Master OTS has done well enough (Nat 5s) to cost me a new guitar. How have your’s gone on?

Five A’s at higher….BOOOOM!

Good work PP junior.

ooof! kudos pp jnr.
Any idea what plans they have for 6th year (if that’s preferred) and beyond ?

She wants to go to Glasgow Uni and do Primary Teaching, but she wants to do Sixth Year first as she’s still only sixteen.

Next years results will be a mixed bag when her less academically oriented brother sits his Nat 5’s

A well done to any STW kids who got their results today.

Initial reports suggest pupils from deprived backgrounds have been massively downgraded, I do hope it’s just radio scotlands usual shite, and not true.

Middle_oab earned two C’s at Higher and an A at Advanced Higher… 😎

deprived backgrounds have been massively downgraded,

As I understand it that’s a result of how they awarded the grades, borderline pupils were more likely to get downgraded and pupils from deprived backgrounds are more likely to be borderline.

The news I heard on Radio Scotland lead with grades being up across the board and the R4 news lead with 125,000 pupils getting downgraded. Both true but a bit of a difference in emphasis!

Good effort mini_PP

Well done petit Perchy! Brains, university, teaching: great combo.
I imagine (I’m in England) the grades were a combination of teacher assessment, earlier exam performance and past school performance (as measured by the exam board) and then the grades are norm referenced.

good on her perchy!
I got pretty decent Highers (many years ago) and the 6th year bit was a no brainer really as I also was still only 16. Even then there were quite a few months at Strathclyde before actually turned 18.

Lewis got

B’s for Art; English; PE
A’s for Maths; Physics; Chemistry; Geography; Design & Manufacture; French

All apart from french and PE were as expected. Both French and PE are better than expected.

Advice for petit Perchy is to do a different degree then do the PGDE in primary. That gives multiple options for careers. Also means she is not tied into it if she doesn’t like it.

Poah is right

Well done to all of your kids!

The news I heard on Radio Scotland lead with grades being up across the board and the R4 news lead with 125,000 pupils getting downgraded. Both true but a bit of a difference in emphasis!

That was the thing that stood out for me when my lad (here in England) was trying to figure out exactly what the conflicting headlines really meant

you can look at the SQA site for each of the subjects and see the difference between expected and given.

Shouldn’t we be addressing the inequality in Scottish education at its roots and not just tinkering with an admittedly unfair exam system

😄

Good luck to all getting their exam results today. If results are not what you expected then don’t worry, there’s always the Scottish Fire Service.

— Chief Miekelson (@ChiefMiekelson) August 4, 2020

They are a shambles in many cases. Our subject dux got a B, which means the SQA think he would have dropped from the 94% he got in the prelim to the 60’s. He also got a B for Modern Studies, but has less reason to feel aggrieved as he only got 86% in the prelim for that. Mind you; somebody in the cohort with 68% got made up to an A, so maybe not. Going to be a busy building in Shawfair for a wee while.

Quite glad not to be involved this year tbh!

The results vs disadvantaged areas thing is complicated by a lot of the systems that are already in place to try to mitigate disadvantages- if you want to get into uni or college then you get extra places, extra clearing chances, and contextual awards (ie, generally lower grade demands because you’ve worked that much harder to achieve the same grade).

So if you’re in the right qualifying group (mostly SIMD postcode derived), your grades go further. So dropping from a B to a C in, say, much of the catchment of Alloa Academy, would still for those purposes often be more valuable than getting that B, but losing those other benefits.

And of course it’s not just this year’s kids, to put them on an even playing field with last years’ means basically disadvantaging them roughly the same as last years’ from the same schools, then giving them all the same advantages in return to try to balance it.

Of course that’s all just for higher/further education, doesn’t apply to careers etc.

Kind of a shitshow tbf but there are good reasons for it to be a shitshow.

400 odd appeals at my school already

poah, interesting as there are no real appeals this year, my wife is an exam officer in England and doing her nut over the media talking about appeals.

All students can do is check what the school put in and if it differs from what the exam board awarded a check can be made that there has been no administrative cockups. Beyond that all you can do is claim bias which you will need to backup with proper evidence which won’t include mr Smith doesn’t like me. She’s bracing herself for a shit storm.

can appeal in Scotland this year though

Am I understanding this correctly? If these downgrades hadn’t happened the success rate would have been way in excess of the norm. Is that correct? So either this is a year of exceptionally gifted students or just perhaps there was a bit of an over-estimation of their pupil’s abilities on the part of the teachers concerned.

