Things that piss you off that shouldn't

[mottaloo]

Radio 5 live this morning & the great A level fiasco. Fine, i get it and any of you VTers with kids or other relatives in that position then i wish you all the best in getting it sorted favourably.....

but...

The breakfast show interviewed a few students awaiting their results including one lad who nervously said in order to qualify for a drama college in London (presumably so he can learn how to sway in the wind like a sapling) he needed three E grades to get in. E, for **** sake ! They called him back once he got his grades and they were something like B,C & D and he then went on to gush how relieved he was and he thought his world was going to crash in around him if he failed to get "good enough" grades ! Worse thing was, the interviewer indulged him ! Proper drama queen, literally !

I'm driving along, chuntering to myself "you wait til you join the real world son !"

Bloody students !

 

Edited August 13, 2020 by mottaloo

[Djemba_Villan]

19 minutes ago, mottaloo said:

Radio 5 live this morning & the great A level fiasco. Fine, i get it and any of you VTers with kids or other relatives in that position then i wish you all the best in getting it sorted favourably.....

but...

The breakfast show interviewed a few students awaiting their results including one lad who nervously said in order to qualify for a drama college in London (presumably so he can learn how to sway in the wind like a sapling) he needed three E grades to get in. E, for **** sake ! They called him back once he got his grades and they were something like B,C & D and he then went on to gush how relieved he was and he thought his world was going to crash in around him if he failed to get "good enough" grades ! Worse thing was, the interviewer indulged him ! Proper drama queen, literally !

I'm driving along, chuntering to myself "you wait til you join the real world son !"

Bloody students !

 

I've been getting irate with it too even though I'm now in my early 30s and exam scores seem a lifetime ago!

Like you..I get it...it's rubbish...esp if you've missed out on a fine margain for your Uni offer.

But all the arm waving. What perfect solution was there!? Some people seem to be acting like this approach has been taken on a Wim and totally unnecessary. Someone had to, at some point, determine grades - or something equivalent to allow the system to work. You can't just inflate everyone to A*s (which is CLEARLY what every teacher has done) else the whole thing fails anyway!

I saw one today where a girl had got mock scores of B C C, her teacher predicted A A* A* (How the f***!?) and then it moderated her down to B A D (ironically). Tbh..is that so bad? Is that so disastrous? She was up in arms about it saying she would have definitely got 3As. Balls. I get it's not ideal but everyone just can't seem to understand there is a bigger picture. The thing is, most unis are being pretty pragmatic about the offers and by looks of it there is an appeals process...so just stop wailing.

Edited August 13, 2020 by Djemba_Villan

[Seat68]

Just now, Djemba_Villan said:

I've been getting irate with it too even though I'm now in my early 30s and exam scores seem a lifetime ago!

Like you..I get it...it's rubbish...esp if you've missed out on a fine margain for your Uni offer.

But all the arm waving. What perfect solution was there!? Some people seem to be acting like this approach has been taken on a Wim and totally unnecessary. Someone had to, at some point, determine grades - or something equivalent to allow the system to work. You can't just inflate everyone to A*s (which is CLEARLY what every teacher has done) else the whole thing fails anyway!

I saw one today where a girl had got mock scores of B C C, her teacher predicted A A* A* (How the f***!?) and then it moderated her down to B A D (ironically). Tbh..is that so bad? Is that so disastrous? She was up in arms about it saying she would have definitely got 3As. Balls. I get it's not ideal but everyone just can't seem to understand there is a bigger picture.

Yeah it is that bad. Really that bad. If you are getting A’s in your mocks how can it be right that someone looks at that at puts you as a C? People have based their entire future on this. A person in an office somewhere decides on the future of a young person. We have been here before of course. 

[Djemba_Villan]

1 minute ago, Seat68 said:

Yeah it is that bad. Really that bad. If you are getting A’s in your mocks how can it be right that someone looks at that at puts you as a C? People have based their entire future on this. A person in an office somewhere decides on the future of a young person. We have been here before of course. 

