They had to clear the decks so that they get on using the schoolkids to infect each other (and hopefully not granny). The drive for backdoor herd immunity is a strong one it appears.
How many years ought children to stay sat at home then?
Yep but one that has allowed a week to pass during which Universities have created a bigger mess through clearing.
Thankfully it doesn't impact me as 1 twin was always retaking year 13 and the other got where she wanted and now has the grades I expected her to get..
What about the 1% whose algorithm grade was HIGHER than the CAG?
They get to keep them according to the announcement.
So do I assume that when the GCSE results come out that pupils will be provided with the algorithm grade and the CAG, or do you think pupils will only ever know the higher?
The daily Covid figures have been (partially) updated.
Total new deaths: 3
The UK hospital patient total is still stuck, due to lack of complete figures from all four nations since the 13th, but the English datum appears to have plateaued just below 600, which is something of a concern.
600 is 0.6 patients per hospital. Most hospitals have 800 beds. And this is Covid postive patients, not necessarily Covid ill patients
Labour backed this system in Wales that they run and gave no criticism of it until its issues were already apparent. Being Captain Hindsight doesn't make you big or clever.
They had to clear the decks so that they get on using the schoolkids to infect each other (and hopefully not granny). The drive for backdoor herd immunity is a strong one it appears.
How many years ought children to stay sat at home then?
It's what Tegnell pretty much admitted to in private emails. Given his connections to others in the UK I have no doubt they want to do this as well. Getting this far by not mandating masks, full classes, no measures on airborne virus is just too transparent. Audacious, I admit, doing it pretty much all in plain sight.
Of course there's a broader debate to be had with some of our resident Comp Sci grads, as to how well your degree set you up for your career? My experience is poorly.
Although I work in what might broadly be called software engineering I didn't do a Comp Sci degree and have almost exclusively learnt from experience on the job.
Very little of what I use now even remotely existed when I did my degree anyway.
What I find that graduates have most difficulty with is, amazingly, in using Google to find answers to something they're struggling with, or applying a bit of logical trial and error to iterate through to a solution.
Well said LostPassword, I have also found the same.
I don't think the ability to be logical is something that can be taught, you either have it, or you don't (ironic).
I am under no doubt that learning the fundamentals of bubble sort has not helped my career whatsoever.
The dept head at our comp sci dept was C.A.R Hoare so they were on the forefront of language abstraction, object orientation, etc. I have been using what i was taughever since (supplemented by further training at IBM).
What about the 1% whose algorithm grade was HIGHER than the CAG?
They get to keep them according to the announcement.
Quite reasonable too. Benefit of the doubt should go to the pupil.
Got to the right place in the end. Called it here all along. 👨🏻🎓 ✅
This was an easy enough call because it's plainly obvious that the Gov't will always prefer a solution that makes people happy in the short term (Particularly this one), doesn't make it right though.
What should they have done then. As now we have many pupils with higher grades than they would have got, all top courses will be over subscribed, so if they had done this Thursday the same problem would have existed.
And they have only moved the story onto University places.
Much more pain to come...
And that's only a problem because this announcement wasn't made a week ago when SQA revealed the only solution.
I didn't rate the Scottish solution and nor do I this one. But if you're going to eventually go down this route better to head down the path immediately rather than a week later. A week is a very very long time in admissions at this point in the year.
What about the 1% whose algorithm grade was HIGHER than the CAG?
They get to keep them according to the announcement.
Quite reasonable too. Benefit of the doubt should go to the pupil.
Got to the right place in the end. Called it here all along. 👨🏻🎓 ✅
This was an easy enough call because it's plainly obvious that the Gov't will always prefer a solution that makes people happy in the short term (Particularly this one), doesn't make it right though.
Not u-turning is normally the easy enough call.
Acknowledging when you get things wrong was the right thing to do here. The algorithm did not give accurate grades to all pupils, getting an average right isn't enough if you're downgrading some pupils below what they should have got.
A sanity check for schools that looked like outliers and basically saying to teachers "are you sure, have another look please" would have been better than just overruling outcomes by an algorithm.
Does anyone know whether A level pupils have been given the centre assessed grades? I assume so, or how would they know that the CAG grade was higher?
On reflection, why did schools give this information out? Seems unnecessarily provocative?
I`m wondering whether the pupils I`m listening to now on the radio who are delighted their getting their predicted grades are mixing up the CAG with the predicted grade for Uni. They could be the same, of course, but not necessarily so. As one poster has said this morning it is possible that a predicted grade is higher to help the pupil get the uni they wanted.
Yep but one that has allowed a week to pass during which Universities have created a bigger mess through clearing.
Thankfully it doesn't impact me as 1 twin was always retaking year 13 and the other got where she wanted and now has the grades I expected her to get..
Indeed should have been done a week ago but GCSE disaster would have made last week look like a minor issue. Hopefully that is now avoided.
Does anyone know whether A level pupils have been given the centre assessed grades? I assume so, or how would they know that the CAG grade was higher?
On reflection, why did schools give this information out? Seems unnecessarily provocative?
I`m wondering whether the pupils I`m listening to now on the radio who are delighted their getting their predicted grades are mixing up the CAG with the predicted grade for Uni. They could be the same, of course, but not necessarily so. As one poster has said this morning it is possible that a predicted grade is higher to help the pupil get the uni they wanted.
I think only the aggregated statistics were released, not on an individual basis?
Because this applies to GCSE grades as well, one side effect that could come back to bite is that over-generous teacher predictions (by some, not all) could lead to many more students reaching the threshold to do A-level courses. It's likely that some of those who scrape the required GCSE grades could struggle on A levels. Expect retention and results to decline on A-level courses by 2022.
Does anyone know whether A level pupils have been given the centre assessed grades? I assume so, or how would they know that the CAG grade was higher?
On reflection, why did schools give this information out? Seems unnecessarily provocative?
