Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[Bell™]

5 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

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

If the SQA left the top-ranked students with the predicted grades and dropped everyone else based on their teachers' arbitrary ranking, then the lowest-ranked students would have had an even larger drop in grades than they did, meaning a larger failure percentage. We'd then have an even greater disparity in the grades of the lowest achievers to the top.

[Jacksgranda]

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.

 

 

14 minutes ago, Sergeant Wilson said:

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

I sat my O grades and Highers in 1969 & 1970. I'm probably entitled to a couple of PhDs, tbqh.

[101]

10 hours ago, pandarilla said:

Have they been advised to close?
 

No - just pontificating on how they might react. Obviously they can still furlough their staff partially which will help

[D.A.F.C]

MPs now admitting the 'just let anyone in or out uk' was actually a massive mistake rather than having no effect on virus spread.

Couldn't make this up.

[mizfit]

MPs now admitting the 'just let anyone in or out uk' was actually a massive mistake rather than having no effect on virus spread.

Couldn't make this up.

I think everyone apart from MP’s was saying it back in March.

[Gaz]

Contrary to popular opinion I'm seeing chucked around online, the SQA doesn't have thousands of employees working around the clock 24/7, 365 days a year (given it relies on ordinary teachers to be markers over the summer holidays, I thought this would have been obvious, but apparently not).

The appeals process will be... interesting.

[Alert Mongoose]

Budge will no doubt try and appeal under the premise that despite getting a C in the prelims, they were anticipating an A+ in the exams.

[Stellaboz]

And a change to the whole system for a year. 

[Detournement]

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

MPs now admitting the 'just let anyone in or out uk' was actually a massive mistake rather than having no effect on virus spread.

Couldn't make this up.

Travel bans were so associated with Trump the entire media would have melted down if the government brought one in during February or March. 

[welshbairn]

2 minutes ago, Detournement said:

Travel bans were so associated with Trump the entire media would have melted down if the government brought one in during February or March. 

That's nonsense, New Zealand had no trouble and was widely admired for it.

[Robin.Hood]

3 minutes ago, Alert Mongoose said:

Budge will no doubt try and appeal under the premise that despite getting a C in the prelims, they were anticipating an A+ in the exams.

I remember my Prelim ( i only sat 2 highers) I ended up failing pretty bad (Modern Studies).

Anyway the teacher at the time thought be waste of time I didnt take the final exam. ( I had a mare all year round). Got a C in the end. For me I would of got a worse off grade now if it went down to the marks for the year :-(.

I dont really have anything too add.  Wear a mask while shopping , keep social distancing and think of others.

[D.A.F.C]

Travel bans were so associated with Trump the entire media would have melted down if the government brought one in during February or March. 

Better that than thousands dying needlessly I suppose.

[VladimirMooc]

2 hours ago, Gordon EF said:

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.

What about people who did give a shit about the attainment gap before and are concerned that the SQA and Scottish Government’s approach has just cemented and baked in that gap?

Some of the responses here highlight the absolute worst of Scottish political debate. Yes, some unionists have jumped on this as a stick to beat the SNP (that’s just politics, and would be the exact same the other way round).

But there are quite clearly serious issues at hand here that have been mishandled and - whisper it - you are actually allowed to criticise the Scottish Government without being a Union Flag-waving British nationalist.

The way in which some SNP voters take any criticism of the Scottish Government as a personal affront is one of the weirdest and most unhelpful aspects of Scottish politics. And I say that as someone who is in favour of Scottish independence. 

Edited August 5, 2020 by VladimirMooc

[hk blues]

8 minutes ago, Stellaboz said:

And a change to the whole system for a year. 

But first, they should ask all Students to vote.  

[Caledonian1]

2 minutes ago, G_Man1985 said:

I remember my Prelim ( i only sat 2 highers) I ended up failing pretty bad (Modern Studies).

Anyway the teacher at the time thought be waste of time I didnt take the final exam. ( I had a mare all year round). Got a C in the end. For me I would of got a worse off grade now if it went down to the marks for the year :-(.

I dont really have anything too add.  Wear a mask while shopping , keep social distancing and think of others.

ah, English exam.  I see.

[Robin.Hood]

3 minutes ago, Caledonian1 said:

ah, English exam.  I see.

Certainly not English. Fucked that ane. I'm not correcting it.

 

Edited August 5, 2020 by G_Man1985

[hk blues]

2 minutes ago, Caledonian1 said:

ah, English exam.  I see.

There's a lot of it about though!

 

[Gaz]

31 minutes ago, VladimirMooc said:

What about people who did give a shit about the attainment gap before and are concerned that the SQA and Scottish Government’s approach has just cemented and baked in that gap?

Some of the responses here highlight the absolute worst of Scottish political debate. Yes, some unionists have jumped on this as a stick to beat the SNP (that’s just politics, and would be the exact same the other way round).

But there are quite clearly serious issues at hand here that have been mishandled and - whisper it - you are actually allowed to criticise the Scottish Government without being a Union Flag-waving British nationalist.

The way in which some SNP voters take any criticism of the Scottish Government as a personal affront is one of the weirdest and most unhelpful aspects of Scottish politics. And I say that as someone who is in favour of Scottish independence. 

These points are fair enough.

Twitter seems to have boiled the issue down into one of two possible scenarios:

1) The SQA have destroyed the aspirations of thousands of pupils, particularly in low SIMD areas, by ignoring teacher estimates and giving pupils lower grades than they expected (as evidenced by SIMD 1/2 estimates being reduced by 15.2%, and SIMD 9/10 estimates being reduced by 6.9%). BOO SNP;

2) The SQA have realised that teachers have grossly over-estimated how their pupils were going to do (as evidenced by SIMD 1/2 estimated grades being 19.8% higher than last year and SIMD 9/10 estimated grades being 9.8% higher than last year) and have adjusted those into a more realistic 4.6% increase for SIMD 1/2 and a 2.9% increase for SIMD 9/10. YAY SNP.

The truth, like so much, will be somewhere in the middle.

On a slightly similar note, I've already spoken to friends of mine across the country who have had e-mails from pupils and parents threatening legal action because Little Jimmy, attendance <70%, who scraped N4 by the skin of his teeth, failed his N5 prelim with a single-figure percentage and whose attendance at study support / extra classes has been non-existent, hasn't been awarded a pass. This will be an absolute minefield.

[vikingTON]

2 hours 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.

 

Spot on. The task set for teachers was to provide a realistic assessment of grades that students would have received for the course had an exam taken place - not what they should get based on their coursework alone because that's not sufficient for a qualification (it probably should be in the long term but that's a separate discussion point). The value of existing coursework is limited to:

- helping to rank students in line with the historical average of your school's performance, so if 80% on average get a pass then the bottom fifth in terms of coursework performance and/or teacher expectations ought to automatically drop into the fail category, unless

- the coursework provides absolutely compelling, unprecedented evidence that the pass rate in this year's cohort would have been higher, taking into account the certainty that some good students would still have crumbled anyway in the final exam. 

None of the students actually demonstrated sufficient knowledge to earn a qualification minus the exam, so other than nonsense, emotive pish reasons, having decent coursework does not mean that you can't be projected to fail or get a C instead of the A you were looking for. That's just the tough reality that the exam process would have dished out had they taken place.

[Gordon EF]

49 minutes ago, VladimirMooc said:

What about people who did give a shit about the attainment gap before and are concerned that the SQA and Scottish Government’s approach has just cemented and baked in that gap?

Some of the responses here highlight the absolute worst of Scottish political debate. Yes, some unionists have jumped on this as a stick to beat the SNP (that’s just politics, and would be the exact same the other way round).

But there are quite clearly serious issues at hand here that have been mishandled and - whisper it - you are actually allowed to criticise the Scottish Government without being a Union Flag-waving British nationalist.

The way in which some SNP voters take any criticism of the Scottish Government as a personal affront is one of the weirdest and most unhelpful aspects of Scottish politics. And I say that as someone who is in favour of Scottish independence. 

I don't disagree.