out on what they should have got.
I think everyone should get what they deserve.
I'm struggling to think of exactly what OFQUAL deserve for this mess, though most of them seem to end with various forms of slow death.
It's a theory that I've been musing on for a while.
Long ago, politicians ran election campaigns. Sometimes they did it well (say, Conservatives in 1992, or Labour in 1997), sometimes they did it badly (say, Labour 1983 or Conservatives 2001). And the ability to run an election campaign was a proxy for how fit a party was to govern.
If they could get thousands of doorsteppers to go out and doorstep, it implied they had a message which was coherent and understandable. It showed they could manage logistics and communications.
If they had a decent number of ministers who could answer difficult questions from journalists, it showed there was a plan and enough people who understood it.
Yes it was artificial, but it worked as a decent proxy. Think about the early series of the Apprentice, when it was still good. No, the tasks weren't realistic, but in general the people who were good at business did better than the ones who weren't. And it worked for some as a learning experience.
At some point, the role of campaigner got decoupled from that of politician. It reached its apogee in 2019, but it's been happening for a while. By outsourcing the campaign to the writers of memes, the parties can't find out who is good and bad at politics, and neither can the public. So we get idiots in government. The insecurity of this PM, driving away anyone with independent thoughts, can't help, but there might be a structural problem as well.
Perhaps the government should award the teachers' grades for GCSEs but stick with the algorithm grades for A-levels. Appeals against GCSE grades could overload the system.
However a big increase in A-level grades would disrupt the universities as some would have too many students meeting their offers, resulting in others having too few.
Does anyone know how many extra places would be needed and where if all students with offers were given places? Might be the only way out at this point
Would that many extra places be needed? Or would it just be fewer for clearing?
It's too late now. I would have thought all the spare places that were created in medicine/vet/ etc will have been filled by now.
What evidence do you have for that claim?
Especially if the government offers money to expand places while also considering the Scots fixed it after the fact without that being an issue and the absence of foreign students?
It's not a claim, it's a talking point, perhaps I should have added a Question mark as well?
Most universities (mine included) would happily bump up intake of UK students to help with the expected overseas student shortfall (albeit there's not much profit in home students compared to overseas). My uni's mid-point estimate is that overseas students are will be down 70%, so there will be spare capacity. However, as I understand it (can't find source now, may be something I was told at work) there's an agreement between universities not to increase home student intake over 5% above normal levels, to avoid completely shafting the lower ranked universities by taking all their students (universities further down could still be in a lot of trouble if the top 20 all take 5% extra, obviously, as that's one average sized university worth of students gone).
Thought that too. But the cap wasn't an entirely bad idea. Virtually everyone who wants to go to University can go now, so expansion of more prestigious courses and Unis will leave less prestigious ones in deep trouble.
Trouble is that the admissions process depends on the grades being reasonably predictable. The combination of ups and downs in the Ofqual algorithm was bad enough, the subsequent squirming is making things far worse.
Maybe I'm being a bit stupid here, but why is the expansion of more prestigious courses for this year's intake a problem? Just give the less prestigious institutions the money for the students they have lost, and everyone's happy, or am I missing something? Sure, it will cost extra, but surely not much in the grand scheme of coronavirus expenditure.
There are several reasons, but the main one is that the vast majority of courses at good unis already are against physical limits such as size of lecture room and teaching rooms, first year student accommodation.
Also in Oxbridge the tutorials will have to be for four students not three
That may be true, but I intended to ask why the problem for lesser unis losing students can't be simply fixed with giving them the money anyway (rather than problems caused for the more popular unis having too many students, which posters above seem to think wouldn't be a problem - indeed those unis would apparently welcome the extra students).
Partly because they've been banned from taking extra students, with financial penalties attached.
But also because they've sacked all their teaching staff, so the infrastructure isn't there.
Again, that may be true although a) the ban on taking extra students can be suspended this year b) other posters have suggested that the more popular universities would welcome more domestic students
But my question is to those saying the problem would be for the less popular universities LOSING too many students if everyone is allowed to take up their first choice offer. Can this problem not be solved by just giving those LESS popular institutions the money the have lost as a result?
The [US Postal Service's patent] application is reported as filed on February 7, 2020, and the invention is described as, “A voting system that can use the security of blockchain and the mail to provide a reliable voting system. A registered voter receives a computer readable code in the mail and confirms identity and confirms correct ballot information in an election. The system separates voter identification and votes to ensure vote anonymity, and stores votes on a distributed ledger in a blockchain.”
Chief among Trump’s complaints against mail-in voting are doubts about whether or not the person whose name is on the ballot actually cast the vote, and whether or not the ballot was tampered with after it was sent. In both instances blockchain offers tantalizing possible solutions. Blockchain identity services are already being widely developed and by moving the vote to a shared, distributed ledger, the votes would transmit almost instantly, drastically reducing the ballot’s vulnerability to tampering.
Ofqual blames government 'policy changes every 12 hours' for A-level exam chaos
which rather sums up this government, badly thought out re-action due to the impact of the previously (badly thought out) action
And the buck-passing now begins.
I get the feeling OFQUAL are now in a blind panic. They have been shown as more naked than the Emperor, and they are wondering if their jobs are about to go.
I pointed this out the instant it became known about nearly a fortnight ago. How come these 'experts' missed it?
OFQUAL note it explicitly in their methodology note but nobody at OFQUAL or the Dept of Education thought it was a problem. The reason is that it has become totally normalised and acceptable to those in positions of power that the education system favours the wealthy via private schools, and so the fact that the algo benefits these privileged kids further was considered unworthy of note, let alone corrective action.
It was striking that Trump's price shortened abruptly on news of his brother dying. A humanizing event and one that he (unusually) reacted to in a way that was not especially crass.
He will have clocked the impact, I'm sure. If he doesn't follow the betting somebody in his camp will be and will have told him. "Mr President, it looks like Robert passing away has given you a boost for November."
I wonder what this could mean for other family members now. One doesn't like to contemplate such things but it's clear that there is very little he won't do to avoid defeat on 3/11.
Step 1) Mandate that all conditional offers from universities and technical colleges for British citizens and residents will be made unconditional. Solves the issue for anyone staying in (British) education. Any duds that slip through can come out in the wash of First Year exams.
Step 2) If necessary bung some extra cash the universities way. They are going to need a bail out without the foreign (Chinese) students anyway.
Step 3) Declare 2020 null and void for A Level unless you have taken the exam. Offer an exam in both autumn and spring, with a generous one off educational grant to anyone who defers going on the dole to instead complete their studies. Special tuition for those who want it.
Step 4) Said exams if necessary to be held in requisitioned conference facilities with the million person volunteer army to help oversea on the day.
Step 5) GCSEs cancelled this year, just like when Voldemort killed that kid in Harry Potter. In the grand scheme, on well.
Step 6) Hysteria to be dialled down a notch. Cv-19 is thankfully not the plague. School to be mandatory rather than optional from here on in.
Personally I see this as one of the more easily solvable problems caused by the lockdown. Money has been spaffed about to help all of pensioners (qe to support stock market bubble), property owners (stamp holidays), small business owners (no questions asked grants and govt backed loans) and workers (furlough). What about some love for the poor sods who aren’t at all risk from this disease and have had their life chances stunted in a final spiteful act by the over 60s?
A shame we don’t have another few Rishi’s knocking about the make up the numbers in the rest of Cabinet.
Everyone seems desperate to throw OFQUAL under the bus, but I think the Gov't should stick to it's guns. If pupils want to get a better grade they can sit an autumn exam.
Are you offering to pay their salaries for the lost working year?
What is odd is that no ministers spotted the huge political elephant trap -- another sign of Boris's inexperienced Cabinet?
Everyone seems to want airy fairy artificially inflated grades. The young man I refferred to in my previous post went to a standard comp not some tiny cohort private school - my guess is actually the algorithm is rather better than most people like to think it is.
These days A-levels exist mainly as a gateway to university -- the number of university places is the important thing, and if I were Boris I'd pressure the universities to speed up the acceptance process. Almost no-one cares about A-levels beyond that.