I`m wondering whether the pupils I`m listening to now on the radio who are delighted their getting their predicted grades are mixing up the CAG with the predicted grade for Uni. They could be the same, of course, but not necessarily so. As one poster has said this morning it is possible that a predicted grade is higher to help the pupil get the uni they wanted.
Many schools gave out the CAG on Thursday with the A-Level results.
What should they have done then. As now we have many pupils with higher grades than they would have got, all top courses will be over subscribed, so if they had done this Thursday the same problem would have existed.
10 out of 10 for the Government performing the U-Turn. Absolutely the right thing to do.
0 out of 10 for the politics of their performance and for getting into this mess in the first place. They left it far far too late to do this and there are no valid excuses for that.
Williamson should be banished to the farthest corners of the back benches for the rest of this century.
What about the 1% whose algorithm grade was HIGHER than the CAG?
They get to keep them according to the announcement.
Quite reasonable too. Benefit of the doubt should go to the pupil.
Got to the right place in the end. Called it here all along. 👨🏻🎓 ✅
This was an easy enough call because it's plainly obvious that the Gov't will always prefer a solution that makes people happy in the short term (Particularly this one), doesn't make it right though.
Agreed, but this was always the likely outcome I guess following the Scottish decision - which sunk the government. Another devolution ramification.
5. Announcement that WhateverAgencyX is unfit for purpose and no one can see why on earth it was set up (other than the Conservative Minister who, in fact, did set it up).
Does anyone know whether A level pupils have been given the centre assessed grades? I assume so, or how would they know that the CAG grade was higher?
On reflection, why did schools give this information out? Seems unnecessarily provocative?
I`m wondering whether the pupils I`m listening to now on the radio who are delighted their getting their predicted grades are mixing up the CAG with the predicted grade for Uni. They could be the same, of course, but not necessarily so. As one poster has said this morning it is possible that a predicted grade is higher to help the pupil get the uni they wanted.
Many schools gave out the CAG on Thursday with the A-Level results.
Should they have been allowed to do this? Red rag to a bull, surely?
Given that any mechanism - teacher assessment, computer formula, or combination of the two - was always going to be an inadequate guesstimate and unfair relative to actual exams, I don't know why somebody didn't think of a simple, logical compromise on standardisation.
Why not apply the dreaded algorithm to determine who should be marked up or down, BUT limit the adjustment of grades to just one level above or below that recommended by the teacher? That would've dealt with most of the grade inflation conundrum, and eliminated all the most egregious cases of heavy downgrading (some perfectly competent students ending up with U's, for example) into the bargain.
What about the 1% whose algorithm grade was HIGHER than the CAG?
They get to keep them according to the announcement.
Quite reasonable too. Benefit of the doubt should go to the pupil.
Got to the right place in the end. Called it here all along. 👨🏻🎓 ✅
This was an easy enough call because it's plainly obvious that the Gov't will always prefer a solution that makes people happy in the short term (Particularly this one), doesn't make it right though.
Agreed, but this was always the likely outcome I guess following the Scottish decision - which sunk the government. Another devolution ramification.
Once SQA announced it the end result was inevitable.
Does anyone know whether A level pupils have been given the centre assessed grades? I assume so, or how would they know that the CAG grade was higher?
On reflection, why did schools give this information out? Seems unnecessarily provocative?
I`m wondering whether the pupils I`m listening to now on the radio who are delighted their getting their predicted grades are mixing up the CAG with the predicted grade for Uni. They could be the same, of course, but not necessarily so. As one poster has said this morning it is possible that a predicted grade is higher to help the pupil get the uni they wanted.
I think only the aggregated statistics were released, not on an individual basis?
Daughter's school provided individual breakdowns of CAGs, Mocks and final A levels.
I'm already seeing some students wanting to appeal their CAGs now they realise it wasn't just the now dead algorithm that scored them lower than their UCAS predictions (which remember are done way back at the start of Yr 13) but often schools had lowered their CAGs first before the algorithm hit them again...
As for Uni admissions officers..... all the best to them!
What should they have done then. As now we have many pupils with higher grades than they would have got, all top courses will be over subscribed, so if they had done this Thursday the same problem would have existed.
What should they have done then. As now we have many pupils with higher grades than they would have got, all top courses will be over subscribed, so if they had done this Thursday the same problem would have existed.
Maybe they should have held exams ....
Yep. Exams are, by their nature, socially distant.
What should they have done then. As now we have many pupils with higher grades than they would have got, all top courses will be over subscribed, so if they had done this Thursday the same problem would have existed.
Well one fundamental fact of a system is that in a single year all A grades, B grades etc in a particular subject in a particular year should be of equal worth. If the decision to go with the higher of either teacher or algorithmed grades is made pre-release then no one can tell (For sure) whether the grade was a result of teacher or algorithm. Right now, the algorithmed grades have taken precedence in terms of filling courses when they ought to be pari passu with the teacher assessed grades.
Does anyone know whether A level pupils have been given the centre assessed grades? I assume so, or how would they know that the CAG grade was higher?
On reflection, why did schools give this information out? Seems unnecessarily provocative?
I`m wondering whether the pupils I`m listening to now on the radio who are delighted their getting their predicted grades are mixing up the CAG with the predicted grade for Uni. They could be the same, of course, but not necessarily so. As one poster has said this morning it is possible that a predicted grade is higher to help the pupil get the uni they wanted.
I think only the aggregated statistics were released, not on an individual basis?
Daughter's school provided individual breakdowns of CAGs, Mocks and final A levels.
I'm already seeing some students wanting to appeal their CAGs now they realise it wasn't just the now dead algorithm that scored them lower than their UCAS predictions (which remember are done way back at the start of Yr 13) but often schools had lowered their CAGs first before the algorithm hit them again...
As for Uni admissions officers..... all the best to them!
+1 for the last bit, I really wouldn't want to be them as they now need to solve the impossible,
Have the Government announced any exception to their previous rules regarding student numbers?
OFQUAL did the job they were set, should have been Williamson apologising today - instead just threw Taylor and OFQUAL under the bus. Disgraceful.
