Vocal Voices

The 2020 cohort is going to have to be treated differently from those who have gone before and those who will follow. Some will have got higher grades than their abilities deserve while others, possibly as many as 280,000, will get grades lower than they and their teachers and schools expected / predicted.

Unfortunately there is no perfect solution to what is going on, and that makes them all crash-test dummies.

Those who got higher grades than their wildest dreams would have allowed will soon find that they are not up to the job. Unfortunately it will be after they have wasted months struggling at Uni and having taken on some form of student debt.

OTH many of those who were under marked will miss out, that's obvious, yet ironically some of those who could have expected B and Cs but only got Cs and Ds could find themselves in more suitable routes to employment such as (proper) apprenticeships.

What is clear, or should be, to the education establishment and students alike, is that the current system needs looking at to try to make it as fair as possible to all - and both sides have their part to play in that.

It's a shambles I'm just glad none of mine are young enough to be affected

Poor kids! I wouldn't be young again for any money

I thought they had decided a couple of days ago that the award would be the highest of (a) your mock result (b) your teacher's assessment and (c) your algorithmic grade as calculated, so there wouldn't actually be any downgrading going on at all. What happened to that idea?

As you say, Kaz, shambolic!

It went out of the window Os! One poor lad on the local news had been marked down by two grades It also seems that children in poorly performing schools been downgraded an masse, despite some being bright students Where is the fairness

Shambolic! Yes, 36% of entries got a lower grade than predicted and 3% were down two grades. One grade lower might be within bounds, but for 36% of entries? That seems way outside what might be expected under any sort of review. Two grades lower? Unfortunately some of them will be justified.

Had it not been for exams I would have left school with poor grades and gone on the bins. I knew that I 'had it' so just coasted through each year, put no effort into mocks and crammed like mad for a few days before each subject exam. In 2020 I would be lucky to get Ds and Es.

I have no idea how it will be resolved this year, but it does throw up a very harsh lesson for future students - the future is unknown. From this day forth those in education will be keeping a close, and closely recorded, watch on teacher assessments, coursework, mocks and exams over the whole course, a bit like at Uni.

Exams will probably remain the main deciding factor, but you can bet your mortgage that the educational establishment is going to want to have some solid grounds for any future awards should the exams system fail again. Students beware! Don't coast, and do not rely on your final year.

although one young girl tonight was saying she was predicted at A and got a U Now that is one hell of a drop, was she really predicted an A?

Shell, that does sound implausible, however, with 280,000 re-grades anything is possible hence all the complaints.

Workingman wrote:Unfortunately there is no perfect solution to what is going on, and that makes them all crash-test dummies.

That's it in a nutshell.
Another thing that shocked me was that one girl interviewed said that she had managed to get on the degree course she wanted through clearing - Fashion Promotion.

Fashion promotion is a degree?????

And one was doing Art History, but she wouldn't be able to get on the course now because her Psychology A level result was too low.
There were a few bemoaning psychology results.

Psychology has always been one of those A levels used as a filler. Maybe they are getting wise?

it could be MM.
What also might have happened was that the re-grade agency thought that teachers were bound to fiddle their students grades upwards, and so got ready to mark them down. But if the teachers were honest then that approach would result in a big shock downgrading.