I keep hearing this and it simply isn't true. I'm 37 with an 18 year track record of employment of one sort or another in a wide variety of fields, and when I apply for jobs employers still want to know my A-levels. That even included Bristol and Bath universities, which was a pain as their forms took ages to fill in.
But you are a teacher though in education - where exams are probably given more detail then they are elsewhere.
In my world all I actually care about is what you know regarding computer software that changes every week. Being honest I don't even care about industry certifications...
Everyone seems desperate to throw OFQUAL under the bus, but I think the Gov't should stick to it's guns. If pupils want to get a better grade they can sit an autumn exam.
Are you offering to pay their salaries for the lost working year?
What is odd is that no ministers spotted the huge political elephant trap -- another sign of Boris's inexperienced Cabinet?
Everyone seems to want airy fairy artificially inflated grades. The young man I refferred to in my previous post went to a standard comp not some tiny cohort private school - my guess is actually the algorithm is rather better than most people like to think it is.
These days A-levels exist mainly as a gateway to university -- the number of university places is the important thing, and if I were Boris I'd pressure the universities to speed up the acceptance process. Almost no-one cares about A-levels beyond that. And what on earth is the point of GCSEs now (almost) no-one can leave school at 16 any more?
And that means grade inflation in A-levels for one year really does not matter.
The big scandal is algorithmic U grades -- they should be revoked and replaced immediately. Again, I am surprised ministers did not spot this beforehand.
GCSEs are still important as they're still the certificates that show you have an adequate understanding of Maths/English/Sciences. Although you can't leave school at 16 any more you do choose a vocational/A Level path, and none of the choices have to be Maths/English/Sciences.
Perhaps the government should award the teachers' grades for GCSEs but stick with the algorithm grades for A-levels. Appeals against GCSE grades could overload the system.
However a big increase in A-level grades would disrupt the universities as some would have too many students meeting their offers, resulting in others having too few.
Does anyone know how many extra places would be needed and where if all students with offers were given places? Might be the only way out at this point
Would that many extra places be needed? Or would it just be fewer for clearing?
It's too late now. I would have thought all the spare places that were created in medicine/vet/ etc will have been filled by now.
What evidence do you have for that claim?
Especially if the government offers money to expand places while also considering the Scots fixed it after the fact without that being an issue and the absence of foreign students?
It's not a claim, it's a talking point, perhaps I should have added a Question mark as well?
Most universities (mine included) would happily bump up intake of UK students to help with the expected overseas student shortfall (albeit there's not much profit in home students compared to overseas). My uni's mid-point estimate is that overseas students are will be down 70%, so there will be spare capacity. However, as I understand it (can't find source now, may be something I was told at work) there's an agreement between universities not to increase home student intake over 5% above normal levels, to avoid completely shafting the lower ranked universities by taking all their students (universities further down could still be in a lot of trouble if the top 20 all take 5% extra, obviously, as that's one average sized university worth of students gone).
Thought that too. But the cap wasn't an entirely bad idea. Virtually everyone who wants to go to University can go now, so expansion of more prestigious courses and Unis will leave less prestigious ones in deep trouble.
Trouble is that the admissions process depends on the grades being reasonably predictable. The combination of ups and downs in the Ofqual algorithm was bad enough, the subsequent squirming is making things far worse.
Maybe I'm being a bit stupid here, but why is the expansion of more prestigious courses for this year's intake a problem? Just give the less prestigious institutions the money for the students they have lost, and everyone's happy, or am I missing something? Sure, it will cost extra, but surely not much in the grand scheme of coronavirus expenditure.
There are several reasons, but the main one is that the vast majority of courses at good unis already are against physical limits such as size of lecture room and teaching rooms, first year student accommodation.
Also in Oxbridge the tutorials will have to be for four students not three
That may be true, but I intended to ask why the problem for lesser unis losing students can't be simply fixed with giving them the money anyway (rather than problems caused for the more popular unis having too many students, which posters above seem to think wouldn't be a problem - indeed those unis would apparently welcome the extra students).
Partly because they've been banned from taking extra students, with financial penalties attached.
But also because they've sacked all their teaching staff, so the infrastructure isn't there.
Again, that may be true although a) the ban on taking extra students can be suspended this year b) other posters have suggested that the more popular universities would welcome more domestic students
But my question is to those saying the problem would be for the less popular universities LOSING too many students if everyone is allowed to take up their first choice offer. Can this problem not be solved by just giving those LESS popular institutions the money the have lost as a result?
Domestic students only pay a fraction of what overseas students stump up. The finances just don't work that way.
As to your second point, I don't know. Some less popular universities were on the brink anyway (Lampeter springs to mind, although that's a deliberate policy by the VC to concentrate services at Carmarthen and Swansea) so it may not be worth trying to save them.
Ofqual blames government 'policy changes every 12 hours' for A-level exam chaos
which rather sums up this government, badly thought out re-action due to the impact of the previously (badly thought out) action
And the buck-passing now begins.
I get the feeling OFQUAL are now in a blind panic. They have been shown as more naked than the Emperor, and they are wondering if their jobs are about to go.
By the end of the week Dido Harding will probably be in charge of a new educaiton and exams body.
Here's a prediction for GCSE results on Thursday. Whatever else happens, there will be a large increase in the proportion of pupils achieving a grade 4 (or above) in English and mathematics. Given that English and maths grade 4 gives access to A levels and lots of other things, the DfE/government will seek to push all the borderline 3/4s up to a 4.
Ofqual blames government 'policy changes every 12 hours' for A-level exam chaos
which rather sums up this government, badly thought out re-action due to the impact of the previously (badly thought out) action
And the buck-passing now begins.
I get the feeling OFQUAL are now in a blind panic. They have been shown as more naked than the Emperor, and they are wondering if their jobs are about to go.
OFQUAL are useless but their problem is their remit was to generate a pile of exam results. The problem is that it was an impossible task and they either weren't bright enough to realise or not vocal enough to point out the impossibility of the request.
Isn't a good solution to send back all of the changed grades to teachers and ask them to asses the reality of the new grade? It should reduce grade inflation quite a bit and it also ensures there are no weird outliers like someone who has never got below a B ending up with an E or that person who got given a U because someone at the school got one previously.
Ofqual blames government 'policy changes every 12 hours' for A-level exam chaos
which rather sums up this government, badly thought out re-action due to the impact of the previously (badly thought out) action
And the buck-passing now begins.
I get the feeling OFQUAL are now in a blind panic. They have been shown as more naked than the Emperor, and they are wondering if their jobs are about to go.
OFQUAL are useless but their problem is their remit was to generate a pile of exam results. The problem is that it was an impossible task and they either weren't bright enough to realise or not vocal enough to point out the impossibility of the request.
I'll go for option (1). They don't understand assessment processes so they probably didn't understand why it was impossible.
Step 1) Mandate that all conditional offers from universities and technical colleges for British citizens and residents will be made unconditional. Solves the issue for anyone staying in (British) education. Any duds that slip through can come out in the wash of First Year exams.
Step 2) If necessary bung some extra cash the universities way. They are going to need a bail out without the foreign (Chinese) students anyway.
Step 3) Declare 2020 null and void for A Level unless you have taken the exam. Offer an exam in both autumn and spring, with a generous one off educational grant to anyone who defers going on the dole to instead complete their studies. Special tuition for those who want it.
Step 4) Said exams if necessary to be held in requisitioned conference facilities with the million person volunteer army to help oversea on the day.
Step 5) GCSEs cancelled this year, just like when Voldemort killed that kid in Harry Potter. In the grand scheme, on well.
Step 6) Hysteria to be dialled down a notch. Cv-19 is thankfully not the plague. School to be mandatory rather than optional from here on in.
Personally I see this as one of the more easily solvable problems caused by the lockdown. Money has been spaffed about to help all of pensioners (qe to support stock market bubble), property owners (stamp holidays), small business owners (no questions asked grants and govt backed loans) and workers (furlough). What about some love for the poor sods who aren’t at all risk from this disease and have had their life chances stunted in a final spiteful act by the over 60s?