No, I think the blame can be shared. OFQUAL screwed up even within their remit (whether it came from Williamson or whether they advocated for it themselves at the outset).
What should they have done then. As now we have many pupils with higher grades than they would have got, all top courses will be over subscribed, so if they had done this Thursday the same problem would have existed.
What should have happened is some multi-step thinking, like the French did.
It will have been obvious for some months that the 2020 results were likely to be on the high side and a bit random, so the October 2020 admissions process (which started nearly a year ago, when Covid-19 wasn't even a twinkle in a bat's eye) wasn't going to play out as normal.
So you get the VCs on Zoom, throw some money at them (like Rishi's Dishes, peanuts in the grand scheme of things) to quietly create bulge places, and to cover the losses at the Unis at the bottom of the food chain. Given time to plan, that's doable.
What you don't do is pretend you can make it normal- even if the overall grades had been held down, they wouldn't have matched the offers previously made at a personal level. You don't then dig your heels in for a few days before running up the white flag.
There's some bad luck in this fiasco. But bad judgement has made it far worse.
Does anyone know whether A level pupils have been given the centre assessed grades? I assume so, or how would they know that the CAG grade was higher?
On reflection, why did schools give this information out? Seems unnecessarily provocative?
I`m wondering whether the pupils I`m listening to now on the radio who are delighted their getting their predicted grades are mixing up the CAG with the predicted grade for Uni. They could be the same, of course, but not necessarily so. As one poster has said this morning it is possible that a predicted grade is higher to help the pupil get the uni they wanted.
I think only the aggregated statistics were released, not on an individual basis?
That`s what I thought. In which case those celebrating may be celebrating too early.
It would be interesting to know from a teacher whether some of the Uni predicted grades are likely to be higher than the particular CAG.
Does anyone know whether A level pupils have been given the centre assessed grades? I assume so, or how would they know that the CAG grade was higher?
On reflection, why did schools give this information out? Seems unnecessarily provocative?
I`m wondering whether the pupils I`m listening to now on the radio who are delighted their getting their predicted grades are mixing up the CAG with the predicted grade for Uni. They could be the same, of course, but not necessarily so. As one poster has said this morning it is possible that a predicted grade is higher to help the pupil get the uni they wanted.
Many schools gave out the CAG on Thursday with the A-Level results.
Should they have been allowed to do this? Red rag to a bull, surely?
Yes - because you could request it under GDPR regulations (alongside all other information about you that was sent to OFQUAL / exam boards).
Most sensible schools released the CAG to students to avoid having to provide anything more....
OFQUAL did the job they were set, should have been Williamson apologising today - instead just threw Taylor and OFQUAL under the bus. Disgraceful.
No, I think the blame can be shared. OFQUAL screwed up even within their remit (whether it came from Williamson or whether they advocated for it themselves at the outset).
And they have only moved the story onto University places.
Much more pain to come...
And that's only a problem because this announcement wasn't made a week ago when SQA revealed the only solution.
There would still have been a big problem as universities routinely overbook places, knowing that a proportion of the candidates will not make the grades, like airlines over booking flights.
There are other universities whose intake is largely made up of those who did not get the grades they need to go elsewhere.
What about the 1% whose algorithm grade was HIGHER than the CAG?
They get to keep them according to the announcement.
Quite reasonable too. Benefit of the doubt should go to the pupil.
Got to the right place in the end. Called it here all along. 👨🏻🎓 ✅
This was an easy enough call because it's plainly obvious that the Gov't will always prefer a solution that makes people happy in the short term (Particularly this one), doesn't make it right though.
Agreed, but this was always the likely outcome I guess following the Scottish decision - which sunk the government. Another devolution ramification.
Once SQA announced it the end result was inevitable.
I still don't accept that, but you'd have to have a Gov't willing to take on some heat and unpopularity - which it is only willing to do over Cummings employment.
It really is amazing to see so many people who advocated the long term shut down of schools now wailing about children's futures being stolen.
Incredible really.
Time for our regular reminder that almost no children have died of Covid. The latest NHS England weekly bulletin states that 20 people aged 0-19 have died after a positive Covid test in English hospitals during the entirety of the pandemic to date, and 16 of those had serious underlying health conditions.
The likelihood of a healthy child falling seriously ill from Covid is minuscule; of one actually dying, probably about the same as being struck by a lightning bolt. And still nearly all ten-and-a-half million schoolkids (the key worker offspring excepted) had to be locked up at home for half-a-year.
I don't think schools were shut primarily to protect children.
OFQUAL did the job they were set, should have been Williamson apologising today - instead just threw Taylor and OFQUAL under the bus. Disgraceful.
Ofqual was created by labour in 2008 and in 2019 Angela Rayner, labour's deputy leader, announced plans to scrap the 'deeply unfair system of teachers predictions' and yet Starmer attacks HMG for doing something he was against one year ago
What should they have done then. As now we have many pupils with higher grades than they would have got, all top courses will be over subscribed, so if they had done this Thursday the same problem would have existed.
Maybe they should have held exams ....
Yep. Exams are, by their nature, socially distant.
Once again time machines don't exist and what we know now is very different to what we knew in March.
Very emotional pupil on Sky delighted to get her predicted grade and saying an apology is enough for the upset since the issue has been fixed so quickly.
In the 24/7 news media fixing this on a Monday after the Thursday may seem like a long time but its really not that long. They tried last week the Triple Lock to avoid this, it failed, well done for doing the right thing so quickly.
What should they have done then. As now we have many pupils with higher grades than they would have got, all top courses will be over subscribed, so if they had done this Thursday the same problem would have existed.
The interesting point I am hearing from a number of friends in academia is that in fact many university courses were undersubscribed and it was known this may well be the case before this mess. There are a number of reasons for this.
1. Perhaps the most obvious is a huge drop in overseas students attending British Universities this year 2. Many British Year 13 students have looked at what is happening in universities at the moment and decided to defer a year. Why go to Uni at the moment and get a hollowed out experience with many unis saying they will run all courses online and none of the extra curricula activities available. Far better to wait a year and see if things are back to normal next September. 3. It was already known there would be a notable drop this year long before Covid as 2001/2002 was a period of notably reduced birthrate.
