The A-levels clusterfuck
This looks like a perfect storm of poor judgement, but it's so bad that I'm having difficulties sorting out exactly what even happened—let alone why.
So, what happened?
How scandalous is it?
What was the impact, on various groups?
Who was responsible? What should be done with them?
How will this be fixed?
How will future fuckups of this sort be prevented?
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
OFQUAL were in a relatively impossible situation - finding exam results for students who haven't sat exams - but have royally screwed the pooch and haven't seen the woods for the trees.
Basically what they have done is get the teachers to predict grades for students - which were then inevitably optimistic but haven't been used - rank students in the class then created a 'clever' algorithm that figures out what standardised grades should have been expected from the class and applied the rankings to that. Bish, bash, bosh done.
Idiots.
The thing is that it came out with results that were superficially reasonable. As an average they are correct, but average isn't good enough. In every year there will be some students who underperform because they've fluffed their exam, had a bad day etc - and that has been standardised and applied by the teachers rankings. Which is unfair. There is no reasonable way the teachers can rank an entire class 100% accurately with no mistakes whatsoever. So anyone whom the teacher ranked lower has gotten a worse result, anyone who has ranked higher has gotten a better result. And that's without considering if the class would have been above or below its standardised history.
Benefit of the doubt should go to the pupils. Which means the average should go up. If the average isn't going up then for every pupil who's got a better grade than they should have there is one who has gotten a worse grade than they should have. Getting a worse grade than you deserve is a much bigger problem than getting a better grade than you deserve.
The government should overrule OFQUAL now, recall Parliament and legislate to apply the teachers predicted grades as the actual grades. It will cause massive grade inflation but is the least-worst option.
As for how to prevent this in the future, its a pretty unique situation and hopefully never again will OFQUAL be tasked with applying exam grades to students who haven't sat exams.
Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer
The algorithm's was using a combination of the teacher's ranking and historical performance which means that
a) Pupils in deprived areas are screwed, so no change there
b) If a previous pupil at a school flubbed their exam for whatever reason and Ofqual therefore decides someone in your class was going to get a U, you'd better hope you weren't ranked at the bottom of the class, even if you go to a good school and being at the bottom of the class means you still would have gotten a B or a C or something.
They back tested their algorithm on historical data and found it was between 40% and 75% accurate for different subjects, then went 'yeah, that's probably good enough' and went with it.
The light that once I thought compassion still casting shadows in your action
The words you shared were cold transactions that bring me to curse what you've done
When you're up there absorbed in greatness with such success you've grown complacent
I hope you scorch your many faces when you fly too close to the sun
Isn't the other issue that they couldn't fully backtest the data because the data needed never existed in the past. The teachers were only asked to rank students this year due to COVID19 and they'd never done so previously so the historical data simply doesn't exist.
For the overwhelming majority of students its given the right results. As an average it is more accurate than any other proposed solution. But an average isn't good enough and it should be dropped immediately.
What's happened in the rest of Europe? Its not only the UK that closed schools, what have the rest of Europe done about this?
What's interesting is that in the UK there are 4 education systems, all 4 countries have different systems, ran by different QUANGOs, overseen by different politicians, all 4 countries governments ran by different parties - and the same thing happened originally in all 4 countries.
I hope and expect there will be a u-turn and OFQUAL's system will be overturned as has happened in Scotland already (which published their results first).
Mounting rumours OFQUAL's grades are going to be pulled and go with Teacher-Predicted Grades instead. Right decision if so.
Press conference scheduled for 4pm for an announcement.
What a mess.
Both OFQUAL and Gavin Williamson deserve all the criticism they get.
The OFQUAL system was created with wide consultation and was endorsed by all the teaching unions and the Labour opposition too.
But its not worked and should be reversed.
Then they all deserve the criticism they get. Gavin Williamson included.
Breaking News: Confirmed its been reversed. All students to get teachers-assessed grades instead.
Indeed they all deserve criticism for making a mistake initially - and having now reversed it rather than dig in obstinately they all deserve praise for realising they've made a mistake and doing the right thing in hindsight.
It's another utterly embarrassing U-Turn for the government.
RB: could you post a source that shows the unions and Labour endorsed the standardisation process? Thanks.
You have to wonder what questions were asked about how it would work. A real lack of curiosity/scrutiny from our leadership.
Last edited by gogobongopop; 08-17-2020 at 03:21 PM.
The Labour Party runs Wales which went ahead with this system too. Labour were saying that using teacher assessed grades was unfair and discriminatory and they should be moderated. https://www.fenews.co.uk/fevoices/44...f-exam-results
The NEU endorsed the system here: https://neu.org.uk/press-releases/su...gcse-and-level
As did the ACSL and others.
Thanks.
I can somewhat forgive some thinking the idea might be sound in principle, assuming they were sold something persuasive.
It seems astonishing though that the results ever got as far as being released. I can only assume our leadership didn't want to scrutinise the outcome before it was released, because anyone with half a brain would recognise the massive backlash they'd be face.
It's a situation where the system worked in theory and produced the right results in theory but in practice there were too many errors and in a situation where any errors are unforgiving and will be magnified. Kids getting a better grade than they should have (which given the record grades was more common than the reverse) would be quietly satisfied but those getting worse ones inevitably became very noisy. Quite right too.