A shame we don’t have another few Rishi’s knocking about the make up the numbers in the rest of Cabinet.
What is surreal is the apparent determination of both the SQA and now OFQAL to award those marks with as little contact with actual output of the students as possible. I am obviously overly simplistic but is the logical response to the exams not being sat not to look to find some other assessment based upon the student's work such as mocks and class work?
Like AS-levels and coursework, you mean? Abolished by that educational genius - Michael Gove - advised by Dominic Cummings.
Everyone seems desperate to throw OFQUAL under the bus, but I think the Gov't should stick to it's guns. If pupils want to get a better grade they can sit an autumn exam.
Are you offering to pay their salaries for the lost working year?
What is odd is that no ministers spotted the huge political elephant trap -- another sign of Boris's inexperienced Cabinet?
Everyone seems to want airy fairy artificially inflated grades. The young man I refferred to in my previous post went to a standard comp not some tiny cohort private school - my guess is actually the algorithm is rather better than most people like to think it is.
These days A-levels exist mainly as a gateway to university -- the number of university places is the important thing, and if I were Boris I'd pressure the universities to speed up the acceptance process. Almost no-one cares about A-levels beyond that. And what on earth is the point of GCSEs now (almost) no-one can leave school at 16 any more?
And that means grade inflation in A-levels for one year really does not matter.
The big scandal is algorithmic U grades -- they should be revoked and replaced immediately. Again, I am surprised ministers did not spot this beforehand.
GCSEs are still important as they're still the certificates that show you have an adequate understanding of Maths/English/Sciences. Although you can't leave school at 16 any more you do choose a vocational/A Level path, and none of the choices have to be Maths/English/Sciences.
For apprentices GCSEs are very important.
Why people want to go to University to do a non-job related degree is beyond me. Get in mountains of debt and have a slightly improved chance to get a job or do an Apprenticeship, get paid to learn and after 4 years come out with a trade for life (And earn £40,000 pa by the time you are 21)
Isn't a good solution to send back all of the changed grades to teachers and ask them to asses the reality of the new grade? It should reduce grade inflation quite a bit and it also ensures there are no weird outliers like someone who has never got below a B ending up with an E or that person who got given a U because someone at the school got one previously.
Fine. But I can already tell you the two answers that will be given:
1) OFQUAL's grade is bollocks.
2) You want us to check these in detail? Then no teaching before October.
Neither of which would be acceptable answers to the government.
Everyone seems desperate to throw OFQUAL under the bus, but I think the Gov't should stick to it's guns. If pupils want to get a better grade they can sit an autumn exam.
Are you offering to pay their salaries for the lost working year?
What is odd is that no ministers spotted the huge political elephant trap -- another sign of Boris's inexperienced Cabinet?
The Cabinet does exactly what Cummings selected it to do: defend the PM at all possible times in all possible ways. Of course, no government serious about education would have Gavin Williamson in charge of it. But that just tells us that this government is not serious about education.
Suggests that the vast majority of students are overpredicted in a normal year -> 75%.
Yes, that sounds about right. But this paper is about UCAS predicted grades. 75% overpredictions partly because teachers want to give their students the best chance of getting in to the university of their choice, even though they know the predictions are ambitious. The question is whether the predictions given to Ofqual were the same as the UCAS predictions. They should have been lower. UCAS predictions are what you hope they will get; Ofqual predictions should be what you think they will get.
But I suspect that in many institutions this distinction was not made.
I'd be interested in @ydoethur 's comments on this, as from memory, the exercise was conducted on the basis of realism rather than optimism by his school ?
In any event, outsize aviations between schools in the optimism of their predictions ought to have been something comparatively simple to control for, statistically.
The exercise which Ofsted undertook was a bizarre method of applying an overall population judgment to individuals, with the only individual input the class ranking orders (which were themselves artificially forced by banning equal rankings).
One of the legal actions against Ofqal argues that they exceed their statutory remit. I'm not clear on the details, as I just heard a snippet on the radio this morning, but will be very interesting to follow.
To be honest, I don’t know enough to comment. Certainly there has always been an issue with UCAS predicted grades not matching final grades, but as @Fysics_Teacher notes, these are often marginal calls. My own A-levels were ABC, but I was two marks in two subjects off AAB.
At A-level, the commonest predictions I made this year were jointly A and C, but as I noted I had a very able cohort. I predicted Ds as well, and got them. Nobody got less than a D, but then in the six years I have been teaching at that school only two students ever got Es, so that seems to me to be fair enough. I can’t remember that any were shockingly out of line with the UCAS predictions, and indeed some of them may have been an improvement on them. But as noted above, it is a very inexact science.
For GCSE I would rather not comment yet.
Incidentally, you mean OFQUAL not OFSTED.
There is a difference in predicted grdes between normal years and this year though. Normally a teacher deliberately bumping up the predicted grade two levels (per subject) will be counterproductive for the student, when they underperform in the actual A-Levels, do not make their offer and are left scrambling through clearing to find a last minute place.
This year the teachers had to submit predicted grades knowing that their predictions would not be compared against actual exam results. As teachers in England are trying to get the highest grades for their students there is a tension between "doing the right thing" and being very generous to their students.
Presumably in normal year the predicted A-Level grades are only assigned in the Autumn term for students who apply to uni, whereas this year the teachers have had to predict for all students in the Summer term.
Sorry, eristdoof but that is the wrong way round. For UCAS teachers tend to predict the highest grade they think their students can get. For this exercise we were predicting what they were realistically capable of getting. That said, there was no external quality control so I can’t answer for every school.
That is what I was asking about earlier, and confirms my recollection of your previous account.
Perhaps the government should award the teachers' grades for GCSEs but stick with the algorithm grades for A-levels. Appeals against GCSE grades could overload the system.
However a big increase in A-level grades would disrupt the universities as some would have too many students meeting their offers, resulting in others having too few.
Does anyone know how many extra places would be needed and where if all students with offers were given places? Might be the only way out at this point
Would that many extra places be needed? Or would it just be fewer for clearing?
It's too late now. I would have thought all the spare places that were created in medicine/vet/ etc will have been filled by now.
What evidence do you have for that claim?
Especially if the government offers money to expand places while also considering the Scots fixed it after the fact without that being an issue and the absence of foreign students?
It's not a claim, it's a talking point, perhaps I should have added a Question mark as well?
Most universities (mine included) would happily bump up intake of UK students to help with the expected overseas student shortfall (albeit there's not much profit in home students compared to overseas). My uni's mid-point estimate is that overseas students are will be down 70%, so there will be spare capacity. However, as I understand it (can't find source now, may be something I was told at work) there's an agreement between universities not to increase home student intake over 5% above normal levels, to avoid completely shafting the lower ranked universities by taking all their students (universities further down could still be in a lot of trouble if the top 20 all take 5% extra, obviously, as that's one average sized university worth of students gone).
Thought that too. But the cap wasn't an entirely bad idea. Virtually everyone who wants to go to University can go now, so expansion of more prestigious courses and Unis will leave less prestigious ones in deep trouble.
Trouble is that the admissions process depends on the grades being reasonably predictable. The combination of ups and downs in the Ofqual algorithm was bad enough, the subsequent squirming is making things far worse.
Maybe I'm being a bit stupid here, but why is the expansion of more prestigious courses for this year's intake a problem? Just give the less prestigious institutions the money for the students they have lost, and everyone's happy, or am I missing something? Sure, it will cost extra, but surely not much in the grand scheme of coronavirus expenditure.
There are several reasons, but the main one is that the vast majority of courses at good unis already are against physical limits such as size of lecture room and teaching rooms, first year student accommodation.
Also in Oxbridge the tutorials will have to be for four students not three
That may be true, but I intended to ask why the problem for lesser unis losing students can't be simply fixed with giving them the money anyway (rather than problems caused for the more popular unis having too many students, which posters above seem to think wouldn't be a problem - indeed those unis would apparently welcome the extra students).
Partly because they've been banned from taking extra students, with financial penalties attached.