I had lunch today with my business partner whose real job is lecturing in Mental Care nursing at one of the Midlands university. He said that this will be the first year for his course when there is no clearing as every nursing type course is fully subscribed and they have even added a second cohort for January. But he said that the nursing courses were clearly the exception and many other courses at his university are seeing applications of well below 50% where in other years they were ver7 close to fully subscribed.
10 out of 10 for the Government performing the U-Turn. Absolutely the right thing to do.
0 out of 10 for the politics of their performance and for getting into this mess in the first place. They left it far far too late to do this and there are no valid excuses for that.
Bollocks to that. This just makes A Level grades meaningless. What’s the point in them because you can’t tell in a few years time when hiring a graduate if the person was really 3As or not? And this one off inflation disadvantages the 2018/2019/2021/2022 graduates in the first years of their career when employers still look at A Level grades.
The government seems incapable of thinking further ahead than tonight’s twitter trends.
I’d love to know if there are people in Cabinet calling these things out or if ministers are wary of stepping on toes outside their brief. I’ve seen it before in the private sector. Most of the room knowing that a committee is sleep walking into disaster but no one having the guts to speak up and say what everyone’s thinking. Which here is “no exam, no grade. Fix the consequence not the other way round”.
OFQUAL did the job they were set, should have been Williamson apologising today - instead just threw Taylor and OFQUAL under the bus. Disgraceful.
Ofqual was created by labour in 2008 and in 2019 Angela Rayner, labour's deputy leader, announced plans to scrap the 'deeply unfair system of teachers predictions' and yet Starmer attacks HMG for doing something his party was against one year ago
Starmer is great on hindsight and hypocrisy
Captain Hindsight once again ignoring that Labour endorsed this system in Wales and that the Unions endorsed this system in England.
It would be great if maybe for once Captain Hindsight could make a productive suggestion or criticism BEFORE an issue blows up.
OFQUAL did the job they were set, should have been Williamson apologising today - instead just threw Taylor and OFQUAL under the bus. Disgraceful.
Ofqual was created by labour in 2008 and in 2019 Angela Rayner, labour's deputy leader, announced plans to scrap the 'deeply unfair system of teachers predictions' and yet Starmer attacks HMG for something he was in favour of one year ago
It really is amazing to see so many people who advocated the long term shut down of schools now wailing about children's futures being stolen.
Incredible really.
Time for our regular reminder that almost no children have died of Covid. The latest NHS England weekly bulletin states that 20 people aged 0-19 have died after a positive Covid test in English hospitals during the entirety of the pandemic to date, and 16 of those had serious underlying health conditions.
The likelihood of a healthy child falling seriously ill from Covid is minuscule; of one actually dying, probably about the same as being struck by a lightning bolt. And still nearly all ten-and-a-half million schoolkids (the key worker offspring excepted) had to be locked up at home for half-a-year.
I don't think schools were shut primarily to protect children.
Indeed not. The problem was that nobody was really thinking of the welfare of the children at all.
10 out of 10 for the Government performing the U-Turn. Absolutely the right thing to do.
0 out of 10 for the politics of their performance and for getting into this mess in the first place. They left it far far too late to do this and there are no valid excuses for that.
Bollocks to that. This just makes A Level grades meaningless. What’s the point in them because you can’t tell in a few years time when hiring a graduate if the person was really 3As or not? And this one off inflation disadvantages the 2018/2019/2021/2022 graduates in the first years of their career when employers still look at A Level grades.
The government seems incapable of thinking further ahead than tonight’s twitter trends.
I’d love to know if there are people in Cabinet calling these things out or if ministers are wary of stepping on toes outside their brief. I’ve seen it before in the private sector. Most of the room knowing that a committee is sleep walking into disaster but no one having the guts to speak up and say what everyone’s thinking. Which here is “no exam, no grade. Fix the consequence not the other way round”.
You can't either way there's been no exams.
Awarding a 3 A's student 3 B's in order to bring the average down isn't a solution! How does that help?
OFQUAL did the job they were set, should have been Williamson apologising today - instead just threw Taylor and OFQUAL under the bus. Disgraceful.
Ofqual was created by labour in 2008 and in 2019 Angela Rayner, labour's deputy leader, announced plans to scrap the 'deeply unfair system of teachers predictions' and yet Starmer attacks HMG for something he was in favour of one year ago
OFQUAL did the job they were set, should have been Williamson apologising today - instead just threw Taylor and OFQUAL under the bus. Disgraceful.
Ofqual was created by labour in 2008 and in 2019 Angela Rayner, labour's deputy leader, announced plans to scrap the 'deeply unfair system of teachers predictions' and yet Starmer attacks HMG for something he was in favour of one year ago
Starmer is great on hindsight and hypocrisy
Was Starmer leader of the labour party in 2019?
He was a prominent Shadow Cabinet minister fully signed up to the policies he collectively agreed with.
10 out of 10 for the Government performing the U-Turn. Absolutely the right thing to do.
0 out of 10 for the politics of their performance and for getting into this mess in the first place. They left it far far too late to do this and there are no valid excuses for that.
Bollocks to that. This just makes A Level grades meaningless. What’s the point in them because you can’t tell in a few years time when hiring a graduate if the person was really 3As or not? And this one off inflation disadvantages the 2018/2019/2021/2022 graduates in the first years of their career when employers still look at A Level grades.
The government seems incapable of thinking further ahead than tonight’s twitter trends.
I’d love to know if there are people in Cabinet calling these things out or if ministers are wary of stepping on ties outside their brief. I’ve seen it before in the private sector. Most of the room knowing that a committee is sleep walking into disaster but no one having the guts to speak up and say what everyone’s thinking. Which here is “no exam, no grade. Fix the consequence not the other way round”.
