Breaking news - all A-level and GCSE students to get grades predicted by teachers

It has just been announced that all A=level and GCSE students in England will get the grades predicted by their teachers. Similar announcements have been made or are expected shortly from the authorities in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The Northern Ireland decision was that students would get whichever was higher of the the A-level grade predicted  by their teachers or the one previously officially awarded, a few days ago and I presume this is how it will work for both A levels and GCSE's throughout the UK.

This U-turn was the only possible course of action since the levelling algorithm used in by the exam appeared to completely unacceptable and inexplicable results.

There was no good way to handle this situation. I don't think it was practical or safe to hold exams and students would rightly have said that their exam performance had been disrupted by the pandemic. It wasn't a bad idea in principle to have a levelling process to ensure fairness but the one employed by the different exam boards in each part of the UK appears to have catastrophically failed. We cannot allow the students taking their exams to have their career opportunities wrecked by that failure.


POSTSCRIPT


CONFIRMED - The PM's office has tweeted that 

"A Level, AS Level and GCSE results will now be based on teacher-assessed grades. 

Students will receive the higher of their teacher-assessed grade or their moderated grade."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the...
Read more

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Image
"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise."  ( Cato the Elder , who lived 234 BC - 149 BC, quoted in "Lives" by Plutarch.) There is a similar saying by Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck: Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have put the same saying in a more humorous form: "Wise men profit by the mistakes of others, while fools will not learn even from their own blunders." See also this thread on the "Quote Investigator" website . Let us all be wise and learn from the events of the last few days.
Read more

Quote of the day 24th July 2020

I was moved to put the passage below forward as a quote today when I saw a horrible post on twitter from someone writing that it was "excellent" that someone who took a different view from her about Brexit had died. I won't write which way round it was so that all the Remain supporters can assume the post was from a Brexit fanatic welcoming the death of a remainer and all the Leavers can assume it was a Remainiac welcoming one less Brexiteer. There's been plenty of nasty stuff on both sides but if you catch anyone of your own viewpoint  posting something like that who might listen to you, please do call them out on it - and point out that they're giving everyone on your side of the argument a bad name. Anyway, here's the quote from John Donne.
Read more