400 odd appeals at my school already

Interesting. Is that 400 candidates, or more like 100 candidates with an average of 4 subjects each? How many of these do you think have a really compelling case? Who has the burden or preparing the appeal case – I assume it is the teacher? How many results are surprising in your school in a normal August? What doesn’t quite make sense to me is that there seem to be a lot of “surprised” teachers – yet the overall grades submitted to SQA were substantially above the norm. I saw a tweet with the comp sci AH results earlier. IIUC the “predicted” outcomes by teachers this year were that almost no students would fail completely, compared to >16% in previous years, with similar disparity getting a D. Now there are possible weird phenomena because of falling numbers on that course, and a constantly changing syllabus – so perhaps only the most dedicated students would still be there or it got a lot easier(?) but the teachers estimated not far off half getting an A. If that is replicated across other subjects/levels then perhaps the issue is some teachers being unrealistic (I did see someone tweet yesterday that there is a phenomena where fewer SQA markers are found in the SIMD schools, and accordingly schools in wealthier areas may have either a better understanding of the likely grades or be better at teaching to pass the exam).

poah, interesting as there are no real appeals this year, my wife is an exam officer in England and doing her nut over the media talking about appeals.

There definitely are appeals in Scotland. IIUC England was proposing that students who were unhappy with the grade they get awarded could choose to take the exam in October instead? In some ways that seems fairer, but I am sure will have lower adoption than asking your teacher to fill in a form. Inevitably some Scottish students will still be disappointed after appeal, although no doubt some English students will still not achieve what they want after the exam (and might have been disadvantaged by remote learning).

As above poly, no consistency; pupil with 80’s and 90’s get a B and the pupil with high 60’s gets an A. Whats that all about? We put the 68% pupil as an A because her draft assignment was excellent and she had improved, but why she got an A and the high flyer didn’t? Love to see the justification for those individual grades.

Not what my wife says and she should know, you cant appeal the grade all you can do is appeal on the grounds of administrative cockup or bias from the teachers, same in Scotland as England. You cant appeal on the grounds you think your child would have done better if the exams had taken place.

As the grounds for appeal are based on bias it will be down to the student to provide evidence, not something most will be able to do even if bias was present.

In normal years some parents spend hundreds of pounds on reviews of papers (they think they are getting remarks) very rarely makes any difference.

I have been working on the fallout from this all day. The inconsistencies are incredible. More than 80% of candidates in a key subject were awarded grades one or more lower than predicted. As far as I am aware only one grade A awarded in the entire subject.

An area of significant deprivation. Shellshocked pupils, parents and teachers. There is no reasonable explanation. Currently this has just been a statistical exercise by the SQA without any examination of any of the supporting evidence – prelims, assignments, essays, practical – that we have to justify the predictions. I am concerned that the appeals process will be overwhelmed.

At the same time, we have kids who thought they were going to fail, and their teachers did too, being awarded a C! Some of the stuff on social media seems to be, literally, incredible.

How many of these do you think have a really compelling case

probably quite a few going by the percentage difference. you can see the differences between this year and the average on the SQA site. Some seriously bad shit going on there. The SQA are a shower of knobjockeys. They have really **** it up this year.

Teachers generally know their students and how they will exam for the most part.

Is that 400 candidates

assuming its appeals for a particular grade. Glad I don’t have to deal with that but going to have to deal with the fall out.

I got an email from the SQA a couple of weeks ago asking me to participate in appeals, almost like they knew…( TL for marking and subject verification) Anybody else?

It was always going to be problematic. Teachers were effectively told to mark their own homework – how well have the kids that you have taught performed? An unfair position for them to be put in. A really difficult situation to unpick – and hilights why exams are so important.

At the same time, we have kids who thought they were going to fail, and their teachers did too, being awarded a C!

in fairness though – that happens in normal years too – its just the teacher assumes that the pupil got lucky with the paper (they may be beneficiaries of adjusting to the curve in normal years too)! There are definitely some people who have won from this as well as those who have lost out.

Not what my wife says and she should know, you cant appeal the grade all you can do is appeal on the grounds of administrative cockup or bias from the teachers, same in Scotland as England. You cant appeal on the grounds you think your child would have done better if the exams had taken place.

Well you’d certainly like to think she should know, and to be very confident about before broadcasting that there’s no point in appealing. I can’t comment about England but the Scottish system explicitly is allowing appeals (or to be more precise in wording “post certification review”) where examiners will review the evidence that supports the original teacher’s estimated grade. https://www.sqa.org.uk/sqa/93800.html. It would be a real shame if anyone here was to advise one of their children not to bother based on your wife’s mistaken assertion.

It was always going to be problematic. Teachers were effectively told to mark their own homework – how well have the kids that you have taught performed? An unfair position for them to be put in. A really difficult situation to unpick – and hilights why exams are so important. there are ways of getting teachers to fairly assess their students and rely less on exams, but they do involve training, moderation, and standardisation, with evidence rather than just giving a score.

As above poly, no consistency; pupil with 80’s and 90’s get a B and the pupil with high 60’s gets an A. Whats that all about? We put the 68% pupil as an A because her draft assignment was excellent and she had improved, but why she got an A and the high flyer didn’t? Love to see the justification for those individual grades.

Those anomalies are the bizzare ones, and don’t fit with the explanation of how it was supposed to work. Statistically adjusting the number of passes/grades happens each year – just normally nobody knows what the mark was on their paper as the starting point for that.

Poly, ok see what you’re saying, you can appeal through the school if your grade is lower than the school submitted. I still don’t think there will be much change on appeal, it’s all a bit computer says no unless someone actually entered the wrong grade, ie an admin error, which I did say above was grounds for appeal. I think my wife was saying the only grounds for appeal against the grade the school submitted was on the grounds of evidenced bias by the school against the pupil.

It’s not surprising students are getting a grade below what was submitted, if they had all got what was submitted the grades would have gone up 10% to 13%. As the moderating process takes into account previous performance from a school I can also see overly optimistic schools being dropped a grade on mass quite easily. The whole thing is a shit storm and England hasn’t been announced yet.

This reminds me of when your doctor asks you “how much do you drink?” You halve the true answer, as you know they will think you are lying. They double your answer, but you know that, so you halve it again…. and so on.

So, all the schools over-estimate as they know it will be adjusted down, and they don’t want to be the fools who estimated correctly.

I still don’t think there will be much change on appeal, it’s all a bit computer says no unless someone actually entered the wrong grade, ie an admin error, which I did say above was grounds for appeal. I think my wife was saying the only grounds for appeal against the grade the school submitted was on the grounds of evidenced bias by the school against the pupil.

This is not my understanding of how it will work in Scotland. Schools can appeal a grade if they have evidence that the SQA grade is wrong. So if I have a pupil who got 80% in the prelim exam and the SQA gave them a B then we would send that prelim exam as evidence and if the SQA agreed it was sufficient evidence of A grade performance they would upgrade that pupil.

My understanding is it’s evidence based appeals. So two kids in same class can appeal but the one who has evidence to show “working at grade” and improvement most likely to get the appeal. This is why I have a pile of papers in a cupboard in my room, it’s the evidence. Some of it is a could be used pile and a nope pile. I also have my list of we can appeal pupils and just shut up and take a pass list. (The latter list is the scrape a pass pupils, no one was entered for a grade/pass that wouldn’t on a good day with a fair breeze achieve it, as per sqa instructions

Out of interest – what did the teacher’s submit originally, just a grade or did they have to provide supporting evidence for each grade?

The grades (A-D) are sub divided into numerical bands (A1+2, B3+4 etc). This is always the case. This year we further subdivided those numerical bands into 2 or 3 smaller bands then where there was more than one pupil at a given band we ranked them best to worst. This gave an overall ranking of a year group or class that the SQA could then work their statistical magic on.

No evidence was required but we did record what evidence we had. I don’t know if that info was considered though.

My son is going to appeal his Maths Higher.

He scored 78% in his last prelim and was predicted an A by his teacher.

He was obviously downgraded by the SQA and was justifiably annoyed about it.

How long will the appeals process take? Presumably it is going to be longer than normal this year because of the volume of appeals.

@Ho hum have a look at the SQA website for that info if you haven’t already. They’ve got a pretty good FAQ.

Hels – it’s a little like that. The “uproar” is not that the doctor assumes you we might all be underestimating but that he assumes people like you might be underestimating more than people like me and applies a bigger correction. Of course, you could argue that someone who provides a clear credible answer that fits with the doctors past experience might be more believable and less subject to adjustment anyway – so a smart school might well have taken the grades it was going to submit and sanity checked them against the sort of performance they typically achieve to make sure their story was credible to start with.

Stumpyjon – I believe you are wrong and there will be a significant number of “corrections” not just for admin errors. (It’s too high profile for there to not be some big corrections; and it’s politically a sensitive time and sensitive subject so doubt they’ll want to face the same storm in 6-8 weeks time again). I’m also quite sure when those results come out there will be a lot of disappointed pupils too – and of course there will be people in both Sqa and government keen to avoid it being seen as a huge mistake. My guess is <1:10 of those downgraded will actually get Upgrades – (so perhaps 1:4-1:5 of those who appeal – because presumably there will be a fair number who don’t care or accept that the result they were awarded was not entirely unreasonable).

Did most schools tell the pupils what they had predicted? My son’s school didn’t tell him – although there are general report card/parents night type predictions throughout the year they don’t face the scrutiny that you’d expect when they come to submit a grade.

Do schools normally predict a grade for sqa? I don’t see what purpose it would serve but something before the results came out implied that they submit similar (but less specific) detail and the robustness of those predictions was expected to avoid the situation they now face…