Rubbish. A levels are a stepping stone to the next level in education or career. This argument about inflation is complete and utter bullshit. If these students are not fit for university then that will become clear when they get there just as it does in other years. But they at least deserve to be given a fair chance and what was done with the algorithm was clearly completely unfair. Everyone knew that from across the political spectrum which is why the Government was fanatically stupid not to make this change straight away.
They have taken political ineptness to a whole new level with this.
OFQUAL did the job they were set, should have been Williamson apologising today - instead just threw Taylor and OFQUAL under the bus. Disgraceful.
Ofqual was created by labour in 2008 and in 2019 Angela Rayner, labour's deputy leader, announced plans to scrap the 'deeply unfair system of teachers predictions' and yet Starmer attacks HMG for doing something he was against one year ago
Starmer is great on hindsight and hypocrisy
It doesn't matter who created it. They were given a job to do which they had to do within certain guidance. It was for the minister to make the political decision to do the right thing and revoke the regrading and he waited far too long to do that.
Very emotional pupil on Sky delighted to get her predicted grade and saying an apology is enough for the upset since the issue has been fixed so quickly.
In the 24/7 news media fixing this on a Monday after the Thursday may seem like a long time but its really not that long. They tried last week the Triple Lock to avoid this, it failed, well done for doing the right thing so quickly.
I listened to that interview and you could almost hear the disappointment from the presenter that she had not demanded Williamson's resignation
10 out of 10 for the Government performing the U-Turn. Absolutely the right thing to do.
0 out of 10 for the politics of their performance and for getting into this mess in the first place. They left it far far too late to do this and there are no valid excuses for that.
Bollocks to that. This just makes A Level grades meaningless. What’s the point in them because you can’t tell in a few years time when hiring a graduate if the person was really 3As or not? And this one off inflation disadvantages the 2018/2019/2021/2022 graduates in the first years of their career when employers still look at A Level grades.
The government seems incapable of thinking further ahead than tonight’s twitter trends.
I’d love to know if there are people in Cabinet calling these things out or if ministers are wary of stepping on toes outside their brief. I’ve seen it before in the private sector. Most of the room knowing that a committee is sleep walking into disaster but no one having the guts to speak up and say what everyone’s thinking. Which here is “no exam, no grade. Fix the consequence not the other way round”.
The government seems incapable of thinking further ahead than tonight's twitter trends.
Well said.
I have a feeling that might be its epitaph.
Of course, this scandal is as nothing to the coming winter of entrenched mass unemployment amidst a sea of debt.
OFQUAL did the job they were set, should have been Williamson apologising today - instead just threw Taylor and OFQUAL under the bus. Disgraceful.
Ofqual was created by labour in 2008 and in 2019 Angela Rayner, labour's deputy leader, announced plans to scrap the 'deeply unfair system of teachers predictions' and yet Starmer attacks HMG for something he was in favour of one year ago
Starmer is great on hindsight and hypocrisy
Was Starmer leader of the labour party in 2019?
When "your team" is having a sh*t day, it is vitally important to point the finger at the other team and hope that everyone looks the other way ...
OFQUAL did the job they were set, should have been Williamson apologising today - instead just threw Taylor and OFQUAL under the bus. Disgraceful.
Ofqual was created by labour in 2008 and in 2019 Angela Rayner, labour's deputy leader, announced plans to scrap the 'deeply unfair system of teachers predictions' and yet Starmer attacks HMG for doing something he was against one year ago
Starmer is great on hindsight and hypocrisy
The emerging story of Sir Keir.....
It is going to be tested to destruction when he tries to explain away the EHRC report on anti-semitism in Labour. Whilst he was sat in the Shadow Cabinet.
It really is amazing to see so many people who advocated the long term shut down of schools now wailing about children's futures being stolen.
Incredible really.
Time for our regular reminder that almost no children have died of Covid. The latest NHS England weekly bulletin states that 20 people aged 0-19 have died after a positive Covid test in English hospitals during the entirety of the pandemic to date, and 16 of those had serious underlying health conditions.
The likelihood of a healthy child falling seriously ill from Covid is minuscule; of one actually dying, probably about the same as being struck by a lightning bolt. And still nearly all ten-and-a-half million schoolkids (the key worker offspring excepted) had to be locked up at home for half-a-year.
I don't think schools were shut primarily to protect children.
Spot on. Schools were seen as a conduit for transmission between otherwise isolated groups of adults. If children can be carriers then it doesn't really matter whether they get it badly or not. What matters is how they transmit it.
Remember at the start of all of this lots of clever people were pointing out how previous flu epidemics have rapidly dissolved once school holidays occur.
Now as it happens it looks like in this case children are also poor carriers as well as not getting the disease themselves. But that wasn't clear at the time the original decisions to shut schools were made.
OFQUAL did the job they were set, should have been Williamson apologising today - instead just threw Taylor and OFQUAL under the bus. Disgraceful.
Ofqual was created by labour in 2008 and in 2019 Angela Rayner, labour's deputy leader, announced plans to scrap the 'deeply unfair system of teachers predictions' and yet Starmer attacks HMG for doing something he was against one year ago
Starmer is great on hindsight and hypocrisy
Well it certainly seems that Teachers predictions are unfair, just in a different way.
I think Rayner was advocating a move away from conditional offers, to post A level application.
That would at least have gotten away from the fiasco of university admissions that has suddenly arisen.
10 out of 10 for the Government performing the U-Turn. Absolutely the right thing to do.
0 out of 10 for the politics of their performance and for getting into this mess in the first place. They left it far far too late to do this and there are no valid excuses for that.
Bollocks to that. This just makes A Level grades meaningless. What’s the point in them because you can’t tell in a few years time when hiring a graduate if the person was really 3As or not? And this one off inflation disadvantages the 2018/2019/2021/2022 graduates in the first years of their career when employers still look at A Level grades.
The government seems incapable of thinking further ahead than tonight’s twitter trends.
I’d love to know if there are people in Cabinet calling these things out or if ministers are wary of stepping on toes outside their brief. I’ve seen it before in the private sector. Most of the room knowing that a committee is sleep walking into disaster but no one having the guts to speak up and say what everyone’s thinking. Which here is “no exam, no grade. Fix the consequence not the other way round”.
The grade inflation must now be continued for future years.
It will be interesting to see if those PBers who said that this year would be a one-off maintain that position.
And we have learnt various valuable things:
That another quango isn't fit for purpose. That teachers grade predictions are less reliable than an estate agent's valuation. And that, yet again, Phaemon's dog was right.
It really is amazing to see so many people who advocated the long term shut down of schools now wailing about children's futures being stolen.
Incredible really.
Time for our regular reminder that almost no children have died of Covid. The latest NHS England weekly bulletin states that 20 people aged 0-19 have died after a positive Covid test in English hospitals during the entirety of the pandemic to date, and 16 of those had serious underlying health conditions.
The likelihood of a healthy child falling seriously ill from Covid is minuscule; of one actually dying, probably about the same as being struck by a lightning bolt. And still nearly all ten-and-a-half million schoolkids (the key worker offspring excepted) had to be locked up at home for half-a-year.
I don't think schools were shut primarily to protect children.
No. The problem was that nobody was really thinking of the welfare of the children at all.
To be fair, everyone was panicking in March. Govt. realised it had been caught out badly and rushed to deal at short notice with what they saw, rightly, as a potential calamity. What they didn't do, apparently, was think about matters like exams as the situation developed.
Of course there's a broader debate to be had with some of our resident Comp Sci grads, as to how well your degree set you up for your career? My experience is poorly.
Although I work in what might broadly be called software engineering I didn't do a Comp Sci degree and have almost exclusively learnt from experience on the job.
Very little of what I use now even remotely existed when I did my degree anyway.
What I find that graduates have most difficulty with is, amazingly, in using Google to find answers to something they're struggling with, or applying a bit of logical trial and error to iterate through to a solution.
Well said LostPassword, I have also found the same.
I don't think the ability to be logical is something that can be taught, you either have it, or you don't (ironic).
I am under no doubt that learning the fundamentals of bubble sort has not helped my career whatsoever.
The fundamentals of the bubble sort taught you about algorithms though, and how the obvious way to do something isn't always very efficient.
I agree though. Google is the very useful if you are capable of distinguishing the useful results from the crap. The same goes for Stack Overflow. Some people just don't seem able to do it.
Because this applies to GCSE grades as well, one side effect that could come back to bite is that over-generous teacher predictions (by some, not all) could lead to many more students reaching the threshold to do A-level courses. It's likely that some of those who scrape the required GCSE grades could struggle on A levels. Expect retention and results to decline on A-level courses by 2022.
10 out of 10 for the Government performing the U-Turn. Absolutely the right thing to do.
0 out of 10 for the politics of their performance and for getting into this mess in the first place. They left it far far too late to do this and there are no valid excuses for that.
Bollocks to that. This just makes A Level grades meaningless. What’s the point in them because you can’t tell in a few years time when hiring a graduate if the person was really 3As or not? And this one off inflation disadvantages the 2018/2019/2021/2022 graduates in the first years of their career when employers still look at A Level grades.
The government seems incapable of thinking further ahead than tonight’s twitter trends.
I’d love to know if there are people in Cabinet calling these things out or if ministers are wary of stepping on toes outside their brief. I’ve seen it before in the private sector. Most of the room knowing that a committee is sleep walking into disaster but no one having the guts to speak up and say what everyone’s thinking. Which here is “no exam, no grade. Fix the consequence not the other way round”.
You are making the almost universal mistake of those outside education of thinking that A-levels are themselves a reliable measure of anything other than the ability to do A-levels. They are correlated with ability and understanding of a subject, but I’ve seen enough candidates underperform on the day (and some with an ability to cram for a test having done little or no work all year) to know that the difference between an A and a B is largely illusory.
And that is before you get to the inevitable foul-ups of the exam boards in a normal year.
OFQUAL did the job they were set, should have been Williamson apologising today - instead just threw Taylor and OFQUAL under the bus. Disgraceful.
Ofqual was created by labour in 2008 and in 2019 Angela Rayner, labour's deputy leader, announced plans to scrap the 'deeply unfair system of teachers predictions' and yet Starmer attacks HMG for doing something he was against one year ago
Starmer is great on hindsight and hypocrisy
It doesn't matter who created it. They were given a job to do which they had to do within certain guidance. It was for the minister to make the political decision to do the right thing and revoke the regrading and he waited far too long to do that.
I do not excuse Williamson who has been out of his depth ever since he joined the cabinet
It really is amazing to see so many people who advocated the long term shut down of schools now wailing about children's futures being stolen.
Incredible really.
Time for our regular reminder that almost no children have died of Covid. The latest NHS England weekly bulletin states that 20 people aged 0-19 have died after a positive Covid test in English hospitals during the entirety of the pandemic to date, and 16 of those had serious underlying health conditions.
The likelihood of a healthy child falling seriously ill from Covid is minuscule; of one actually dying, probably about the same as being struck by a lightning bolt. And still nearly all ten-and-a-half million schoolkids (the key worker offspring excepted) had to be locked up at home for half-a-year.
I don't think schools were shut primarily to protect children.
Spot on. Schools were seen as a conduit for transmission between otherwise isolated groups of adults. If children can be carriers then it doesn't really matter whether they get it badly or not. What matters is how they transmit it.
Remember at the start of all of this lots of clever people were pointing out how previous flu epidemics have rapidly dissolved once school holidays occur.
Now as it happens it looks like in this case children are also poor carriers as well as not getting the disease themselves. But that wasn't clear at the time the original decisions to shut schools were made.
"You may have contributed to the death of your dad and grandma but you're still healthy" isn't exactly reassuring to a child.
Do you think that mocking the government for U-turns is going to persuade them that next time there is something they ought to change their mind on they should go ahead and do it? Or might they say ‘we will get stick for this if we change our mind, so we might as well carry on doing what we are doing”?
It really is amazing to see so many people who advocated the long term shut down of schools now wailing about children's futures being stolen.
Incredible really.
Time for our regular reminder that almost no children have died of Covid. The latest NHS England weekly bulletin states that 20 people aged 0-19 have died after a positive Covid test in English hospitals during the entirety of the pandemic to date, and 16 of those had serious underlying health conditions.
The likelihood of a healthy child falling seriously ill from Covid is minuscule; of one actually dying, probably about the same as being struck by a lightning bolt. And still nearly all ten-and-a-half million schoolkids (the key worker offspring excepted) had to be locked up at home for half-a-year.
I don't think schools were shut primarily to protect children.
Spot on. Schools were seen as a conduit for transmission between otherwise isolated groups of adults. If children can be carriers then it doesn't really matter whether they get it badly or not. What matters is how they transmit it.
Remember at the start of all of this lots of clever people were pointing out how previous flu epidemics have rapidly dissolved once school holidays occur.
Now as it happens it looks like in this case children are also poor carriers as well as not getting the disease themselves. But that wasn't clear at the time the original decisions to shut schools were made.
"You may have contributed to the death of your dad and grandma but you're still healthy" isn't exactly reassuring to a child.
Indeed. I don't see how the Government could have done anything else other than shut the schools when they did given what they thought they knew at the time.
OFQUAL did the job they were set, should have been Williamson apologising today - instead just threw Taylor and OFQUAL under the bus. Disgraceful.
Ofqual was created by labour in 2008 and in 2019 Angela Rayner, labour's deputy leader, announced plans to scrap the 'deeply unfair system of teachers predictions' and yet Starmer attacks HMG for doing something he was against one year ago
Starmer is great on hindsight and hypocrisy
The emerging story of Sir Keir.....
It is going to be tested to destruction when he tries to explain away the EHRC report on anti-semitism in Labour. Whilst he was sat in the Shadow Cabinet.
The depends on what he does - I suspect those who are explicitly named within the report may not have the labour whip after publication.
It really is amazing to see so many people who advocated the long term shut down of schools now wailing about children's futures being stolen.
Incredible really.
Time for our regular reminder that almost no children have died of Covid. The latest NHS England weekly bulletin states that 20 people aged 0-19 have died after a positive Covid test in English hospitals during the entirety of the pandemic to date, and 16 of those had serious underlying health conditions.
The likelihood of a healthy child falling seriously ill from Covid is minuscule; of one actually dying, probably about the same as being struck by a lightning bolt. And still nearly all ten-and-a-half million schoolkids (the key worker offspring excepted) had to be locked up at home for half-a-year.
I don't think schools were shut primarily to protect children.
No. The problem was that nobody was really thinking of the welfare of the children at all.
To be fair, everyone was panicking in March. Govt. realised it had been caught out badly and rushed to deal at short notice with what they saw, rightly, as a potential calamity. What they didn't do, apparently, was think about matters like exams as the situation developed.
There's plenty of people who are paid to think about matters like exams.
But its easier to do nothing and let someone else take the decisions and get the blame.
10 out of 10 for the Government performing the U-Turn. Absolutely the right thing to do.
0 out of 10 for the politics of their performance and for getting into this mess in the first place. They left it far far too late to do this and there are no valid excuses for that. Williamson should be banished to the farthest corners of the back benches for the rest of this century.
Seriously, Mr Tyndall? Please think of the poor MPs who will be there until 2100...
Or perhaps you means like the chap who founded the University of London? He is still with them, I believe.
10 out of 10 for the Government performing the U-Turn. Absolutely the right thing to do.
0 out of 10 for the politics of their performance and for getting into this mess in the first place. They left it far far too late to do this and there are no valid excuses for that.
Bollocks to that. This just makes A Level grades meaningless. What’s the point in them because you can’t tell in a few years time when hiring a graduate if the person was really 3As or not? And this one off inflation disadvantages the 2018/2019/2021/2022 graduates in the first years of their career when employers still look at A Level grades.
The government seems incapable of thinking further ahead than tonight’s twitter trends.
I’d love to know if there are people in Cabinet calling these things out or if ministers are wary of stepping on toes outside their brief. I’ve seen it before in the private sector. Most of the room knowing that a committee is sleep walking into disaster but no one having the guts to speak up and say what everyone’s thinking. Which here is “no exam, no grade. Fix the consequence not the other way round”.
The government seems incapable of thinking further ahead than tonight's twitter trends.
Well said.
I have a feeling that might be its epitaph.
Of course, this scandal is as nothing to the coming winter of entrenched mass unemployment amidst a sea of debt.
wonder what the twitterati will say about that.
Starmer really should go all guns blazing and throw out from the party the Corbyns, Long Baileys and Dawn thingummybob. I won’t vote for him if those types are still in the parliamentary party, just too risky. But I suspect I and many others could be first time Labour voters if he does.
I suspect he is too timid a character for this however and Labour will lose again.
Comments
Much more pain to come...
Got to the right place in the end. Called it here all along. 👨🏻🎓 ✅
Thankfully it doesn't impact me as 1 twin was always retaking year 13 and the other got where she wanted and now has the grades I expected her to get..
Labour backed this system in Wales that they run and gave no criticism of it until its issues were already apparent. Being Captain Hindsight doesn't make you big or clever.
What with us departing the EU trade arrangements on 31st December.....
They are just getting started...
Its almost as if lower taxes and less regulation stimulated economic activity!
Acknowledging when you get things wrong was the right thing to do here. The algorithm did not give accurate grades to all pupils, getting an average right isn't enough if you're downgrading some pupils below what they should have got.
A sanity check for schools that looked like outliers and basically saying to teachers "are you sure, have another look please" would have been better than just overruling outcomes by an algorithm.
On reflection, why did schools give this information out? Seems unnecessarily provocative?
I`m wondering whether the pupils I`m listening to now on the radio who are delighted their getting their predicted grades are mixing up the CAG with the predicted grade for Uni. They could be the same, of course, but not necessarily so. As one poster has said this morning it is possible that a predicted grade is higher to help the pupil get the uni they wanted.