But also because they've sacked all their teaching staff, so the infrastructure isn't there.
Again, that may be true although a) the ban on taking extra students can be suspended this year b) other posters have suggested that the more popular universities would welcome more domestic students
But my question is to those saying the problem would be for the less popular universities LOSING too many students if everyone is allowed to take up their first choice offer. Can this problem not be solved by just giving those LESS popular institutions the money the have lost as a result?
Domestic students only pay a fraction of what overseas students stump up. The finances just don't work that way.
As to your second point, I don't know. Some less popular universities were on the brink anyway (Lampeter springs to mind, although that's a deliberate policy by the VC to concentrate services at Carmarthen and Swansea) so it may not be worth trying to save them.
Though the kinds of Universities in most trouble are probably the ones in places where levelling up is meant to be happening.
Isn't a good solution to send back all of the changed grades to teachers and ask them to asses the reality of the new grade? It should reduce grade inflation quite a bit and it also ensures there are no weird outliers like someone who has never got below a B ending up with an E or that person who got given a U because someone at the school got one previously.
Fine. But I can already tell you the two answers that will be given:
1) OFQUAL's grade is bollocks.
2) You want us to check these in detail? Then no teaching before October.
Neither of which would be acceptable answers to the government.
Hmm, there will be a lot of B to C or C to D changes that are valid, in fact I'd probably go as far as saying accept all of the single grade changes and have a teacher review of just the two or more grade changes, which do seem the most unfair. That alone brings the number down to something manageable.
Ofqual blames government 'policy changes every 12 hours' for A-level exam chaos
which rather sums up this government, badly thought out re-action due to the impact of the previously (badly thought out) action
And the buck-passing now begins.
I get the feeling OFQUAL are now in a blind panic. They have been shown as more naked than the Emperor, and they are wondering if their jobs are about to go.
By the end of the week Dido Harding will probably be in charge of a new educaiton and exams body.
Isn't a good solution to send back all of the changed grades to teachers and ask them to asses the reality of the new grade? It should reduce grade inflation quite a bit and it also ensures there are no weird outliers like someone who has never got below a B ending up with an E or that person who got given a U because someone at the school got one previously.
You are back to the feedback loop I suggested on the first day of the SQA disaster.
But once again it isn't possible because that required being pro-active and most people aren't bright enough to do that,
Perhaps the government should award the teachers' grades for GCSEs but stick with the algorithm grades for A-levels. Appeals against GCSE grades could overload the system.
However a big increase in A-level grades would disrupt the universities as some would have too many students meeting their offers, resulting in others having too few.
Does anyone know how many extra places would be needed and where if all students with offers were given places? Might be the only way out at this point
Would that many extra places be needed? Or would it just be fewer for clearing?
It's too late now. I would have thought all the spare places that were created in medicine/vet/ etc will have been filled by now.
What evidence do you have for that claim?
Especially if the government offers money to expand places while also considering the Scots fixed it after the fact without that being an issue and the absence of foreign students?
It's not a claim, it's a talking point, perhaps I should have added a Question mark as well?
Most universities (mine included) would happily bump up intake of UK students to help with the expected overseas student shortfall (albeit there's not much profit in home students compared to overseas). My uni's mid-point estimate is that overseas students are will be down 70%, so there will be spare capacity. However, as I understand it (can't find source now, may be something I was told at work) there's an agreement between universities not to increase home student intake over 5% above normal levels, to avoid completely shafting the lower ranked universities by taking all their students (universities further down could still be in a lot of trouble if the top 20 all take 5% extra, obviously, as that's one average sized university worth of students gone).
Thought that too. But the cap wasn't an entirely bad idea. Virtually everyone who wants to go to University can go now, so expansion of more prestigious courses and Unis will leave less prestigious ones in deep trouble.
Trouble is that the admissions process depends on the grades being reasonably predictable. The combination of ups and downs in the Ofqual algorithm was bad enough, the subsequent squirming is making things far worse.
Maybe I'm being a bit stupid here, but why is the expansion of more prestigious courses for this year's intake a problem? Just give the less prestigious institutions the money for the students they have lost, and everyone's happy, or am I missing something? Sure, it will cost extra, but surely not much in the grand scheme of coronavirus expenditure.
There are several reasons, but the main one is that the vast majority of courses at good unis already are against physical limits such as size of lecture room and teaching rooms, first year student accommodation.
Also in Oxbridge the tutorials will have to be for four students not three
That may be true, but I intended to ask why the problem for lesser unis losing students can't be simply fixed with giving them the money anyway (rather than problems caused for the more popular unis having too many students, which posters above seem to think wouldn't be a problem - indeed those unis would apparently welcome the extra students).
Partly because they've been banned from taking extra students, with financial penalties attached.
But also because they've sacked all their teaching staff, so the infrastructure isn't there.
Again, that may be true although a) the ban on taking extra students can be suspended this year b) other posters have suggested that the more popular universities would welcome more domestic students
But my question is to those saying the problem would be for the less popular universities LOSING too many students if everyone is allowed to take up their first choice offer. Can this problem not be solved by just giving those LESS popular institutions the money the have lost as a result?
Domestic students only pay a fraction of what overseas students stump up. The finances just don't work that way.
As to your second point, I don't know. Some less popular universities were on the brink anyway (Lampeter springs to mind, although that's a deliberate policy by the VC to concentrate services at Carmarthen and Swansea) so it may not be worth trying to save them.
Though the kinds of Universities in most trouble are probably the ones in places where levelling up is meant to be happening.
"Levelling up" is a meaningless soundbite, with no policies attached to implement it or even any real sense of what it is meant to entail. To the extent it has any meaning at all it can be translated as "fuck London".
This is abysmal: ...The Sixth Form Colleges Association (SFCA) said it looked at 65,000 exam entries in 41 subjects from sixth form colleges and found that grades were 20% lower than historic performances for similar students in those colleges....
Gives room for successful appeals in appropriate cases. Unlike Scotland which started with a higher pass rate than normal and then went up, way up, from there beyond any credibility threshold.
As ever they will will be dragged kicking and screaming to follow the Scottish lead, happening a lot now. Boris needs to phone Nicola for help prior to making a mess of things.
Suggests that the vast majority of students are overpredicted in a normal year -> 75%.
Yes, that sounds about right. But this paper is about UCAS predicted grades. 75% overpredictions partly because teachers want to give their students the best chance of getting in to the university of their choice, even though they know the predictions are ambitious. The question is whether the predictions given to Ofqual were the same as the UCAS predictions. They should have been lower. UCAS predictions are what you hope they will get; Ofqual predictions should be what you think they will get.
But I suspect that in many institutions this distinction was not made.
I'd be interested in @ydoethur 's comments on this, as from memory, the exercise was conducted on the basis of realism rather than optimism by his school ?
In any event, outsize aviations between schools in the optimism of their predictions ought to have been something comparatively simple to control for, statistically.
The exercise which Ofsted undertook was a bizarre method of applying an overall population judgment to individuals, with the only individual input the class ranking orders (which were themselves artificially forced by banning equal rankings).
One of the legal actions against Ofqal argues that they exceed their statutory remit. I'm not clear on the details, as I just heard a snippet on the radio this morning, but will be very interesting to follow.
To be honest, I don’t know enough to comment. Certainly there has always been an issue with UCAS predicted grades not matching final grades, but as @Fysics_Teacher notes, these are often marginal calls. My own A-levels were ABC, but I was two marks in two subjects off AAB.
At A-level, the commonest predictions I made this year were jointly A and C, but as I noted I had a very able cohort. I predicted Ds as well, and got them. Nobody got less than a D, but then in the six years I have been teaching at that school only two students ever got Es, so that seems to me to be fair enough. I can’t remember that any were shockingly out of line with the UCAS predictions, and indeed some of them may have been an improvement on them. But as noted above, it is a very inexact science.
For GCSE I would rather not comment yet.
Incidentally, you mean OFQUAL not OFSTED.
There is a difference in predicted grdes between normal years and this year though. Normally a teacher deliberately bumping up the predicted grade two levels (per subject) will be counterproductive for the student, when they underperform in the actual A-Levels, do not make their offer and are left scrambling through clearing to find a last minute place.
This year the teachers had to submit predicted grades knowing that their predictions would not be compared against actual exam results. As teachers in England are trying to get the highest grades for their students there is a tension between "doing the right thing" and being very generous to their students.
Presumably in normal year the predicted A-Level grades are only assigned in the Autumn term for students who apply to uni, whereas this year the teachers have had to predict for all students in the Summer term.
Sorry, eristdoof but that is the wrong way round. For UCAS teachers tend to predict the highest grade they think their students can get. For this exercise we were predicting what they were realistically capable of getting. That said, there was no external quality control so I can’t answer for every school.
OK, I stand corredted, but I am surprised. I guess then that the benefit of predicting up UCAS candidates, is that the students get considered for uni at all.
On the other hand you have made it clear that you here strong on the side of -what I call- "doing the right thing" by grade predictions and implied that this was not the case in all schools.
But that is what OFQUAL might have corrected for in their 'standardisation' process. Instead, they simply chucked out the individual centre assessed grades (except in the case of small cohorts), and came up with some roundabout way of awarding grades based on the performance of the results of different students in the previous three years.
The legal case against them claims that this was outside of their powers, as what they were doing wasn't standardisation of grades at all, but rather creation of results by extrapolation from historic records.
Perhaps the government should award the teachers' grades for GCSEs but stick with the algorithm grades for A-levels. Appeals against GCSE grades could overload the system.
However a big increase in A-level grades would disrupt the universities as some would have too many students meeting their offers, resulting in others having too few.
Does anyone know how many extra places would be needed and where if all students with offers were given places? Might be the only way out at this point
Would that many extra places be needed? Or would it just be fewer for clearing?
It's too late now. I would have thought all the spare places that were created in medicine/vet/ etc will have been filled by now.
What evidence do you have for that claim?
Especially if the government offers money to expand places while also considering the Scots fixed it after the fact without that being an issue and the absence of foreign students?
It's not a claim, it's a talking point, perhaps I should have added a Question mark as well?
Most universities (mine included) would happily bump up intake of UK students to help with the expected overseas student shortfall (albeit there's not much profit in home students compared to overseas). My uni's mid-point estimate is that overseas students are will be down 70%, so there will be spare capacity. However, as I understand it (can't find source now, may be something I was told at work) there's an agreement between universities not to increase home student intake over 5% above normal levels, to avoid completely shafting the lower ranked universities by taking all their students (universities further down could still be in a lot of trouble if the top 20 all take 5% extra, obviously, as that's one average sized university worth of students gone).
Thought that too. But the cap wasn't an entirely bad idea. Virtually everyone who wants to go to University can go now, so expansion of more prestigious courses and Unis will leave less prestigious ones in deep trouble.
Trouble is that the admissions process depends on the grades being reasonably predictable. The combination of ups and downs in the Ofqual algorithm was bad enough, the subsequent squirming is making things far worse.
Maybe I'm being a bit stupid here, but why is the expansion of more prestigious courses for this year's intake a problem? Just give the less prestigious institutions the money for the students they have lost, and everyone's happy, or am I missing something? Sure, it will cost extra, but surely not much in the grand scheme of coronavirus expenditure.
There are several reasons, but the main one is that the vast majority of courses at good unis already are against physical limits such as size of lecture room and teaching rooms, first year student accommodation.
Also in Oxbridge the tutorials will have to be for four students not three
That may be true, but I intended to ask why the problem for lesser unis losing students can't be simply fixed with giving them the money anyway (rather than problems caused for the more popular unis having too many students, which posters above seem to think wouldn't be a problem - indeed those unis would apparently welcome the extra students).
Partly because they've been banned from taking extra students, with financial penalties attached.
But also because they've sacked all their teaching staff, so the infrastructure isn't there.
Again, that may be true although a) the ban on taking extra students can be suspended this year b) other posters have suggested that the more popular universities would welcome more domestic students
But my question is to those saying the problem would be for the less popular universities LOSING too many students if everyone is allowed to take up their first choice offer. Can this problem not be solved by just giving those LESS popular institutions the money the have lost as a result?
Domestic students only pay a fraction of what overseas students stump up. The finances just don't work that way.
As to your second point, I don't know. Some less popular universities were on the brink anyway (Lampeter springs to mind, although that's a deliberate policy by the VC to concentrate services at Carmarthen and Swansea) so it may not be worth trying to save them.
Though the kinds of Universities in most trouble are probably the ones in places where levelling up is meant to be happening.
I would have thought the ones that will be hit hardest would actually be the Russell Group, ironically. They have the highest numbers of foreign students. They also have the most research money coming in from government and industry, which will probably suddenly be cut off (unless they have a medical research facility).
But - while they may lose the most, it's those universities that have the least margin that are most likely to go - the smallest and least flexible. If I had to randomly seize on a few that are facing tough times I would nominate Lampeter (although technically that's no longer a university) Gloucestershire, Falmouth, Cumbria, Thames Valley, Edgehill, and possibly Derby.
Isn't a good solution to send back all of the changed grades to teachers and ask them to asses the reality of the new grade? It should reduce grade inflation quite a bit and it also ensures there are no weird outliers like someone who has never got below a B ending up with an E or that person who got given a U because someone at the school got one previously.
Fine. But I can already tell you the two answers that will be given:
1) OFQUAL's grade is bollocks.
2) You want us to check these in detail? Then no teaching before October.
Neither of which would be acceptable answers to the government.
Hmm, there will be a lot of B to C or C to D changes that are valid, in fact I'd probably go as far as saying accept all of the single grade changes and have a teacher review of just the two or more grade changes, which do seem the most unfair. That alone brings the number down to something manageable.
That's probably a fair compromise. The double downgrades are the real problem here I think. If I'd been under this system I would have avoided a D in chemistry. Just couldn't get on with organic in particular. Think I'd have been assessed a C though.
Failure to publish results on Thursday will confirm that OFQUALK screwed up the A level results (I'll leave the K typo as it's reminds me of the whelk stall they equally couldn't run).
Isn't a good solution to send back all of the changed grades to teachers and ask them to asses the reality of the new grade? It should reduce grade inflation quite a bit and it also ensures there are no weird outliers like someone who has never got below a B ending up with an E or that person who got given a U because someone at the school got one previously.
Possibly - if that had happened weeks ago. The schools submitted the info at the end of May.
Not now - and remember that a key problem is that some schools were more optimistic than others. They should have filtered out the schools which were most optimistic (based on the school`s previous record) and asked them to look again. But, as I say, too late now.
Failure to publish results on Thursday will confirm that OFQUALK screwed up the A level results (I'll leave the K typo as it's reminds me of the whelk stall they equally couldn't run).
This is going to be like Cummings all over again, isn’t it? Lots of hand-wringing “I share your pain” tweets but f*** all action.
Yes. This is where the Presidential trend in our politics has taken us - Parliament, which is supposed to hold government to account is increasingly toothless, and so MPs can say anything because they don't have the power to turn words into action and so don't have to take responsibility for providing an alternative.
So everyone opposes the unpopular status quo, but nothing changes. It's going to do massive damage in the long-run to trust in the democratic process.
Isn't a good solution to send back all of the changed grades to teachers and ask them to asses the reality of the new grade? It should reduce grade inflation quite a bit and it also ensures there are no weird outliers like someone who has never got below a B ending up with an E or that person who got given a U because someone at the school got one previously.
Fine. But I can already tell you the two answers that will be given:
1) OFQUAL's grade is bollocks.
2) You want us to check these in detail? Then no teaching before October.
Neither of which would be acceptable answers to the government.
Hmm, there will be a lot of B to C or C to D changes that are valid, in fact I'd probably go as far as saying accept all of the single grade changes and have a teacher review of just the two or more grade changes, which do seem the most unfair. That alone brings the number down to something manageable.
That's probably a fair compromise. The double downgrades are the real problem here I think.
Which why would you accept the single grade changes.
ABB gets you into a Russell group University BCC and chances are you are in a second tier place if you are lucky and all those grade changes are single grades.
Heck BBB might be enough for you to lose that university place when the it's the wrong subject being downgraded.
This is going to be like Cummings all over again, isn’t it? Lots of hand-wringing “I share your pain” tweets but f*** all action.
Yes. This is where the Presidential trend in our politics has taken us - Parliament, which is supposed to hold government to account is increasingly toothless, and so MPs can say anything because they don't have the power to turn words into action and so don't have to take responsibility for providing an alternative.
So everyone opposes the unpopular status quo, but nothing changes. It's going to do massive damage in the long-run to trust in the democratic process.
I might also point out that it's similar to the dynamic that led to Brexit, only now it is being turned onto our domestic political institutions.
This is abysmal: ...The Sixth Form Colleges Association (SFCA) said it looked at 65,000 exam entries in 41 subjects from sixth form colleges and found that grades were 20% lower than historic performances for similar students in those colleges....
Gives room for successful appeals in appropriate cases. Unlike Scotland which started with a higher pass rate than normal and then went up, way up, from there beyond any credibility threshold.
As ever they will will be dragged kicking and screaming to follow the Scottish lead, happening a lot now. Boris needs to phone Nicola for help prior to making a mess of things.
The implication of that is that Nicola has a satisfactory solution. She doesn't.
This is going to be like Cummings all over again, isn’t it? Lots of hand-wringing “I share your pain” tweets but f*** all action.
Yes. This is where the Presidential trend in our politics has taken us - Parliament, which is supposed to hold government to account is increasingly toothless, and so MPs can say anything because they don't have the power to turn words into action and so don't have to take responsibility for providing an alternative.
So everyone opposes the unpopular status quo, but nothing changes. It's going to do massive damage in the long-run to trust in the democratic process.
We had Keir here on Thursday (our former MP is now something senior with him).
Watching our local MP compete is entertaining - he was begging for information on facebook as the students replied - we told Keir on Thursday you are 2 days late....
Step 1) Mandate that all conditional offers from universities and technical colleges for British citizens and residents will be made unconditional. Solves the issue for anyone staying in (British) education. Any duds that slip through can come out in the wash of First Year exams.
Step 2) If necessary bung some extra cash the universities way. They are going to need a bail out without the foreign (Chinese) students anyway.
Step 3) Declare 2020 null and void for A Level unless you have taken the exam. Offer an exam in both autumn and spring, with a generous one off educational grant to anyone who defers going on the dole to instead complete their studies. Special tuition for those who want it.
Step 4) Said exams if necessary to be held in requisitioned conference facilities with the million person volunteer army to help oversea on the day.
Step 5) GCSEs cancelled this year, just like when Voldemort killed that kid in Harry Potter. In the grand scheme, on well.
Step 6) Hysteria to be dialled down a notch. Cv-19 is thankfully not the plague. School to be mandatory rather than optional from here on in.
Personally I see this as one of the more easily solvable problems caused by the lockdown. Money has been spaffed about to help all of pensioners (qe to support stock market bubble), property owners (stamp holidays), small business owners (no questions asked grants and govt backed loans) and workers (furlough). What about some love for the poor sods who aren’t at all risk from this disease and have had their life chances stunted in a final spiteful act by the over 60s?
A shame we don’t have another few Rishi’s knocking about the make up the numbers in the rest of Cabinet.
Isn't a good solution to send back all of the changed grades to teachers and ask them to asses the reality of the new grade? It should reduce grade inflation quite a bit and it also ensures there are no weird outliers like someone who has never got below a B ending up with an E or that person who got given a U because someone at the school got one previously.
Fine. But I can already tell you the two answers that will be given:
1) OFQUAL's grade is bollocks.
2) You want us to check these in detail? Then no teaching before October.
Neither of which would be acceptable answers to the government.
Hmm, there will be a lot of B to C or C to D changes that are valid, in fact I'd probably go as far as saying accept all of the single grade changes and have a teacher review of just the two or more grade changes, which do seem the most unfair. That alone brings the number down to something manageable.
That's probably a fair compromise. The double downgrades are the real problem here I think.
Which why would you accept the single grade changes.
ABB gets you into a Russell group University BCC and chances are you are in a second tier place if you are lucky and all those grade changes are single grades.
Heck BBB might be enough for you to lose that university place when the it's the wrong subject being downgraded.
That's for the Universities and pupils to decide. Aren't there a certain number of places to fill also ? Generally deflated or inflated grades won't change that. If they're all inflated it's detrimental to next and the previous years' cohort if there's some cross year applying for the same spot.
Step 1) Mandate that all conditional offers from universities and technical colleges for British citizens and residents will be made unconditional. Solves the issue for anyone staying in (British) education. Any duds that slip through can come out in the wash of First Year exams.
Step 2) If necessary bung some extra cash the universities way. They are going to need a bail out without the foreign (Chinese) students anyway.
Step 3) Declare 2020 null and void for A Level unless you have taken the exam. Offer an exam in both autumn and spring, with a generous one off educational grant to anyone who defers going on the dole to instead complete their studies. Special tuition for those who want it.
Step 4) Said exams if necessary to be held in requisitioned conference facilities with the million person volunteer army to help oversea on the day.
Step 5) GCSEs cancelled this year, just like when Voldemort killed that kid in Harry Potter. In the grand scheme, on well.
Step 6) Hysteria to be dialled down a notch. Cv-19 is thankfully not the plague. School to be mandatory rather than optional from here on in.
Personally I see this as one of the more easily solvable problems caused by the lockdown. Money has been spaffed about to help all of pensioners (qe to support stock market bubble), property owners (stamp holidays), small business owners (no questions asked grants and govt backed loans) and workers (furlough). What about some love for the poor sods who aren’t at all risk from this disease and have had their life chances stunted in a final spiteful act by the over 60s?
A shame we don’t have another few Rishi’s knocking about the make up the numbers in the rest of Cabinet.
Step 1) Mandate that all conditional offers from universities and technical colleges for British citizens and residents will be made unconditional. Solves the issue for anyone staying in (British) education. Any duds that slip through can come out in the wash of First Year exams.
Step 2) If necessary bung some extra cash the universities way. They are going to need a bail out without the foreign (Chinese) students anyway.
Step 3) Declare 2020 null and void for A Level unless you have taken the exam. Offer an exam in both autumn and spring, with a generous one off educational grant to anyone who defers going on the dole to instead complete their studies. Special tuition for those who want it.
Step 4) Said exams if necessary to be held in requisitioned conference facilities with the million person volunteer army to help oversea on the day.
Step 5) GCSEs cancelled this year, just like when Voldemort killed that kid in Harry Potter. In the grand scheme, on well.
Step 6) Hysteria to be dialled down a notch. Cv-19 is thankfully not the plague. School to be mandatory rather than optional from here on in.
Personally I see this as one of the more easily solvable problems caused by the lockdown. Money has been spaffed about to help all of pensioners (qe to support stock market bubble), property owners (stamp holidays), small business owners (no questions asked grants and govt backed loans) and workers (furlough). What about some love for the poor sods who aren’t at all risk from this disease and have had their life chances stunted in a final spiteful act by the over 60s?
A shame we don’t have another few Rishi’s knocking about the make up the numbers in the rest of Cabinet.
This is going to be like Cummings all over again, isn’t it? Lots of hand-wringing “I share your pain” tweets but f*** all action.
Yes. This is where the Presidential trend in our politics has taken us - Parliament, which is supposed to hold government to account is increasingly toothless, and so MPs can say anything because they don't have the power to turn words into action and so don't have to take responsibility for providing an alternative.
So everyone opposes the unpopular status quo, but nothing changes. It's going to do massive damage in the long-run to trust in the democratic process.
Parliament also has itself to blame (in part) by voting not to sit and have long holidays instead.
Our democratic institutions - and such checks and balances as we have - are being hollowed out and will, if this trend is not reversed, end up being about as meaningful as all the flummery that happens when HMQ opens Parliament.
