Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[vikingTON]

1 hour ago, Billy Jean King said:

Going by the Daily Briefing you have misread the room here.

The journo cabal line seems to be outrage at the SQA actually DOWNGRADING 20% of all the original submissions. Not even the merest eyebrow raising at the increase in passes.

This particular line of outrage is being led though by the usual greeting-faced pushy parents on Twitter and top drawer Labour politician Iain Gray.

So we know how much stock should be placed in that particular narrative.

The real story here is why teachers were allowed to submit such wildly inflated grade expectations across the board and, as a result of this mass gaming of the system, why any employer or higher education institute should take these buckshee qualifications seriously at all.

[Dons_1988]

1 hour ago, D.V.T. said:

Do we think there will be a localised lockdown for Aberdeen? This cluster does seem worse than the Lanarkshire and Inverclyde ones.

Finally, the border we've always wanted.

Everyone south of Stonehaven can f**k off.

[ICTChris]

Going by the Daily Briefing you have misread the room here.

The journo cabal line seems to be outrage at the SQA actually DOWNGRADING 20% of all the original submissions. Not even the merest eyebrow raising at the increase in passes.

From what I have read the SQA used historical data of pass rates of schools to downgrade the predicted results of pupils. This has meant that pupils in schools that performed poorly in the past have been downgraded more than pupils who attend schools that have performed better.

This table shows the affect of the regrading



If a school didn’t have historical data then teachers estimates were accepted without revision.

[ICTChris]

Of course if the estimated grades had been accepted then we’d have seen massive pass jumps for all groups that would very likely have fallen back next year when exams resume. If the higher estimates had been accepted then the 2020 cohort would likely have had an invisible asterisk next to their name in future, if they were being assessed on these qualifications.

[vikingTON]

Collectively estimating your Higher pass rate to be 16% higher than it has been in any of the previous four years is a genuinely disgraceful attempt at gaming the system by the poorest performing schools in the first place. The only people that students from disadvantaged backgrounds should therefore be blaming if they feel that their grades got unfairly caught up in the mass downgrade are their own teachers/senior management for bunging in a massive stack of utter nonsense expectations into the system in the first place. 'Garbage in, garbage out' sums up this farce of an exam cycle. 

Edited August 4, 2020 by vikingTON

[Wee Bully]

From what I have read the SQA used historical data of pass rates of schools to downgrade the predicted results of pupils. This has meant that pupils in schools that performed poorly in the past have been downgraded more than pupils who attend schools that have performed better.

This table shows the affect of the regrading



If a school didn’t have historical data then teachers estimates were accepted without revision.

I suppose 2 points / questions are in my head.

1. The lowest 20%, which is the highlighted bit, still shows a 4%+ increase on last years figures. No one is going to believe the 20% increase the teachers were suggesting, and

2. How many schools have no historic data? It must be pretty few.

[DeeTillEhDeh]

This particular line of outrage is being led though by the usual greeting-faced pushy parents on Twitter and top drawer Labour politician Iain Gray.

So we know how much stock should be placed in that particular narrative.

The real story here is why teachers were allowed to submit such wildly inflated grade expectations across the board and, as a result of this mass gaming of the system, why any employer or higher education institute should take these buckshee qualifications seriously at all.

 

Some schools who have been honest with estimates have suffered though - they had already reduced original estimates downwards only for SQA to downgrade again. I've one course where the average grade is one grade below the previous 3 years results - 15 out of 18 were downgraded and this after we had already downgraded estimates. What is probably more infuriating is that this was the best cohort I've had in 5 years. In the past 2 years we have had around 75% of pupils gaining an A or B - this year it's nearer 50% - it's an utter joke.  

 

 

Fortunately we know our pupils did well in their assignments and will appeal - forcing them to be marked along with the other evidence we have.

 

 

 

[DeeTillEhDeh]

From what I have read the SQA used historical data of pass rates of schools to downgrade the predicted results of pupils. This has meant that pupils in schools that performed poorly in the past have been downgraded more than pupils who attend schools that have performed better.

This table shows the affect of the regrading



If a school didn’t have historical data then teachers estimates were accepted without revision.

In some cases the historical data seems to have been completely ignored.

[WhiteRoseKillie]

“f**k everybody else”

Give it a rest. This virus is harmless to the vast, vast majority of people who get it.

So, do All Lives not Matter after all, then?

[vikingTON]

2 minutes ago, DeeTillEhDeh said:

Some schools who have been honest with estimates have suffered though - they had already reduced original estimates downwards only for SQA to downgrade again. I've one course where the average grade is one grade below the previous 3 years results - 15 out of 18 were downgraded and this after we has already downgraded estimates. What is probably more infuriating is that this was the best cohort I've had in 5 years. In the past 2 years we have had around 75% of pupils gaining an A or B - this year it's nearer 50% - it's an utter joke.

Fortunately we know our pupils did well in their assignments and will appeal - forcing them to be marked along with the other evidence we have.

Was there any directive at your school/LA/national level to apply historical data in drawing up estimations? Genuine question. Schools that have been filing wishful thinking dross estimates should be absolutely hammered for this. 

[D.A.F.C]

Exam results have gone up almost every year haven't they?

Seems odd.

[DeeTillEhDeh]

Was there any directive at your school/LA/national level to apply historical data in drawing up estimations? Genuine question. Schools that have been filing wishful thinking dross estimates should be absolutely hammered for this. 

Yes - Dundee went through every single course in every school - we were given the 5 year estimates.  