0 out of 10 for the politics of their performance and for getting into this mess in the first place. They left it far far too late to do this and there are no valid excuses for that.
Williamson should be banished to the farthest corners of the back benches for the rest of this century.
Why not apply the dreaded algorithm to determine who should be marked up or down, BUT limit the adjustment of grades to just one level above or below that recommended by the teacher? That would've dealt with most of the grade inflation conundrum, and eliminated all the most egregious cases of heavy downgrading (some perfectly competent students ending up with U's, for example) into the bargain.
Oh well, too late now.
I'm already seeing some students wanting to appeal their CAGs now they realise it wasn't just the now dead algorithm that scored them lower than their UCAS predictions (which remember are done way back at the start of Yr 13) but often schools had lowered their CAGs first before the algorithm hit them again...
As for Uni admissions officers..... all the best to them!
Worth remembering the PM and Education Secretary had time to learn from what happened in Scotland.
Right now, the algorithmed grades have taken precedence in terms of filling courses when they ought to be pari passu with the teacher assessed grades.
Have the Government announced any exception to their previous rules regarding student numbers?
OFQUAL screwed up even within their remit (whether it came from Williamson or whether they advocated for it themselves at the outset).
It will have been obvious for some months that the 2020 results were likely to be on the high side and a bit random, so the October 2020 admissions process (which started nearly a year ago, when Covid-19 wasn't even a twinkle in a bat's eye) wasn't going to play out as normal.
So you get the VCs on Zoom, throw some money at them (like Rishi's Dishes, peanuts in the grand scheme of things) to quietly create bulge places, and to cover the losses at the Unis at the bottom of the food chain. Given time to plan, that's doable.
What you don't do is pretend you can make it normal- even if the overall grades had been held down, they wouldn't have matched the offers previously made at a personal level. You don't then dig your heels in for a few days before running up the white flag.
There's some bad luck in this fiasco. But bad judgement has made it far worse.
It would be interesting to know from a teacher whether some of the Uni predicted grades are likely to be higher than the particular CAG.
Most sensible schools released the CAG to students to avoid having to provide anything more....
There are other universities whose intake is largely made up of those who did not get the grades they need to go elsewhere.
Starmer is great on hindsight and hypocrisy
In the 24/7 news media fixing this on a Monday after the Thursday may seem like a long time but its really not that long. They tried last week the Triple Lock to avoid this, it failed, well done for doing the right thing so quickly.
1. Perhaps the most obvious is a huge drop in overseas students attending British Universities this year
2. Many British Year 13 students have looked at what is happening in universities at the moment and decided to defer a year. Why go to Uni at the moment and get a hollowed out experience with many unis saying they will run all courses online and none of the extra curricula activities available. Far better to wait a year and see if things are back to normal next September.
3. It was already known there would be a notable drop this year long before Covid as 2001/2002 was a period of notably reduced birthrate.
I had lunch today with my business partner whose real job is lecturing in Mental Care nursing at one of the Midlands university. He said that this will be the first year for his course when there is no clearing as every nursing type course is fully subscribed and they have even added a second cohort for January. But he said that the nursing courses were clearly the exception and many other courses at his university are seeing applications of well below 50% where in other years they were ver7 close to fully subscribed.
The government seems incapable of thinking further ahead than tonight’s twitter trends.
I’d love to know if there are people in Cabinet calling these things out or if ministers are wary of stepping on toes outside their brief. I’ve seen it before in the private sector. Most of the room knowing that a committee is sleep walking into disaster but no one having the guts to speak up and say what everyone’s thinking. Which here is “no exam, no grade. Fix the consequence not the other way round”.
We can't disadvantage next year's students by reducing the % of A and A* grades compared to this year now can we? That would be terribly unfair!
Only solution for employers is going to be to set their own tests as school exam results will become largely worthless.
As for Universities they'll just recalibrate offers upwards to reflect the new grade distribution.
It would be great if maybe for once Captain Hindsight could make a productive suggestion or criticism BEFORE an issue blows up.
Awarding a 3 A's student 3 B's in order to bring the average down isn't a solution! How does that help?
They have taken political ineptness to a whole new level with this.
Well said.
I have a feeling that might be its epitaph.
Of course, this scandal is as nothing to the coming winter of entrenched mass unemployment amidst a sea of debt.
wonder what the twitterati will say about that.
It is going to be tested to destruction when he tries to explain away the EHRC report on anti-semitism in Labour. Whilst he was sat in the Shadow Cabinet.
Remember at the start of all of this lots of clever people were pointing out how previous flu epidemics have rapidly dissolved once school holidays occur.
Now as it happens it looks like in this case children are also poor carriers as well as not getting the disease themselves. But that wasn't clear at the time the original decisions to shut schools were made.
I think Rayner was advocating a move away from conditional offers, to post A level application.
That would at least have gotten away from the fiasco of university admissions that has suddenly arisen.
It will be interesting to see if those PBers who said that this year would be a one-off maintain that position.
And we have learnt various valuable things:
That another quango isn't fit for purpose.
That teachers grade predictions are less reliable than an estate agent's valuation.
And that, yet again, Phaemon's dog was right.
I agree though. Google is the very useful if you are capable of distinguishing the useful results from the crap. The same goes for Stack Overflow. Some people just don't seem able to do it.
And that is before you get to the inevitable foul-ups of the exam boards in a normal year.
I would be staggered if we don't see a four-fold increase in reported cases over the next two weeks in the UK.
03/08 938 reported cases
17/08 713 reported cases
And from slightly more testing as well.
Meanwhile the covid symptoms app continues to trend down:
https://covid.joinzoe.com/data#levels-over-time
Its not been a good few months for the boy. Happens to us all.
But its easier to do nothing and let someone else take the decisions and get the blame.
Or perhaps you means like the chap who founded the University of London? He is still with them, I believe.
We need people chosen primarily for competence and integrity.
I suspect he is too timid a character for this however and Labour will lose again.