This is going to be like Cummings all over again, isn’t it? Lots of hand-wringing “I share your pain” tweets but f*** all action.
Yes. This is where the Presidential trend in our politics has taken us - Parliament, which is supposed to hold government to account is increasingly toothless, and so MPs can say anything because they don't have the power to turn words into action and so don't have to take responsibility for providing an alternative.
So everyone opposes the unpopular status quo, but nothing changes. It's going to do massive damage in the long-run to trust in the democratic process.
I'm hopeful there will be a reversion but it doesn't help that Parliament is on holiday for a month. If it wasn't then there might be far more urgency to sort this out before PMQs on Wedensday.
My son is back to school today. One of his pieces of "homework" over the summer was an entry into an economics essay competition comparing the effects of the Black Death and Covid.
Although there are some surprising similarities the major difference is the scale. When I was a lad the general presumption was that 1/3 of the world (ie Europe) died as a result of the Black Death. The view from historians now seems to be that this was based on serious under estimates of where the population stood pre-plague and it was in fact more like 50-60% of the population who died in the various waves.
Which does rather put the 1-2% of Covid into perspective, doesn't it?
Especially when you consider the vast majority of those killed by covid would never had made it in life long enough to be killed by covid.
They would have died due to low life expectancy rates or from lack of treatment for the c0-morbidities they have.
Even by your quite low standards, that doesn’t seem to make sense.
Incidentally, did you know that statistically the most dangerous human activity is breathing? Everyone who breathes, dies.
It really is quite amazing that after such a long time so many people are so ignorant of what COVID is and who it affects.
You said the majority of those killed by Covid would not have lived long enough to die of it.
Which is an effect of this virus I will admit I was unaware of.
Its absolutely true. The numbers say yu have got to be pretty ill and old to die from COVID essentially. Over 80 with at least one co-morbodity.
In the middle ages, in case you were wondering, the was no such thing as managing illnesses like hypertension, heart disease and diabetes. Chaucer strangely doesn't refer to transplant surgery in the Canterbury tales.
No the numbers don't say that.
The numbers say that with our healthcare, and with our treatments you are more likely to be pretty old and ill to die. But younger people especially those with co-morbidities are possible to die too even with our healthcare looking after them - and @ydoethur is right comorbidities and ill health were rife then.
With the absence of any antibiotics or medicine then young people with TB (a major issue then) or some other comorbidities could have been slaughtered in vast numbers then.
There’s plenty of places in the world with only a pretty Middle Ages standard of healthcare available to most people and with young populations. .
I'm sorry this is just rubbish. You obviously have no idea of medicine in the middle ages.
There are certainy many places in the world which have no money for good medicines and equipment, but decent knowledge of medicine is almost everywhere. Even if rural developing areas are only using early 20th century medicine practices (which I doubt) they are still centuries ahead of middle ages medicine.
Even the poorest countries have public health systems which make a dramatic difference in limiting the spread of infections.
Actually grammar schools seem to have been one of the main losers from the algo, second only to 6th form colleges/FE. Presumably they don't have the money to run a lot of small subject groups (their exam performance comes from selective intake not from more money) and so didn't benefit from the small subject group uplift.
This is abysmal: ...The Sixth Form Colleges Association (SFCA) said it looked at 65,000 exam entries in 41 subjects from sixth form colleges and found that grades were 20% lower than historic performances for similar students in those colleges....
Gives room for successful appeals in appropriate cases. Unlike Scotland which started with a higher pass rate than normal and then went up, way up, from there beyond any credibility threshold.
As ever they will will be dragged kicking and screaming to follow the Scottish lead, happening a lot now. Boris needs to phone Nicola for help prior to making a mess of things.
The implication of that is that Nicola has a satisfactory solution. She doesn't.
She has the least unsatisfactory solution. Which admittedly is not quite the same thing, but what would you do?
Ofqual blames government 'policy changes every 12 hours' for A-level exam chaos
which rather sums up this government, badly thought out re-action due to the impact of the previously (badly thought out) action
And the buck-passing now begins.
I get the feeling OFQUAL are now in a blind panic. They have been shown as more naked than the Emperor, and they are wondering if their jobs are about to go.
By the end of the week Dido Harding will probably be in charge of a new educaiton and exams body.
Ofqual blames government 'policy changes every 12 hours' for A-level exam chaos
which rather sums up this government, badly thought out re-action due to the impact of the previously (badly thought out) action
And the buck-passing now begins.
I get the feeling OFQUAL are now in a blind panic. They have been shown as more naked than the Emperor, and they are wondering if their jobs are about to go.
By the end of the week Dido Harding will probably be in charge of a new educaiton and exams body.
Probably with that spelling, too.
Add an L to her name.
That would symbolise this was an enormous cock up.
The site has been hacked to "Palatial"betting again. Paging @rcs1000
Earlier in this thread @rcs1000 commented that it is on his to do list.
Where are people seeing "Palatial"? I'm not (on my trusty 2014 MacBook).
On the banner of the political betting wordpress website - which may be cached so you may or may not see it.
Being honest @rcs1000 is correct here, all poster details are stored in vanilla, the wordpress site is nowadays just a content management system that hosts the articles for which I suspect only 3 or 4 people have accounts and need access.
Also wordpress is so popular that it really is the preferred target for hackers as so many wordpress plugins provide possible access points.
The question is why the other three governments do not adopt Scotland's approach
Becasue it is daft, vast grade inflation helps no one
Don’t we demand better teaching at all levels? Isn’t the outcome of better teaching and exam focus an improve not in grades? How do you separate Grade inflation from genuine improvements?
The question is why the other three governments do not adopt Scotland's approach
Becasue it is daft, vast grade inflation helps no one
It's the least bad solution.
Have you got a less bad solution that doesn't result in some students getting worse grades than they should have got?
No I haven't , but giving people A who would have got C is not fair on those who have A and would have got A. If there was an easy fair solution to this then the Government would be doing it.
The question is why the other three governments do not adopt Scotland's approach
Becasue it is daft, vast grade inflation helps no one
It's the least bad solution.
Have you got a less bad solution that doesn't result in some students getting worse grades than they should have got?
No I haven't , but giving people A who would have got C is not fair on those who have A and would have got A. If there was an easy fair solution to this then the Government would be doing it.
You are accusing Teachers and Head teachers there of being unprofessional.
And the question is who is being unprofessional here - the teachers who when asked to predict the grade students would get gave them a grade or the computer system that decided that the student actually deserved a U because someone had a mental breakdown 2 years ago.
This is going to be like Cummings all over again, isn’t it? Lots of hand-wringing “I share your pain” tweets but f*** all action.
Yes. This is where the Presidential trend in our politics has taken us - Parliament, which is supposed to hold government to account is increasingly toothless, and so MPs can say anything because they don't have the power to turn words into action and so don't have to take responsibility for providing an alternative.
So everyone opposes the unpopular status quo, but nothing changes. It's going to do massive damage in the long-run to trust in the democratic process.
I'm hopeful there will be a reversion but it doesn't help that Parliament is on holiday for a month. If it wasn't then there might be far more urgency to sort this out before PMQs on Wedensday.
A country run by the performance of two individuals at an artificial, superficial farce called PMQ’s shows how poor this democracy is.
The question is why the other three governments do not adopt Scotland's approach
Becasue it is daft, vast grade inflation helps no one
It's the least bad solution.
Have you got a less bad solution that doesn't result in some students getting worse grades than they should have got?
No I haven't , but giving people A who would have got C is not fair on those who have A and would have got A. If there was an easy fair solution to this then the Government would be doing it.
The question is why the other three governments do not adopt Scotland's approach
Becasue it is daft, vast grade inflation helps no one
It's the least bad solution.
Have you got a less bad solution that doesn't result in some students getting worse grades than they should have got?
Autumn exams, Max's solution of going back to the school, bumping up double downgrades to single...
Who is going to help students prepare for those Autumn exams and how do you cope with the people who could afford for private exam prep and those who can't
Especially as those who can afford it have already won due to the small cohort bump...
