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Complete and utter farce today. 

Kids with predicted grades downgraded as they're at a lower performing school yet others at higher performing schools having upgraded from their predicted grades.

Money talks it seems. SNP have done lots of good things but education record leaves a lot to be desired. 

 

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6 minutes ago, Squirrelhumper said:

Complete and utter farce today. 

Kids with predicted grades downgraded as they're at a lower performing school yet others at higher performing schools having upgraded from their predicted grades.

Money talks it seems. SNP have done lots of good things but education record leaves a lot to be desired. 

 

The TV, Radio and Internet has been full of people complaining about how unfair the system has been.   Funnily enough very few people have suggested what they would have done in the circumstances that was fairer.

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When i did Teacher training the inside joke was the exam pass mark was just set arbitrarily limit that showed a slight increase in results. This was from one of the senior examiners and writer of the actual papers. As opposed to any actual metric of competence.

Also the difficulty difference in an 80's paper and the 2003 paper on the same subject was so large (80's much harder) it was incomprehensible.

Not seen anything about this current situation but developing a objective metric of competence in a subject wasn't the function of the exam pass mark when i was involved.

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I reckon teachers are to blame - they were looking to give all their students great marks - sometng like an average 10% increase

sound like an old croc - but suddenly these last 10-15 years students are so much "smarter" - either that or the exams are easier .....................

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24 minutes ago, euan2020 said:

I reckon teachers are to blame - they were looking to give all their students great marks - sometng like an average 10% increase

sound like an old croc - but suddenly these last 10-15 years students are so much "smarter" - either that or the exams are easier .....................

If they're going down the route of blaming teachers for this governments continued failure if education then it's not going to end well for the SNP.

Ive family and friend's who are massive SNP/indy supporters, teachers in deprived areas and all with countless kids who've been utterly shafted. Likewise others at wealthier schools who've pupils getting upgraded to grades they'd never achieve .

We blaming old folk in care homes too for the SNPs failings? Some of the blind loyalty amongst some SNP voter's when it comes to criticism is just as harmful to independence as the smears from the other side. 

This isn't going to go away and the SNP need to put a lid on it.

 

Edited by Squirrelhumper
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133,000 grades changed.

No explanation, nor any evidence viewed to based that change on.

Just purely changes based on how a school has performed in the past.

Utter lunacy.

And to say there were no prelims to base grades on is utter made up shite.

Was a kid in Motherwell who got 5 A's in her prelims, been a straight A student her full life but was awarded 3 A's and 2 B's in the revised SQA results despite her teachers (correctly predicting she'd get 5's.) She's  now not able to apply for medicine.

Nobody is telling me her grades weren't altered for anything other than where she lived. If this was the Tory's doing this then we'd be righty up in arms.

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13 minutes ago, Squirrelhumper said:

133,000 grades changed.

No explanation, nor any evidence viewed to based that change on.

Just purely changes based on how a school has performed in the past.

Utter lunacy.

And to say there were no prelims to base grades on is utter made up shite.

Was a kid in Motherwell who got 5 A's in her prelims, been a straight A student her full life but was awarded 3 A's and 2 B's in the revised SQA results despite her teachers (correctly predicting she'd get 5's.) She's  now not able to apply for medicine.

Nobody is telling me her grades weren't altered for anything other than where she lived. If this was the Tory's doing this then we'd be righty up in arms.

I think it’s horrific. As you say, it’s discrimination based on where you happen to attend school.Either trust all teachers equally or do away completely with exam results completely this year and have unis hold entrance exams where necessary. But not this.

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17 minutes ago, Squirrelhumper said:

133,000 grades changed.

No explanation, nor any evidence viewed to based that change on.

Just purely changes based on how a school has performed in the past.

Utter lunacy.

And to say there were no prelims to base grades on is utter made up shite.

Was a kid in Motherwell who got 5 A's in her prelims, been a straight A student her full life but was awarded 3 A's and 2 B's in the revised SQA results despite her teachers (correctly predicting she'd get 5's.) She's  now not able to apply for medicine.

Nobody is telling me her grades weren't altered for anything other than where she lived. If this was the Tory's doing this then we'd be righty up in arms.

There is an appeals procedure.

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I don't think there's any blame you can attach to teachers over how they've done their assessments, I think you have to assume that they've all been done individually in good faith and with the evidence and information that's been made available to them.  That said, had they just gone with the teacher assessments and based it solely on those then there would've been a massive uptick in results which simply wouldn't have been credible and would have pretty much invalidated the entire year's results.  

One thing I'd say about teachers as a group though, they really come across as people who don't like having their homework marked by others and maybe they should think about how that comes across.

Assuming that no-one believes the exams should have gone ahead as per the original schedule then to me there's only two options.  The first would've been to completely scrap the whole system and not make any awards, in effect writing off the entire academic year.  I don't think that's in the least bit acceptable.   The other is to try and come up with a process that mirrors as close to possible the current system with the limited information you have available and with all its inherent flaws and biases and that's what they did.

i imagine that most of the obvious "mistakes" will be addressed through appeal - and maybe there needs to be some QA done on the original submissions to see if they accurately reflected the students position. 

The problem though is that any body who's been bumped up a grade - which is in the minority - won't appeal and will "get away with it"

I normally don't have a lot of time for Larry Flanagan but I thought he was talking some sense yesterday when he said that it is shining a light on some of the inherent biases in the education system and in particular that the exam system in itself disadvantages those from poorer backgrounds as opposed to a continuous assessment model.

There may well be a lot of truth in that but what you can't do is wave a magic wand and change it overnight particularly in this year's circumstances. To be fair to him, he wasn't suggesting that, but plenty, primarily Greens, Labiur and the odd "rebel" in the SNP seem to be implying that.

