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[Sherrif John Bunnell]

It's going to be some laugh seeing the Tories claiming that they are concerned about poorer kids being disadvantaged.

[Melanius Mullarkey]

6 hours ago, tamthebam said:

*cough* 

Reported

[doulikefish]

As much  as I hate to take this teachers thread off topic...thats another 5 positive tests in Aberdeen.Loads of businesses in the north east now telling people if you visited any pub in Aberdeen to cancel appointments and rebook for 14 days time.

[Guest bernardblack]

Has nobody had a thought for the invigilators, with the lack of exams?

 

WON’T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE INVIGILATORS??

 

 

[AyrshireTon]

3 minutes ago, bernardblack said:

Has nobody had a thought for the invigilators, with the lack of exams?

 

WON’T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE INVIGILATORS??

 

 

Markers too. That’s usually our holiday money.
This was at least countered by the fact that nobody with a brain was going anywhere this summer.

[Billy Jean King]

'#ResignSturgeon' is trending on Twitter due to the results drama.

She and the SG were damned if they do and damned if they didn't. If they had let the results stand there would have been outcry at the % rises (VT originally thought that was going to be the story at the downgraded 3-5% increases remember). The SQA were instructed to adjust them to bring them down to a more realistic level and that too has caused outcry. It seems the blame here lies squarely with the teachers in traditionally poorer performing schools who saw it as an opportunity to raise that schools profile by submitting over inflated grades and thus screwing their few over performing pupils in the process. The laughable situation is that as VT rightly pointed out performance is up by a fair percentage chunk yet the media have seized upon a negative fuelled by an error from the moaning parents / pupils own schools decisions.

[Gordon EF]

7 hours ago, tamthebam said:

When I sat my Highers in *cough* 1989 we were given past papers from the mid 70s to practice on and they seemed a damn sight harder than the exams we were about to sit.

It may be I'm a grumpy old gammon but with all these super duper clever whizz kids of the generation that followed me getting straight As every year I'd be curious how they would get on sitting the exams I sat.

Mind you the Modern Studies paper I sat (I got an A, get it up ye) would now be a Modern History exam 

I imagine they'd find it very difficult, largely because it's a different syllabus. The same way the 1989 cohort would undoubtedly struggle with exams from the 2010s,

[Gordon EF]

40 minutes ago, Sherrif John Bunnell said:

It's going to be some laugh seeing the Tories claiming that they are concerned about poorer kids being disadvantaged.

Yep. This issue has some cut through with the 'your middle class auntie who's never once given a shit about the attaintment gap before' crowd.

Extraordinary.

[Mark Connolly]

9 hours ago, Gordon EF said:

Is there any possible outcome of the exam results that wouldn't have sent unionists into an impotent frenzy?

A. No

B. Nope

C. Absolutely not.

D. All of the above.

  Reveal hidden contents

The correct answer is D. All of the above.

 

Although this submission is worthy of a greenie, you have been awarded a red due to the predictions based on your previous work.

[Wee Bully]

She and the SG were damned if they do and damned if they didn't. If they had let the results stand there would have been outcry at the % rises (VT originally thought that was going to be the story at the downgraded 3-5% increases remember). The SQA were instructed to adjust them to bring them down to a more realistic level and that too has caused outcry. It seems the blame here lies squarely with the teachers in traditionally poorer performing schools who saw it as an opportunity to raise that schools profile by submitting over inflated grades and thus screwing their few over performing pupils in the process. The laughable situation is that as VT rightly pointed out performance is up by a fair percentage chunk yet the media have seized upon a negative fuelled by an error from the moaning parents / pupils own schools decisions.

I agree wholeheartedly with this.

And it looks like it was planned for - free appeals were already announced for this year (not a knee jerk reaction, but part of the plan) so those kids who actually have been screwed over will get it sorted out.

I thought John Swinney handled it excellently on Radio Scotland 20 minutes ago.