 

Once we entered our results - these were discussed via calls with one member of staff and face-to-face with another) in the hub), they were analysed by our Senior Management Team and submitted to the council for checking. At that point if they felt there were anamolies they asked us to adjust - this was done in consultation with a meeting with our Head Teacher, SQA Coordinator and DHT departmental link. At that point we had reduced estimates for that course - they were 0.5 of a grade too high compared to previous years. The adjustments should have taken estimates to be almost on par with previous years. Historically as well the course has consistently underestimated student performance - that's why I am fuming - clearly for some courses in other LAs there has not been the same rigour.

 

 

Fortunately the assignment for the course (a practical paper) is worth 58% of the overall marks - SQA have those and will need to mark - I'm fairly confident that the vast majority of those pupils did well in their assignments.

 

 

[vikingTON]

6 minutes ago, D.A.F.C said:

Exam results have gone up almost every year haven't they?

Seems odd.

The table cited above quite clearly shows that it has been falling year on year in Scotland at Higher level until this set of diddled awards. 

Edited August 4, 2020 by vikingTON

[Todd_is_God]

The problem with downgrading based on historical data is that, even in the worst schools, there are always bright pupils, who will now have been bumped down through no fault of their own.

But then what can you do? Every single one of those estimates look ludicrous next to historical data. Awarding them would make grades from this year meaningless.

The blame here surely lies at the door of whoever submitted any ridiculous estimates, rather than the SQA, who, as NS says have a duty to ensure the qualifications from this year are somewhat credible.

My guess would be that many who would likely have gotten a D were bumped up to a C in the estimates, rather than have the balls to tell them and their parents they just weren't very good at the subject.

A knock-on effect of today's "Participation Trophy" culture, perhaps, where as much effort as possible is made to shield young people from failure which, in this case, has had the opposite effect.

Edited August 4, 2020 by Todd_is_God

[David W]

16 minutes ago, virginton said:

Was there any directive at your school/LA/national level to apply historical data in drawing up estimations? Genuine question. Schools that have been filing wishful thinking dross estimates should be absolutely hammered for this. 

I can't speak for other schools (or indeed other departments in my school), but we did the following:

1. I assigned predicted grades to pupils in my classes. Our PT went through pupil by pupil on a phone-call with myself (lasting a good hour and half) and challenged me on every prediction, which was useful as he was purely going off data.  We were told that if there was any uncertainty in our mind (as any teacher knows, there are a host of pupils who sit right on grade boundaries, there are always surprises and disappointments in any exam cohort) then we should predict the higher grade. I don't know if that was specifically a school policy, or council, or a national one.

2. Those grades were then collated and analysed in comparison to our department's previous SQA results, and in the case of S5/6 pupils, prior attainment in previous exam diets. It matched up reasonably well; I think band 1 As were the main outlier in terms of being over-inflated.

3. The data was then submitted and a whole school analysis was done, comparing the predicted grades with the school's expected grades. A list of potential anomalies was drawn up and fed back to departments. We do whole-school class-by-class prelim analysis and year-long tracking, so we have a fair idea how pupils will do anyway.

4. The PT then discussed the pupils who raised eyebrows with ourselves and any alterations agreed were made.

5. At about this point, the SQA decided they wanted pupils ranked in order (my only bit of opinion in this post; I hated doing that, as I found it nearly impossible for my own classes, never mind trying to do it across a department with kids you don't know). So that was done, then submitted.

[Gaz]

What David W says above is broadly similar to what we did at our school as well. In particular across the school we spent a fair whack of time analysing predictions to ensure that pupils who scraped two Cs at N5 weren't being predicted to get five As at Higher.

[Gaz]

47 minutes ago, virginton said:

Collectively estimating your Higher pass rate to be 16% higher than it has been in any of the previous four years is a genuinely disgraceful attempt at gaming the system

I don't disagree with a lot of what you're saying, but this can happen.

I teach in a fairly rough school, low SIMD areas all around our catchment area, but as a result of catchment changes about 15 years ago we had one year group about 3 / 4 years ago now who massively outperformed the previous year and the subsequent year. I'm talking jumps of over 20% in both N5 and then Higher the following year, which caused a fair amount of alarm when the regression to the mean occured the following year.

It's rare, but it can happen.

[vikingTON]

9 minutes ago, Gaz said:

I don't disagree with a lot of what you're saying, but this can happen.

I teach in a fairly rough school, low SIMD areas all around our catchment area, but as a result of catchment changes about 15 years ago we had one year group about 3 / 4 years ago now who massively outperformed the previous year and the subsequent year. I'm talking jumps of over 20% in both N5 and then Higher the following year, which caused a fair amount of alarm when the regression to the mean occured the following year.

It's rare, but it can happen.

Yes but we're dealing with a 16% increase across all schools in the bottom quintile of the SIMD here. That cannot be explained by changes in catchment areas (and in any case all the other quintiles also increased their estimates by a lesser amount). 

For all the individual cases cited of schools and teachers using best practice (or as close as can be reasonably expected given the circumstances) the collective statistics demonstrate that there are far more cases out there of schools that have just been taking the piss. There's no other way of getting such vastly inflated estimates compared to the historical reality.

Edited August 4, 2020 by vikingTON

[ICTChris]

Freakonomics has a chapter about cheating in exams, when they introduced standardised testing in Chicago public schools, one teacher was caught because her class got 100%.  Turns out she just wrote the answers on the blackboard for them to copy during the exam  

[Bairnardo]

I've never once had to use my highers for anything beyond getting into uni.

Which puts me at never once..