Always good to have hard, fast statistics. There are no winners in this mess. The issue has been the process. Grossly inflated estimates should not have been accepted in the first instance. In fact, schools should have been given their distributions with a generous positive error ban as the moderation process attempted to do and told to pencil in names versus grades. There would still have been perceived winners and losers but no discrepancy between forecast and actual. Hindsight, eh?
Despite the downsides to the process of evaluation by examination, that strictly controlled process would appear to be the only effective way to assess our kids because our teaching staff on the whole are being shown up as unable to moderate their positive subjectivity. There will certainly be reasons for that.
Or maybe everyone could just have been given A for everything and let the unis etc. sort it out?
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"Because the overestimation was greatest in schools in deprived areas, the downgrades were also greatest in those schools, leading to claims poor pupils were being treated especially harshly and marked down because of their school’s track record, not their own efforts.
Last year, the A to C attainment rate in the most deprived areas for National 5 was 68.7%, the teacher estimate was up 15.8 points to 84.5% and after moderation this was cut to 74%.
For Highers, the deprived area A to C rate was 65.3% in 2019, the teacher estimate this year was up 19.8 points to 85.1%, and after moderation it was cut to 69.9%.
For Advanced Higher, the 2019 pass rate in deprived areas was 69.7%, the teacher estimate was up 21.7 points to 91.4%, and after moderation it was cut to 80.6%.
In the most affluent areas, the changes were less dramatic: the National 5 attainment rates in 2019, teacher estimates and moderated results were 85.8%, 92.3% and 87.1%.
For Highers, the respective figures were 81.7%, 91.5% and 84.6%; for Advanced Highers they were 83.3%, 94.1% and 86.8%. "
Getting to the truth
posted on 12/8/20
comment by Blue C (U21939)
posted 49 minutes ago
Does this regrading exercise stretch back to 1979? Asking for a friend.
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First time the exams have not been sat.
posted on 12/8/20
What has also been largely ignored is the pass marks for each band change every year. It is not simply 40% for a D, 50% for a C, 60% for a B and 70% for an A
If scores on the whole are up on an exam then the bands go up. It effectively means if a Maths exam was easier than the previous years then an A may go up to 74% say.
However, pupils don't know this and if they got a B then there is not much they can do other than appeal even if they got 73% which they won't realise.
The teachers have done no different this year from any other. They predict them. If you go back over several years teacher estimates they are generally very close. The SQA did not take into account aggregated teacher estimates v actual scores. THAT would have given the SQA a far more accurate base to work on
posted on 12/8/20
comment by Silver (U6112)
posted 8 hours, 44 minutes ago
I've seen it stated that the teacher forecasts were submitted prior to pandemic? If so, why the huge jump this year? And, if these assessments are increasingly detached from actual, then what is the point other than box ticking?
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They weren't submitted prior to the pandemic. They were submitted after schools were shut. Teachers were unable to go into school to get coursework that was not on school servers or captured on spreadsheets
posted on 12/8/20
Comment Deleted by Site Moderator
posted on 12/8/20
And yet Celtic got hammered for it.
To hell with the SNP. The sooner those amateurs are gone the better. Been a disaster for Scotland.
posted on 12/8/20
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
posted on 12/8/20
Tbf school grades mean next to nothing unless you're applying for top universities.. which accounts for a very small percentage of students.
I agree that doctoring them to reduce the amount of high scoring grades from poorer backgrounds appears to be rigging the system (as per), and is probably why we see fewer oiks at Cambridge or Oxford etc.
Success isn't really determined by your school grades for the majority of Britain.. most entry level higher education courses only ask for grades 1-3/A-C so it doesn't matter if you're B was downgraded in the larger scheme of things.
posted on 12/8/20
comment by Brian Christ (U14278)
posted 6 hours, 25 minutes ago
And yet Celtic got hammered for it.
To hell with the SNP. The sooner those amateurs are gone the better. Been a disaster for Scotland.
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OK. It's too hot outside, I can only drink so much cold lager daytime so I'll bite.
How the fwck did 'Celtic get hammered'?
Support for the SNP is increasing with the latest polls suggesting '57% of voters plan to back the SNP in May' (The Times 12/8/20)
Nicola Sturgeon's approval rating is up 45 from when the question was asked a year ago, in contrast Boris's rating is minus 50 (-50)having fallen by a further 16 points. (The Times 12/8/20).
These figures are all the more impressive as polling was conducted this week during the exam grades controversy.
The polls record the highest levels of support for the SNP and independence, ever recorded by You-Gov.
posted on 13/8/20
Heard today some students had coursework piling up and decided to focus on that during the prelims instead of preparing for the test. Seems a bit unfair their marks are now less than their prelim scores. What if they'd prepared better? They expected a fair run at a test but their tactics backfired.
posted on 13/8/20
Heard today some students had coursework piling up and decided to focus on that during the prelims instead of preparing for the test. Seems a bit unfair their marks are now less than their prelim scores. What if they'd prepared better? They expected a fair run at a test but their tactics backfired.