So what would you have done differently?

I asked some Labour type that question on Twitter yesterday, the fact I'm still waiting for a reply tell someone me all I need to know.

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5 minutes ago, Orraloon said:

Neither the government nor the SNP adjusted any results. The SQA adjusted the results. The SQA is staffed by mainly teachers, ex teachers and people from higher education institutions.

Seriously?  Judging by the reporting, I thought that Nicola Sturgeon and John Swinney had got their red pens out and were doing all the marking. 

Edited by aaid
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35 minutes ago, Orraloon said:

There is an appeals procedure.

Aye, and it'll not be able to handle the volume of appeals.

 

25 minutes ago, aaid said:

 

So what would you have done differently?

 

Trusting a teachers judgment of a pupil, rather than a computer algorithm that has no idea how that pupil performed.

The way the SQA do pass marks generally is shite. If say 2018 too many got A's they would bump the passmark from 70% to 75% for example but the following year 68% could be the pass mark if too few achieve A's.

All about hitting targets and nothing to do with the individual pupils. It's like they assume every year group is exactly the same.

My cousins school averages 9 A's in his subject yearly, they've been downgraded to 4.

Over 40 kids in his subject alone downgraded based on a computer.

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41 minutes ago, Orraloon said:

There is an appeals procedure.

Appeals process shouldn't be for folk who get straight A's in premlims. Their grades should be cut and dry, especially if they are predicted straight A's.

 

32 minutes ago, Orraloon said:

Neither the government nor the SNP adjusted any results. The SQA adjusted the results. The SQA is staffed by mainly teachers, ex teachers and people from higher education institutions.

The Education Sec overseas it, he's appointed by Sturgeon, so it's everything to do with them. Especially this year.

And especially given she's said she wants judged on Education.

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36 minutes ago, Orraloon said:

Neither the government nor the SNP adjusted any results. The SQA adjusted the results. The SQA is staffed by mainly teachers, ex teachers and people from higher education institutions.

Nobody from SNP work in hospitals either.....does that mean they aren't accountable for healthcare?

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It seems the adjustment was done by past performances by the school rather than the pupil, the whole system needs to be looked at if that's the case. Been a problem since at least 2005 when i attended teacher school.

Asked about the process at her daily briefing, Nicola Sturgeon said: "What we want to make sure is that this year's results have the degree of credibility that means that they are not so out of sync with previous years that people are going to look at them and say 'they don't make any sense'.

"As much as I would love to be in the position of standing here credibly saying that 85% of the 20% in the most deprived areas had passed Higher, given that it was 65% last year, that would raise a real credibility issue."

Yeah it's the same method the teaching staff used to mock 15 years ago as a viable metric. It's a bad way of measuring something but it's part of the culture now.

Edited by phart
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Incidentally many moons ago i spoke about this same thing on here and without thinking named the person who was saying it. I got contacted by another teacher and had to get my post removed by the mods cause it seemed if you spoke out against the practice you were liable for disciplinary action by the relevant authorities so if anyone is wondering why more teachers aren't speaking out against it...

Edited by phart
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It looks like there is incidences where people who already have 4 A's at higher, are doing more highers in their 6th year, are getting serious downgrades from A's to as low as F's based on how their school has historically performed. If one assumes this isn't a wind-up

 

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7 minutes ago, phart said:

15.2% reduction in most deprived area 6.9% reduction in least deprived area.

Is there an explanation for this?

I imagine that it's reflective of the inherent bias that exists in the education system and has done for decades, if not since formal education began, which is that kids from better off backgrounds tend to do better at exams than those from poorer ones. 

Thats not right and needs to change but it's not something that can be done overnight. It's the responsibility of the government to address that.

It's perfectly acceptable to question the pace of change and whether it's quick enough or not and whether steps to address that are the right ones but again, it's another area where complaints are many but alternatives are few.

"marking up" people artificially isn't going to change that and certainly doesn't help anyone. 

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2 minutes ago, aaid said:

I imagine that it's reflective of the inherent bias that exists in the education system and has done for decades, if not since formal education began, which is that kids from better off backgrounds tend to do better at exams than those from poorer ones. 

Thats not right and needs to change but it's not something that can be done overnight. It's the responsibility of the government to address that.

It's perfectly acceptable to question the pace of change and whether it's quick enough or not and whether steps to address that are the right ones but again, it's another area where complaints are many but alternatives are few.

"marking up" people artificially isn't going to change that and certainly doesn't help anyone. 

The pass mark is already artificial though as i explained in this thread already. It's deliberately picked to be a slight increase each year. It's arbitrary as hell and not an actual metric of competence in the subject.

I'm glad we're in agreement that the artificial nature is a problem and doesn't help.

Hopefully this fiasco is a driver for change in the system. Unfortunately the government in Sturgeon and Swinney so far have just been defending the decision so how much political will there is to change it remains to be seen, it;s inherently flawed though.

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1 hour ago, Squirrelhumper said:

Trusting a teachers judgment of a pupil, rather than a computer algorithm that has no idea how that pupil performed.

 

So how do you deal with the artificially high number of passes that that would have meant?

For example, I assume that when when Universities make conditional offers they know that a certain percentage won't get the grades they require and that another percentage will get them but will go elsewhere.

How do you deal with someone getting a conditional offer which would now have to be withdrawn because they don't have enough spaces?

Forever more, HR departments will be looking at CVs and going "5 A's, looks good, ah hold on 2020, stick that in the bin".

I'm not suggesting that the system is by any stretch of the imagination perfect, it clearly isn't although given the circumstances I don't see what other route could've been taken.  

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