It's only when the results were released the problems were discovered. The UK government hastily tried to solve the problems the Scots had seen but in hindsight it was too little too late.
You say the problems were only found once the results were published. That's the biggest scandal of all. I would have expected such an exceptional event, which had already gone wrong in Scotland days before, to be scrutinised by the Education Secretary. He should have reviewed the outcome, asked to see where it worked, where it didn't and how often etc. If he did then he's clearly happy with the results, which he confirmed 4 days ago when he assured the country they'd be no U-turn. If he didn't then he should be fired.
Let's remember why the U-turn happened. It's not because GW thinks the outcome was bad, it's because public pressure has forced him into it.
The idea of assigning individual grades on the basis of a generalized statistical model is dumb no matter how well or how badly it's been done. You can't say to a kid who's got a conditional offer on the basis of their predicted grades that, notionally, they fucked up an exam which never took place and now they don't get to go to their first choice of uni.
It's like, the police can't do their job because of pandemic but historically this area had 10 robberies in the same period so we'll just pick 10 people we think are most likely to commit robbery and send them to prison.
The light that once I thought compassion still casting shadows in your action
The words you shared were cold transactions that bring me to curse what you've done
When you're up there absorbed in greatness with such success you've grown complacent
I hope you scorch your many faces when you fly too close to the sun
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-53808233
So much for fixing that problem.
Hope is the denial of reality
What was the whole business with conflicting announcements being made by various actors and then bring swiftly retracted? Sounds like the response was completely uncoordinated.
Last edited by Aimless; 08-17-2020 at 06:47 PM.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Twitter Link
Odd response. How does he still not accept there was a problem with the system? Labour moving on because they're copying the Tories but don't understand what was wrong in the first place
That's nonsense Loki. Utter nonsense.
The government have already said universities should accept all the students. Most universities have already said they will. Despite there being slack in the system there was a cap on how many students each university can take imposed by the government (long story, can explain if you're interested) - and that has been lifted.
So quoting a few pupils who say they don't know if they're getting in, doesn't mean nothing has changed. It just means they don't know. The answer is yes, maybe they should see before being quoted saying they don't know but I guess that's not as interesting a story. Heck one of those stories has already been updated to say they already know they're getting in afterall (as they all will) and the BBC have still ran the story anyway. Ridiculous, utterly ridiculous.
After first speaking to the BBC, Zainab says Queen Mary decided to offer her a place. The university said on Monday evening that it was "deeply sympathetic" to all students affected by the U-turn, and that applicants with revised grades will be guaranteed a place if they meet the terms of their original offer.
Total non-story, why even publish that and bury that in the text? Clickbait nonsense.
...who copied the SNP.
Yeah but at least they're not saying that's why there's doing it!
The Welsh First Minister is literally saying that's why he's doing it. No better reason than that?
Do you mean the Ofqual thing that was swiftly retracted? Someone from Ofqual published some guidelines on appeals or something like that and I suspect got a quick ticking off from someone higher up the food chain saying that appeals were not the way to resolve this so it was swiftly retracted. Radio silence was then maintained besides leaks until the full u-turn was announced. It was the right thing to do.
Loki the government have announced all university issues should be dealt with in full: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/g...essment-grades - the government limits on pupil numbers have been lifted so record numbers of domestic students could be going to university this year as a result of this. Ironic. And anyone who's accepted a second-place offer will be able to go back to their first place.
You mean the university got embarrassed into changing its policy? Let's hope all universities follow suit, not most.
Hope is the denial of reality
'The government's changed the policy. The government had imposed a cap on places for each university [again, long story, can explain if you're interested] and that cap has been lifted.
A cap on places at a university isn't the same as a cap on places in a course. I'm also curious how universities are going to afford this. It costs more money to teach more students.
Hope is the denial of reality
OK here goes . . .
The universities are almost all undersubscribed not oversubscribed. In particular due to travel restrictions and COVID19 there has been a major fall in overseas students this year which normally make up 1/6th of the total undergraduate student body. As such there's more spaces than normal that should be available.
In order to avoid having the top universities fill up and have the rest of the sector struggling to get any students as a result, during what is an exceptional year, the universities agreed that they would not lift their proportion of domestic students by more than a 5% cap this year. That cap was agreed with the government who imposed the cap and financial penalties would apply to any university breaching the cap and support available to those under the cap. The idea was this would keep the whole system stable through the pandemic and open to students going forwards.
As a result of the unprecedented grades there are more domestic students able to go to universities than ever before, or ever again quite possibly. So having a cap no longer makes sense.
As for how the universities are going to afford this, they're well renumerated now for the students they take on (which is why they were being stopped from taking too many and making others suffer by contrast) plus the government are offering extra support too.
Twitter Link
Here's the man of the hour. With a whip on his table.
Last edited by gogobongopop; 08-18-2020 at 10:35 AM.
He got it when he was Chief Whip and has kept it ever since.
Yes, I appreciate he was chief whip once, but honestly, what a stupid thing for the education secretary to proudly display in a publicity stunt photo.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote