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would expect nothing less from an autodidact Enlightenment man like yourself.

Ah... Using words I have never heard of. The perfect way to lord it over me [emoji53]

 

ETA have now googled autodidact and am happy enough with that.

 

Thank you.

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3 minutes ago, MixuFruit said:

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

I'm quite honest with pupils and tell them that, for most of them, most of what they learn in maths they'll never use, but having the qualification is what opens up the doors in the first place.

It seems to go down better rather than trying to lie to them that they'll use it in every day life.

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Guest JTS98
4 hours ago, Donathan said:

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

That's a statement that is impossible to support with the current evidence. It's a guess at best. In reality it's more like wishful thinking.

Far too early to say something like that.

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Can't do much for the attainment gap, slamming poor schools and boosting the good ones cos that's how they normally do. 

I know at my old school there'll be some very sad faces. Generally poor simd areas, with one "posh" area, from where kids normally are the higher performers alongside a handful from the other areas. If it's taken as an average, surely it's obvious that the better pupils will get hammered while the poorer pupils will get boosted? 

I say all this knowing next to nothing about the process this year, but I know in my old department the head will have hammered evidence based over wishful thinking  grading, so hopefully that will allow for appeals. 

Edited by madwullie
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Guest JTS98

An interesting time to consider the nature of assessment itself.

Exams are like job interviews. One of these things that people put a lot of importance on, but are not necessarily the best way of telling you what you want to know.

Using historical data to give kids grades is disgraceful.

But exams themselves are a much weaker indicator of ability than coursework throughout a course. There are so many variables that can influence them that they aren't really worth taking as seriously as we take them as a society.

You might be feeling a bit off-colour. You might not have slept very well. You mum and dad might have had a huge domestic the night before. You might get the only question for that topic you could answer and get an inflated grade. You might get a kind marker. You might know a topic inside-out but get the only selection of questions you can't do well with. Maybe with the previous year's exam you'd have done much better or worse. You might have a teacher who has the inside track on the exam and guides you to a narrow level of knowledge that gives you an impressive grade. Often they reward memory as much as anything else. Is memory what employers and universities are looking for?

Exams are shite. In a situation like this, it should be done on coursework. It's far more reliable in terms of a candidate's ability.

People like exams because they give you an easy grading system. But that doesn't mean they give you the information you want about the candidates. They are a cheap (in the educational sense) and easy way of carrying out assessment. They should be binned. Given what we now know about education and learning, it's amazing exams have survived into the 21st century. Completely out-dated.

Edited by JTS98
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1 hour ago, David W said:

 

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.

This will pretty much guarantee class bias within schools as well.

 

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1 hour ago, virginton said:

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.

Perhaps poorer kids are more likely to panic in exams, don't use their study leave well compared to richer students and don't have access to tutors?

So they may have performed as well up to March but been more likely to fall away? 

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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.

1320173859_imageproxy(1).gif.bd5d6273c78fbe85dacd8ce331f3514e.gif

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.

Make your mind up you have now done a 180 from earlier. Your opening gambit was the rise in passes, it was pointed out that wasn't the story as SQA have downgraded 20% of all submissions leading to a pretty much across the board media outcry so your now changing tack to say the SQA are right to have moved in that direction and it's all the teachers fault for submitting such inflated grades in the first place.

 

Which is it to be ???

 

Fwiw given the % rises AFTER the 20% downgrading it seems the original submissions have been "generous" . Probably the SQA had no option but to act. My son has been awarded exactly what was submitted, at least the paper certificates tell you that I.e. no adjustments.

 

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11 minutes ago, madwullie said:

f**k sake. Poorest pupils' grades dropped by 15%, richest kids' 7%

Literally giving grades based on how scummy your area is. 

Screenshot_20200804-181526_Twitter.jpg

They dropped it in a totally linear fashion as well which gives a huge boost to the most wealthy areas. 

 

 

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7 minutes ago, madwullie said:

f**k sake. Poorest pupils' grades dropped by 15%, richest kids' 7%

Literally giving grades based on how scummy your area is. 

Screenshot_20200804-181526_Twitter.jpg

Results are still up across the board.

Either this year had exceptional teaching that produced by far the best group of pupils ever or teachers overestimated the grades.

Going by historical figures has issues but might be the most accurate way of trying to temper down the overestimate of results.

4 minutes ago, Detournement said:

A must read thread. 

Definitely an issue that teachers might have incorrectly ranked students so the wrong ones had their grade altererd. But the teachers have more time and evidence to get this aspect correct than the SQA do.

Pupils can still appeal and have their work re-assessed.

 

There is a lot of talka bout unfairness but exams themselves are unfair. One student gets unlucky with the questions or makes an uncharacteristic mistake while a lesser student gets a set of questions that fits perfectly with their more limited knowledge.

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16 minutes ago, madwullie said:

f**k sake. Poorest pupils' grades dropped by 15%, richest kids' 7%

Literally giving grades based on how scummy your area is. 

 

It's genuinely worrying that this is the conclusion you draw from that table and are also paid by the state to educate children. 

The inflation on what grades students would be expected to receive - based on the historical data - is essentially flat across the SIMD. That a lot of poorly performing schools decided to chuck in a set of laughable band 1 A predictions for their pupils should not be accepted by the SQA just because inequality is bad.

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