If there was factual evidence like a Mock and someone had As then got moderated down to Cs/Ds...I'd be properly sympathetic, that would really suck. I get how important it is for those affected.

It's the teachers prediction that's the problem (as in the example I saw). They've set unrealistic predictions that was always 100% inevitably going to lead to moderation. My issue is, you can't just say "that's no good" if there's no viable alternative mechanism being proposed. If they said "right..this year is a write off...exams will fairly held next year" there would understandably be even more outrage.

[Genie]

Is there not course work to consider? Is that the bit of information that is missing here?

If they got an A in the mock exam, but course work was at C/D level then getting an overall grade C is not that unreasonable.

If not then I don’t know how else you can get an A in a mock exam but then the powers that be apply a C as the official mark.

[chrisp65]

2 minutes ago, Djemba_Villan said:

If there was factual evidence like a Mock and someone had As then got moderated down to Cs/Ds...I'd be properly sympathetic, that would really suck. I get how important it is for those affected.

It's the teachers prediction that's the problem (as in the example I saw). They've set unrealistic predictions that was always 100% inevitably going to lead to moderation. My issue is, you can't just say "that's no good" if there's no viable alternative mechanism being proposed. If they said "right..this year is a write off...exams will fairly held next year" there would understandably be even more outrage.

Mocks are treated differently in each and every school. Some don’t even do them. They are sometimes a whole past paper sat at a time when the student has only done 60% of the course work. Other schools will select mock questions to only cover what’s been taught.

There is a level of detail to this story that is rightly too boring for most people to get in to. But it is turning in to a classic where everyone has an opinion based on 40% of a story.

Those three A’s, if they were for medical school, they could be kind of important. 

Why have private schools strangely found their pass mark has gone up and schools in poor areas have found their pass marks have gone down?

I get that it’s the annual diarised story for the media. But there is a little more to it.

[Djemba_Villan]

3 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

Mocks are treated differently in each and every school. Some don’t even do them. They are sometimes a whole past paper sat at a time when the student has only done 60% of the course work. Other schools will select mock questions to only cover what’s been taught.

There is a level of detail to this story that is rightly too boring for most people to get in to. But it is turning in to a classic where everyone has an opinion based on 40% of a story.

Those three A’s, if they were for medical school, they could be kind of important. 

Why have private schools strangely found their pass mark has gone up and schools in poor areas have found their pass marks have gone down?

I get that it’s the annual diarised story for the media. But there is a little more to it.

Fair enough and yes, your point about mocks is well made. That said, those arguing the teacher's predicted grades should be the dominant factor though...from what I've seen that's not practical either. It's a interesting subject really as any human prediction is likely to be "Happy Path/Sunny Day" i.e. student achieves better or as well as track record suggests...a teacher isn't motivated to 'score down' a pupil as they have to look them in the eye on results day - they also aren't going to speculate if someone was going to flunk final exams/coursework. Reality means that some (like me many years ago - in my case it worked out though) don't do as well as they expected for many reasons....the algorithm has to somehow predict that. Based on minimal personalised data. So all it can do is look for statistical trends. Which will always lead to things like your later point.

Re: Private schools, I guess it's just those statistical trends. I get it doesn't read well, but other than the powers that be trying their best, with the best analytical methods available, what better options are really available given such sparse data available? There is no methodology that would please even a fraction of people. There are always some people that lose out and some that don't. Like a lot of things with COVID collateral damage - it's really really sub-optimal...but anyone clinging for a perfect solution will always be 'disappointed/furious'.

Taking your example of medical school AAA requirement. University X has 1000 applicants, gives 300 conditional offers for 200 spaces - knowing that 1/3 of pupils statistically don't achieve their grades. Every 300 pupils concerned has predicted grades of AAA as the school don't want to deny the pupil and benefits in their assessments. What does University X do? 

the only pragmatic thing I can think of is for those scored down - say ABB. Assuming the uni rejects them on that basis and no good clearing spaces available...they challenge the 2 Bs - if they got As in their Mocks, or other robust evidence available challenge and appeal for As. If no such evidence exists...it's galling but I can't see what anyone in the link above can do do fully resolve? You can't just allow in all 300 people. My annoyance isn't at the puipls/those affected it's those ranting on radio as if there was some magical alternative...also a bit at teachers for inflating predictions.

 

[chrisp65]

Aye, agree with all of that and for me it basically boils down to... politicians.

They’ve had close on 5 months to come up with ‘something’. They’ve done nothing very much then changed that, literally making an announcement at 5:00pm yesterday that had no information to back it up until gone 10:00pm last night.

At 9:00am this morning one of the two schools here didn’t know what the system was. To take your point, there is never going to be a totally fair and equitable solution. But they’ve managed to turn it in to a farce by somehow not even being able to predict one of all the possible scenarios.

It’s beyond piss poor from government. What we get, is radio 5 pretending not to understand and just doing vox pops with people that don’t know the facts.

Which quite rightly, has annoyed you and everyone else they haven’t explained the story to, because they are Radio 5 and if it can’t be explained in 90 seconds, just have a phone in.

[Stevo985]

1 hour ago, Djemba_Villan said:

If there was factual evidence like a Mock and someone had As then got moderated down to Cs/Ds...I'd be properly sympathetic, that would really suck. I get how important it is for those affected.

It's the teachers prediction that's the problem (as in the example I saw). They've set unrealistic predictions that was always 100% inevitably going to lead to moderation. My issue is, you can't just say "that's no good" if there's no viable alternative mechanism being proposed. If they said "right..this year is a write off...exams will fairly held next year" there would understandably be even more outrage.

There seems to be hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of examples of exactly that.

There couldn't be a perfect solution, but any solution that changes AAA Mock Results and AAA assessed grades to BBC is ****.

[Djemba_Villan]

5 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

There seems to be hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of examples of exactly that.

There couldn't be a perfect solution, but any solution that changes AAA Mock Results and AAA assessed grades to BBC is ****.

Agreed. 

They should be transparent with the algorithm used.

[chrisp65]

So, as a one off example, that doesn’t matter as the result wasn’t needed or relevant.

A level Biology, for 2 years every assessment, AS level, prediction and mock my nipper has had mostly B’s, a couple of A’s, a couple of C’s. So to me, that looks like a B all day long but it’s an exam so you never know.

Grade given this morning?

D

Who has looked at an array of some A’s, mostly B’s and some C’s and thought, yeah, that’s a D? What possible algorithm came up with that?

 

(for a bit of context, the other marks were really good, but someone somewhere clearly had a hunch that maybe they’d have had a bad day, the day of the Biology exam. I guess the slight advantage here is the baccalaureate, which I don’t think English schools do? So that’s also a continuous assessment so when that stopped in March there were already 18 months of recorded continual assessments, so it basically subbed out the poxy biology grade)

Edited August 13, 2020 by chrisp65

[NurembergVillan]

1 hour ago, mottaloo said:

including one lad who nervously said in order to qualify for a drama college in London (presumably so he can learn how to sway in the wind like a sapling) he needed three E grades to get in. E, for **** sake ! They called him back once he got his grades and they were something like B,C & D and he then went on to gush how relieved he was and he thought his world was going to crash in around him if he failed to get "good enough" grades ! Worse thing was, the interviewer indulged him ! Proper drama queen, literally !

This is one of the most one-eyed, ill-thought out posts I've read on here in a while.

We know nothing about this young man.  Maybe he has learning difficulties, maybe he's just not academically gifted, maybe he's the first person in his family to ever sit an A-level.  Maybe he's been too focussed on acting?

Why would drama college mean he was going to "learn how to sway in the wind like a sapling"?  Do you not watch TV, or movies, or theatre?

Getting into drama college could be, and seemingly is, a huge achievement for him.  He's been awarded grades that are better than mine - I went on to study fashion design so I could learn how to make cloaks out of Dalmatian puppies.

This country's in a sorry state and there's a long line of people we should be taking the piss out of before an 18 year old who's trying to make something of himself in an industry he enjoys.

Without the arts we've got **** all.

/rant

[NurembergVillan]

19 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

So, as a one off example, that doesn’t matter as the result wasn’t needed or relevant.

A level Biology, for 2 years every assessment, AS level, prediction and mock my nipper has had mostly B’s, a couple of A’s, a couple of C’s. So to me, that looks like a B all day long but it’s an exam so you never know.

Grade given this morning?

D

Who has looked at an array of some A’s, mostly B’s and some C’s and thought, yeah, that’s a D? What possible algorithm came up with that?

 

(for a bit of context, the other marks were really good, but someone somewhere clearly had a hunch that maybe they’d have had a bad day, the day of the Biology exam. I guess the slight advantage here is the baccalaureate, which I don’t think English schools do? So that’s also a continuous assessment so when that stopped in March there were already 18 months of recorded continual assessments, so it basically subbed out the poxy biology grade)

Seemingly this is largely to do with recent results at the school, so if your kids' school usually produces D-grade Biology students - there's your answer.

It would explain why student in under-privileged areas are being marked down and private school grades are up.

It's the academic equivalent of ending the football season early and saying "Villa haven't beaten Arsenal at home since 1998, so that's an away win".

[Vive_La_Villa]

When people go through their emails and reply to each one straight away even though several further emails have already been sent since the original email. 
 

Read them all first! 

[chrisp65]

1 minute ago, NurembergVillan said:

Seemingly this is largely to do with recent results at the school, so if your kids' school usually produces D-grade Biology students - there's your answer.

It would explain why student in under-privileged areas are being marked down and private school grades are up.

It's the academic equivalent of ending the football season early and saying "Villa haven't beaten Arsenal at home since 1998, so that's an away win".

...genuinely, the weird quirk here, we have two new schools, one not even finished being built, up until this year we had a Boys school and as Girls school, this year they’ve both been renamed and gone co-ed, with classes shared across both sites.

My nipper did Biology in the new school in the ‘poor’ end of town, but did the rest of the exams registered in the school in the (relatively) ‘posh’ end of town.

So they have decided to downgrade the results from the east end, not the west end.

That’s a hell of a call, when it’s actually the same kids commuting back n fore. But looking across all the social media, that’s exactly what they’ve done they’ve downgraded exams that were physically sat in the poor end of town.

That’s a little bit shit.

 

[Davkaus]

1 hour ago, Genie said:

Is there not course work to consider? Is that the bit of information that is missing here?

 

Most courses don't have coursework anymore. Just humanities subjects I think.

[mottaloo]

@NurembergVillan - fair point, i didn't really think it through.....just the ramblings of a bloke who was stuck in rush hour traffic and had little sleep the night before. 

Good luck to the kid. 

[chrisp65]

24 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

Most courses don't have coursework anymore. Just humanities subjects I think.

Worth noting, it was tory policy to reintroduce the ‘rigour’ of exams.

[NurembergVillan]

17 minutes ago, mottaloo said:

@NurembergVillan - fair point, i didn't really think it through.....just the ramblings of a bloke who was stuck in rush hour traffic and had little sleep the night before. 

Good luck to the kid. 

I tried to be super careful to make it all about the post and not about you because it seemed an unusual viewpoint for you.  Sadly, there are plenty of people who would gladly jump all over this kid.

Kudos for acknowledging it

[blandy]

1 hour ago, NurembergVillan said:

Why would drama college mean he was going to "learn how to sway in the wind like a sapling"? 

Now we're all friends again, can I say it's obvious he could branch out into other roles?