Oor Nicola Sturgeon thread.

[mizfit]

SNP FAIL OUR CHILDREN WITH THE BIGGEST DECLINE IN EXAM PERFORMANCE IN HISTORY!

Ross Greer will be insufferable won’t he?

[DeeTillEhDeh]

All teachers should now be forced to accept performance based pay.  Your pay will go up or down  asked on your pupils exam results next year versus this year. The only party to come out of this with any credibility IMO is the SQA which had to account for teachers being at best highly optimistic and at worst downright dishonest. Swinney's statement was the epitomy of populism and casts a shadow over the SNP. 

 

 

The SQA have not come out of this with any credibility - they sat on the estimates for almost 2 months before telling Swinney - they should have acted in June and did nothing.    

 

 

Performance based pay is virtually unworkable - results vary depending on the cohort you have in front of you - in any case it is not always the same teachers that take the courses - some teachers will also have far more senior classes than junior classes - some teachers don't have any senior exam classes as they teach predominantly BGE or other courses such as NPAs - how do you work that out?

 

 

[Ludo*1]

Performance based pay. 

Fucking hell.

[Monkey Tennis]

4 hours ago, Billy Jean King said:

4 hours ago, sparky88 said:

Biggest mistake the Government could make now would be to consider the matter closed. How will the 2020 cohort of students' "exam" results be considered by employers and universities/ colleges going forward?

It won't affect admissions one iota. You either had a conditional or unconditional offer which will be honoured assuming in the case of Conditional offers the conditions were met.

Yes, but if a pupil fell short of the conditions of their offer last Tuesday, they might be meeting them today.

That therefore means this has an effect.

[Monkey Tennis]

3 hours ago, sparky88 said:

Logical conclusion of this is that exams were never needed in the first place. 

An imaginative Government might have used COViD to entirely reshape how exams sit within the educational system. Perhaps that might still happen since a precedent has been set. 

After way over a century of exams, we have a year without them.  The result is that chaos ensues.  There are clear injustices, followed by a 'solution' that trashes the achievements of kids, dents the government and is certain to have damaging knock on effects.

Your conclusion:  Exams are the problem.  Extraordinary.

[Monkey Tennis]

45 minutes ago, DeeTillEhDeh said:

The SQA have not come out of this with any credibility - they sat on the estimates for almost 2 months before telling Swinney - they should have acted in June and did nothing.    

You don't believe that Swinney knew nothing until the last fortnight do you?

He'd have surely been carefully monitoring what was coming in as it arrived.  Hell, even I knew in June that the national figures were highly inflated.  It's safe to say he'd have known rather more about it than me.  

I just think the extent to which there would be genuine hard luck stories, easily picked up and exaggerated by the press, was badly underestimated.  The implications of an appeals process on such a scale, were probably underestimated.  

These things are political failings of course.  The SG's response has not been nimble.  They didn't sufficiently challenge the frankly ludicrous notion that individual pupils were marked down on account of their postcodes, a narrative that really gained a foothold.  

The whole thing is a bloody mess, that serves nobody particularly well.

[NotThePars]

Performance based pay in teaching is the most your brain poisoned by neoliberalism suggestion I've heard yet. 

[BucksburnDandy]

I agree that there was no easy answer based on what had come before. I would imagine that there will be some sort of inquiry that will shed more light on whether or not an alternative course could have been followed (e.g. an earlier start to the process, releasing "provisional grades", then using appeals as part of the overall process rather than as a post-hoc resolution).
More broadly, I do think a review of the system is needed (and is coming, I believe). People would say that it's unrealistic for the SQA to have had in place a contingency for a global pandemic, but I don't think that's the issue here. It doesn't seem unreasonable for a qualifications body to have in place policies, procedures and assessment methods that allow any individual pupil/student to receive the grade they deserve regardless if they actually do an exam (e.g. if they're ill). Obviously, in normal times, that's handled by the appeals process, but maybe it shouldn't be. Maybe it should all be managed as part of the award process, reserving appeals exclusively for people who feel they have underperformed in exams.
With such policies and procedures in place, the SQA would more or less be ready for any eventuality - from the cancelling of all exams, through to an individual pupil being ill on the day of their exam, and everything in between. 

Absolutely agree on reform of the examination system being required. Ultimately there needs to be a greater variety of assessment methods to allow a situation like this never to arise again. Not only that but the current situation of all or nothing exams penalises those students who might well be very intelligent but struggle with the exam situation.

Hopefully John Swinney will actually push this reform as he sorely needs to improve the system after this year and the continuing struggles of the Curriculum for Excellence. If he does, some good will come out of this year.

[Monkey Tennis]

18 minutes ago, BucksburnDandy said:

Not only that but the current situation of all or nothing exams penalises those students who might well be very intelligent but struggle with the exam situation.
 

The current situation cannot remotely be characterised as involving "all or nothing exams".

It's nothing like that at all in the vast majority of subjects, at the vast majority of levels.  A hopelessly outdated myth.

