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A bit of insight for you before GCSE "results" are announced next week. It'll help you understand teachers' anger. 1/n
It looks like next week's GCSEs are likely to be based on taking the ranking given by schools from top to bottom of the cohort, and applying a curve based on schools' past performance. 2/n
If you're wondering why teachers are going to be angry, let me tell you. 3/n
We were specifically NOT asked to rank a whole year group from top to bottom. 4/n
We were asked to give students grades, and then rank within those grades. So, for example, the top "9" all the way down to the bottom "9" ,then the the top "8" down to the bottom "8", and and so on. 5/n
Now, to the casual eye, this looks exactly the same as a top to bottom ranking for the whole year group. It isn't, and we would have done things differently if we were asked to do that. 6/n
The method we were asked to imply suggested that the grade we gave was the most important, but that the exam board might make some adjustments. Result: we spent ages on the grade, and we spent ages on the boundaries. 7/n
In other words, we gave a grade, and then indicated our confidence by placing the student near the top or the bottom. We sweated the detail hugely at the bottom of each boundary, as that represented a "danger zone". 8/n
However, this methodology meant that we didn't sweat those in the middle of a band as much. If you were a "safe 8", say ranked 25 out of 50, what did it matter if you were misranked a bit? 9/n
22 or 28, for example? You were bang in the middle of the pack, and your grade wasn't going anywhere. 10/n
However, it looks like Ofqual has just taken these rankings and just turned them into a top to bottom order, and applied a curve which is independent from Centre Assessed Grades. This changes things. 11/n
Suddenly, our "middle of the pack" safe kid might now sit on a border - a border that we had no idea might exist. 12/n
When you see students who have been downgraded by two grades, I'm pretty sure that is what has happened. Schools have, quite understandably, thought that particular grades were safe, because of how we were asked to rank (which was an unusual specific methodology) 13/n
Turns out that either a) Ofqual was being disingenuous or (more likely) b) they discovered after the fact that their original method wasn't going to hit government targets for "grade inflation." 14/n
I really hope that's helpful in trying to understand what's gong on, and the anger of schools and teachers across the country. 15/15