[Jacksgranda]

9 hours ago, 101 said:

This a dig at your man VT

[craigkillie]

 

1 hour ago, Billy Jean King said:

She and the SG were damned if they do and damned if they didn't. If they had let the results stand there would have been outcry at the % rises (VT originally thought that was going to be the story at the downgraded 3-5% increases remember). The SQA were instructed to adjust them to bring them down to a more realistic level and that too has caused outcry. It seems the blame here lies squarely with the teachers in traditionally poorer performing schools who saw it as an opportunity to raise that schools profile by submitting over inflated grades and thus screwing their few over performing pupils in the process. The laughable situation is that as VT rightly pointed out performance is up by a fair percentage chunk yet the media have seized upon a negative fuelled by an error from the moaning parents / pupils own schools decisions.

I think this post betrays a lack of understanding of the process that was actually followed. Even if you think that teachers decided to artificially inflate their grades, there is no reason that this would be "screwing over their overperforming pupils". Teachers were specifically asked to rank their students within a grade band too, so even if they had predicted a couple of extra As for borderline students, this shouldn't have mattered because a fair ranking system would have pushed down the grades of those students, not the top ones.

It's interesting that you choose the word "overperforming" too, it suggests you think kids from poorer backgrounds shouldn't be getting good grades purely on the basis of where they go to school. I doubt a child from Douglas Academy or whatever would be described as overperforming if they got 5 As. That's precisely the issue the SQA has here - a student should be judged on their own individual merits, not what school they went to.

I think the discussion around teachers inflating grades is unfair too. They can only make the decision based on the evidence they have available to them. If a student has got an A in their prelim and any coursework that they've carried out, then I would say it would be completely wrong to predict any grade other than an A. You can't say to them "ah, but actually only 80% of students who get an A in the prelim go on to get an A in the exam, and I've put you in the bottom 20% so you're getting a B". It's generally accepted that students do better in continuing assessment via coursework than in exams, so of course the grades will be a little higher. Of course, again there is inequality baked into the system too, because it's much easier for a Douglas Academy teacher to predict their 15 As than for the Drumchapel High School teacher to pinpoint the 1 or 2 who might get it.

Edited August 5, 2020 by craigkillie

[The Woolshed]

As much  as I hate to take this teachers thread off topic...thats another 5 positive tests in Aberdeen.Loads of businesses in the north east now telling people if you visited any pub in Aberdeen to cancel appointments and rebook for 14 days time.

Where are you seeing this out of interest? And 5 cases linked to the cluster or a total of 5 in the whole Grampian area?

[Wee Bully]

I think the discussion around teachers inflating grades is unfair too. They can only make the decision based on the evidence they have available to them. If a student has got an A in their prelim and any coursework that they've carried out, then I would say it would be completely wrong to predict any grade other than an A. You can't say to them "ah, but actually only 80% of students who get an A in the prelim go on to get an A in the exam, and I've put you in the bottom 20% so you're getting a B". It's generally accepted that students do better in continuing assessment via coursework than in exams, so of course the grades will be a little higher.

Hold on - it’s a “prediction”. You absolutely can predict what is likely to happen.

Surely if you know 20% won’t get the grade, then the bottom 20% of your cohort of “A’s” become “B’s”. Unless they all got 100%, this is quantifiably easy to do.

[Boghead ranter]

 An English Contact Tracer was interviewed on Jeremy Vine's radio show yesterday, the subject of the interview was that she was basically being paid to sit at home and watch box sets, while using the pause button once or twice a week to do the Contact Training work.

One wee nugget was that on one of the traces she did, she was asked by the person "I'm taking the family camping this weekend, can we start our isolation when we get home?"

[Bell™]

8 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

I think this post betrays a lack of understanding of the process that was actually followed. Even if you think that teachers decided to artificially inflate their grades, there is no reason that this would be "screwing over their overperforming pupils". Teachers were specifically asked to rank their students within a grade band too, so even if they had predicted a couple of extra As for borderline students, this shouldn't have mattered because a fair ranking system would have pushed down the grades of those students, not the top ones.

since the genuine straight-A students can't have their grades inflated - 100% is already as has as can be attained - by inflating all the other students estimates, the teachers have screwed over the straight-A students by causing the SQA to blanket lower everyone's grades. The lower end must have been inflated by more than 15% to achieve an average of 15%, and the top percentile not inflated at all, meaning the lowest percentile still benefit from the over-estimation, while the top percentile suffer, once the grades are lowered to a realistic level.

 

[craigkillie]

16 minutes ago, Wee Bully said:

 

Hold on - it’s a “prediction”. You absolutely can predict what is likely to happen.

Surely if you know 20% won’t get the grade, then the bottom 20% of your cohort of “A’s” become “B’s”. Unless they all got 100%, this is quantifiably easy to do.

 

No, but you are applying a population level average, to an individual level, which is known in statistics as the ecological fallacy. Just because 20% of students don't make the grade on average absolutely does not mean that 20% of the students in a given year will not make the grade.

Even if you are making that judgement, it shouldn't actually matter what specific teachers predict so much as it matters the order they rank their students, as you can see from the example below.

 

5 minutes ago, Bell™ said:

since the genuine straight-A students can't have their grades inflated - 100% is already as has as can be attained - by inflating all the other students estimates, the teachers have screwed over the straight-A students by causing the SQA to blanket lower everyone's grades. The lower end must have been inflated by more than 15% to achieve an average of 15%, and the top percentile not inflated at all, meaning the lowest percentile still benefit from the over-estimation, while the top percentile suffer, once the grades are lowered to a realistic level.

 

 

The SQA didn't or shouldn't be "blanket" doing anything. The teachers were asked to rank their students in order of performance, even with a grade band., so if the SQA needed to drop down some students from A to B, then the students being dropped down would be the lowest ranked A students. Therefore what you describe as the "genuine straight-A" students should be completely unaffected.

Look at the table below, for example. It shouldn't matter which of the following the school submits - if the SQA decides that the school should get 3 As, 3Bs, 2Cs and 2Ds, then the eventual way they would be distributed should be exactly the same based on the ranking. That's the whole point in asking them to rank students in the first place.

Ranking	Optimistic School Grade	Realistic School Grade	Pessmistic School Grade
1	A	A	A
2	A	A	B
3	A	A	B
4	A	B	B
5	A	B	C
6	A	B	C
7	B	C	C
8	B	C	D
9	C	D	D
10	C	D	D

[Gordon EF]

31 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

I think the discussion around teachers inflating grades is unfair too. They can only make the decision based on the evidence they have available to them. If a student has got an A in their prelim and any coursework that they've carried out, then I would say it would be completely wrong to predict any grade other than an A. You can't say to them "ah, but actually only 80% of students who get an A in the prelim go on to get an A in the exam, and I've put you in the bottom 20% so you're getting a B". It's generally accepted that students do better in continuing assessment via coursework than in exams, so of course the grades will be a little higher. Of course, again there is inequality baked into the system too, because it's much easier for a Douglas Academy teacher to predict their 15 As than for the Drumchapel Academy teacher to pinpoint the 1 or 2 who might get it.

I doubt it was some nefarious scheme. But it's human nature to bump most people on the borderline up rather than down.

[Sergeant Wilson]

8 hours ago, tamthebam said:

When I sat my Highers in *cough* 1989 we were given past papers from the mid 70s to practice on and they seemed a damn sight harder than the exams we were about to sit.

Exactly! My O grade and Higher are the equivalent of a Masters nowadays.

[doulikefish]

31 minutes ago, The Woolshed said:

 

Where are you seeing this out of interest? And 5 cases linked to the cluster or a total of 5 in the whole Grampian area?

 

Another 5 linked to the cluster...it was on original 106 on the radio this morning