Edited August 11, 2020 by Monkey Tennis

[sparky88]

1 hour ago, Monkey Tennis said:

After way over a century of exams, we have a year without them.  The result is that chaos ensues.  There are clear injustices, followed by a 'solution' that trashes the achievements of kids, dents the government and is certain to have damaging knock on effects.

Your conclusion:  Exams are the problem.  Extraordinary.

I don't think they are the problem. But a couple of posters have suggested that not having exams doesn't seem to be an issue to universities or employers. So what is the point in them then? 

[strichener]

1 hour ago, DeeTillEhDeh said:

The SQA have not come out of this with any credibility - they sat on the estimates for almost 2 months before telling Swinney - they should have acted in June and did nothing.    

 

 

Performance based pay is virtually unworkable - results vary depending on the cohort you have in front of you - in any case it is not always the same teachers that take the courses - some teachers will also have far more senior classes than junior classes - some teachers don't have any senior exam classes as they teach predominantly BGE or other courses such as NPAs - how do you work that out?

 

 

Well they certainly appear to be miracle workers this year.  Just heard in the news that in studies teachers only managed to correctly predict 16% of grades achieved by their pupils.  16% is worse than using randomisation.  You can blame the SQA for sitting on this for months but nobody has actually suggested that the process was less accurate than the SNP sop that is now going to ensure that the 2020 results are looked at as anomalous regardless of hard students worked.   My PRP suggestion was just to see how many teachers on here would bite, you didn't disappoint.

[vikingTON]

5 hours ago, O'Kelly Isley III said:

7 hours ago, virginton said:

 

We won't miss Private Fraser as long as you are around. Chill, by this time next week we'll all have moved onto new things.

Speak for yourself, I'll be shopping around for someone that isn't completely and utterly spineless to the point of bad governance in next year's election. Not that I'm convinced that such an option will be available.

[vikingTON]

5 hours ago, Detournement said:

Universities will cope no problem.  Employers don't care about highers. 

 

4 hours ago, AUFC90 said:

4 hours ago, Marshmallo said:

Your life experience is comprehensive of each and every potential career path, I'm sure.

Comprehensive enough to conclude that the majority of employers don't check whether your highers are real or not. I've only had further education qualifications checked.

Nobody has ever suggested that an employer is on tenterhooks waiting for the relative quality of a Macbeth essay to be marked to hand a job to someone. But credible exam results are fundamental to not having your CV placed immediately in the bin for failing to meet the minimum required qualification standard, as well as in filtering out inferior from superior candidates (among many other factors) in the following stages of recruitment. The 19/20 cohort are going to find all of their grades have an invisible asterisk next to them after this pathetic sop measure, which when already entering probably the worst job market this side of the Great Depression will do them massive damage. Why would an employer take a chance on shortlisting someone with a Higher C in English as the bare minimum standard of communication skills from this dubious set when they'll be spoilt for choice with more reputable candidates? They won't and so lack of credibility will soon bring about a lack of experience and long-term inactivity which is the real killer.

[renton]

22 minutes ago, virginton said:

Speak for yourself, I'll be shopping around for someone that isn't completely and utterly spineless to the point of bad governance in next year's election. Not that I'm convinced that such an option will be available.

Still the Only Show in Town?

[Lurkst]

55 minutes ago, virginton said:

 The 19/20 cohort are going to find all of their grades have an invisible asterisk next to them after this pathetic sop measure

Was always going to happen as soon as the exams were binned.

 

[mizfit]

Welsh Govt refusing to upgrade results.

England say they “might” be able to use their mock exam results if unhappy.

Northern Ireland allowing appeals.

[Monkey Tennis]

8 hours ago, strichener said:

Well they certainly appear to be miracle workers this year.  Just heard in the news that in studies teachers only managed to correctly predict 16% of grades achieved by their pupils.  16% is worse than using randomisation.  

Are you able to share with me some further details of these "studies"?

[Marshmallo]

1 hour ago, mizfit said:

Welsh Govt refusing to upgrade results.

England say they “might” be able to use their mock exam results if unhappy.

Northern Ireland allowing appeals.
 

The English have given a triple lock of whatever is highest from mocks, their predicted grade and a potential exam in Autumn. It's wild how they manage to find a way to do even worse than the Scottish Government on literally everything. Been some year for them.

[Mark Connolly]

That really is a spectacular effort in England. They are saying they can sit the exams in the Autumn, but the schools are colleges are saying there is no way they can accomodate it.

It's almost like the Tories have produced a policy without consulting any of the people that might have to implement it or be affected by it - that's not like them.

[strichener]

45 minutes ago, Monkey Tennis said:

Are you able to share with me some further details of these "studies"?

As stated in my original post, this was on the news last night.  The miracle of Google indicates that this was a report written in 2016 by UCL. https://www.ucu.org.uk/media/8409/Predicted-grades-accuracy-and-impact-Dec-16/pdf/Predicted_grades_report_Dec2016.pdf.

All evidence points to a bias towards over-predicting attainment and the less the academic ability the more the tendency to over-predict.