The question is why the other three governments do not adopt Scotland's approach
Becasue it is daft, vast grade inflation helps no one
It's the least bad solution.
Have you got a less bad solution that doesn't result in some students getting worse grades than they should have got?
No I haven't , but giving people A who would have got C is not fair on those who have A and would have got A. If there was an easy fair solution to this then the Government would be doing it.
If you haven't got a fairer solution then we need to do the fairest solution possible - which is the teacher's grades.
Giving a C to someone who should have got a C is more unfair to that person than giving an A to someone who should have got a C is to everyone else.
This is abysmal: ...The Sixth Form Colleges Association (SFCA) said it looked at 65,000 exam entries in 41 subjects from sixth form colleges and found that grades were 20% lower than historic performances for similar students in those colleges....
Gives room for successful appeals in appropriate cases. Unlike Scotland which started with a higher pass rate than normal and then went up, way up, from there beyond any credibility threshold.
As ever they will will be dragged kicking and screaming to follow the Scottish lead, happening a lot now. Boris needs to phone Nicola for help prior to making a mess of things.
The implication of that is that Nicola has a satisfactory solution. She doesn't.
She has the least unsatisfactory solution. Which admittedly is not quite the same thing, but what would you do?
Not seen or heard anything that comes as close to being a good solution , especially from the brains trust down south. Only unhappy people in Scotland are the Tory MSP's/MP's who are pig sick that yet again the SNP do th right thing and deliberately make themselves popular as a result.
The question is why the other three governments do not adopt Scotland's approach
Becasue it is daft, vast grade inflation helps no one
It's the least bad solution.
Have you got a less bad solution that doesn't result in some students getting worse grades than they should have got?
No I haven't , but giving people A who would have got C is not fair on those who have A and would have got A. If there was an easy fair solution to this then the Government would be doing it.
Comments
It's a theory that I've been musing on for a while.
Long ago, politicians ran election campaigns. Sometimes they did it well (say, Conservatives in 1992, or Labour in 1997), sometimes they did it badly (say, Labour 1983 or Conservatives 2001). And the ability to run an election campaign was a proxy for how fit a party was to govern.
If they could get thousands of doorsteppers to go out and doorstep, it implied they had a message which was coherent and understandable. It showed they could manage logistics and communications.
If they had a decent number of ministers who could answer difficult questions from journalists, it showed there was a plan and enough people who understood it.
Yes it was artificial, but it worked as a decent proxy. Think about the early series of the Apprentice, when it was still good. No, the tasks weren't realistic, but in general the people who were good at business did better than the ones who weren't. And it worked for some as a learning experience.
At some point, the role of campaigner got decoupled from that of politician. It reached its apogee in 2019, but it's been happening for a while. By outsourcing the campaign to the writers of memes, the parties can't find out who is good and bad at politics, and neither can the public. So we get idiots in government. The insecurity of this PM, driving away anyone with independent thoughts, can't help, but there might be a structural problem as well.
Ofqual blames government 'policy changes every 12 hours' for A-level exam chaos
which rather sums up this government, badly thought out re-action due to the impact of the previously (badly thought out) action
a) the ban on taking extra students can be suspended this year
b) other posters have suggested that the more popular universities would welcome more domestic students
But my question is to those saying the problem would be for the less popular universities LOSING too many students if everyone is allowed to take up their first choice offer. Can this problem not be solved by just giving those LESS popular institutions the money the have lost as a result?
The [US Postal Service's patent] application is reported as filed on February 7, 2020, and the invention is described as, “A voting system that can use the security of blockchain and the mail to provide a reliable voting system. A registered voter receives a computer readable code in the mail and confirms identity and confirms correct ballot information in an election. The system separates voter identification and votes to ensure vote anonymity, and stores votes on a distributed ledger in a blockchain.”
Chief among Trump’s complaints against mail-in voting are doubts about whether or not the person whose name is on the ballot actually cast the vote, and whether or not the ballot was tampered with after it was sent. In both instances blockchain offers tantalizing possible solutions. Blockchain identity services are already being widely developed and by moving the vote to a shared, distributed ledger, the votes would transmit almost instantly, drastically reducing the ballot’s vulnerability to tampering.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbrett/2020/08/13/us-post-counters-trump-attacks-on-mail-in-voting-with-a-new-blockchain-patent/
I get the feeling OFQUAL are now in a blind panic. They have been shown as more naked than the Emperor, and they are wondering if their jobs are about to go.
Thus they have come up with a system to generate exam results in the absence of people taking exams.
https://www.rferl.org/a/calls-for-strikes-in-belarus-keep-pressure-on-lukashenka-after-huge-minsk-rally/30787556.html
In my world all I actually care about is what you know regarding computer software that changes every week. Being honest I don't even care about industry certifications...
As to your second point, I don't know. Some less popular universities were on the brink anyway (Lampeter springs to mind, although that's a deliberate policy by the VC to concentrate services at Carmarthen and Swansea) so it may not be worth trying to save them.
The key difference between Lukashenko and Maduro seems to be that Maduro at least pretends to be a patriot even if he isn't.
Why people want to go to University to do a non-job related degree is beyond me. Get in mountains of debt and have a slightly improved chance to get a job or do an Apprenticeship, get paid to learn and after 4 years come out with a trade for life (And earn £40,000 pa by the time you are 21)
1) OFQUAL's grade is bollocks.
2) You want us to check these in detail? Then no teaching before October.
Neither of which would be acceptable answers to the government.
But once again it isn't possible because that required being pro-active and most people aren't bright enough to do that,
Instead, they simply chucked out the individual centre assessed grades (except in the case of small cohorts), and came up with some roundabout way of awarding grades based on the performance of the results of different students in the previous three years.
The legal case against them claims that this was outside of their powers, as what they were doing wasn't standardisation of grades at all, but rather creation of results by extrapolation from historic records.
But - while they may lose the most, it's those universities that have the least margin that are most likely to go - the smallest and least flexible. If I had to randomly seize on a few that are facing tough times I would nominate Lampeter (although technically that's no longer a university) Gloucestershire, Falmouth, Cumbria, Thames Valley, Edgehill, and possibly Derby.
If I'd been under this system I would have avoided a D in chemistry. Just couldn't get on with organic in particular. Think I'd have been assessed a C though.
Not now - and remember that a key problem is that some schools were more optimistic than others. They should have filtered out the schools which were most optimistic (based on the school`s previous record) and asked them to look again. But, as I say, too late now.
So everyone opposes the unpopular status quo, but nothing changes. It's going to do massive damage in the long-run to trust in the democratic process.
ABB gets you into a Russell group University BCC and chances are you are in a second tier place if you are lucky and all those grade changes are single grades.
Heck BBB might be enough for you to lose that university place when the it's the wrong subject being downgraded.
He's now Dominic Ra*a*a
Watching our local MP compete is entertaining - he was begging for information on facebook as the students replied - we told Keir on Thursday you are 2 days late....
That's Billy Root of Glamorgan, of course.
The question is why the other three governments do not adopt Scotland's approach
Our democratic institutions - and such checks and balances as we have - are being hollowed out and will, if this trend is not reversed, end up being about as meaningful as all the flummery that happens when HMQ opens Parliament.
Have you got a less bad solution that doesn't result in some students getting worse grades than they should have got?
That would symbolise this was an enormous cock up.
Have a good morning.
Being honest @rcs1000 is correct here, all poster details are stored in vanilla, the wordpress site is nowadays just a content management system that hosts the articles for which I suspect only 3 or 4 people have accounts and need access.
Also wordpress is so popular that it really is the preferred target for hackers as so many wordpress plugins provide possible access points.
And the question is who is being unprofessional here - the teachers who when asked to predict the grade students would get gave them a grade or the computer system that decided that the student actually deserved a U because someone had a mental breakdown 2 years ago.
Especially as those who can afford it have already won due to the small cohort bump...
Giving a C to someone who should have got a C is more unfair to that person than giving an A to someone who should have got a C is to everyone else.
Benefit of the doubt should go with the student.