| A Level results 08:32 - Aug 13 with 8262 views | MrSheen |
Good luck to anyone else going through this today. Fortunately my youngest has got what she needs for exile to Chilly Jocko-Land (c. J. Greaves). |  | | |  |
| A Level results on 09:57 - Aug 13 with 3742 views | Myke |
My daughter did (or rather didn't do) the Leaving Cert this year so waiting on predicted grades. Normally, the state exam results are out this week, but have been kicked back until the 9th of September. Well done to your daughter and best of luck to her. |  | | |
| A Level results on 10:02 - Aug 13 with 3737 views | izlingtonhoop |
My youngest went thru the (standard) process last year, so I don't have a personal interest. But it really does seem like a dog's breakfast, listening to stories on the radio.
Anyway, I'm moments away from putting 'algorithm' on the Random Irritations thread.. |  | | |
| A Level results on 10:32 - Aug 13 with 3701 views | MrSheen |
| A Level results on 09:57 - Aug 13 by Myke |
My daughter did (or rather didn't do) the Leaving Cert this year so waiting on predicted grades. Normally, the state exam results are out this week, but have been kicked back until the 9th of September. Well done to your daughter and best of luck to her. |
Is that how long they have to wait? I’m just back from Ireland, and we can tell when Leaving Cert day is from all the kids running into the sea in their undies. I wondered why we hadn’t seen it this time. How will the Unis cope with applications in that time frame? Good luck to her, I’m just delighted it’s over. | | | |
| A Level results on 10:53 - Aug 13 with 3674 views | Phildo |
No 1 son got what he needed and is off to Durham - kids have been put through the ringer this week with all the speculation about exams they never actually sat. Some mates of his who just missed on needed grades have been contacted by the unis and told don't worry you still have your place. |  | | |
| A Level results on 11:19 - Aug 13 with 3631 views | Clive_Anderson |
They should have sat the exams, it's exactly the type of scenario where you can sit 2m apart anyway.
You can't give people marks for exams they haven't taken, it's stupid. | | | |
| A Level results on 11:20 - Aug 13 with 3629 views | CroydonCaptJack |
| A Level results on 10:53 - Aug 13 by Phildo |
No 1 son got what he needed and is off to Durham - kids have been put through the ringer this week with all the speculation about exams they never actually sat. Some mates of his who just missed on needed grades have been contacted by the unis and told don't worry you still have your place. |
That is good to hear. |  | | |
| A Level results on 11:37 - Aug 13 with 3584 views | MrSheen |
| A Level results on 11:19 - Aug 13 by Clive_Anderson |
They should have sat the exams, it's exactly the type of scenario where you can sit 2m apart anyway.
You can't give people marks for exams they haven't taken, it's stupid. |
They can sit apart, but the problem was getting hundreds of kids in and out of doors, as well as the fact that they weren't in school for the last three months - not all kids have the same access to study. I feel more sorry for the kids coming up next year. My daughter had completely the curriculum and was into the revision stage, next year's lot will have missed the time when they were supposed to be tackling it for the first time.
My view is tainted by the fact that it all turned out well, but I think taking teachers' grades and getting outside scrutiny was fairer than just giving them what the teachers indicated, like in Scotland. Either way, congrats to everyone who's come through it, time to look forward. | | | |
| A Level results on 11:39 - Aug 13 with 3576 views | MrSheen |
| A Level results on 10:53 - Aug 13 by Phildo |
No 1 son got what he needed and is off to Durham - kids have been put through the ringer this week with all the speculation about exams they never actually sat. Some mates of his who just missed on needed grades have been contacted by the unis and told don't worry you still have your place. |
Typical! You've given them a nice place to live, and first chance they get they want to move hundreds of miles away! Well done to your boy. Some of my daughter's friends were also accommodated with lower offers - happened to my son a few years ago anyway. | | | |
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| A Level results on 12:11 - Aug 13 with 3540 views | stowmarketrange |
| A Level results on 11:39 - Aug 13 by MrSheen |
Typical! You've given them a nice place to live, and first chance they get they want to move hundreds of miles away! Well done to your boy. Some of my daughter's friends were also accommodated with lower offers - happened to my son a few years ago anyway. |
Durham is a beautiful city to visit,especially by train.I don’t know what it’s like to live there though,but the Bigg market is only a 12 minute train ride away.And one of the cheapest pubs in the uk is only a few miles south in Darlington.
Not that they’ll have time for going out drinking with all that studying to do. |  | | |
| A Level results on 12:22 - Aug 13 with 3527 views | Phildo |
| A Level results on 12:11 - Aug 13 by stowmarketrange |
Durham is a beautiful city to visit,especially by train.I don’t know what it’s like to live there though,but the Bigg market is only a 12 minute train ride away.And one of the cheapest pubs in the uk is only a few miles south in Darlington.
Not that they’ll have time for going out drinking with all that studying to do. |
He has a weekly poker school and 5 of the 6 players are off to Durham. I told him he is just moving the game north as the heat is up in the smoke. | | | |
| A Level results on 12:38 - Aug 13 with 3502 views | W13R |
My youngest thankfully got enough for Nottingham. He now needs to decide if he will defer for a year or spend his first year doing his course potentially on-line or in reduced lecture sizes?
I must say it could have gone either way and I do feel sorry for anyone who has been let down by these strange circumstances. |  | | |
| A Level results on 12:46 - Aug 13 with 3482 views | stowmarketrange |
| A Level results on 12:22 - Aug 13 by Phildo |
He has a weekly poker school and 5 of the 6 players are off to Durham. I told him he is just moving the game north as the heat is up in the smoke. |
If they’d gone to Newcastle uni they could’ve been playing poker with houses in the west end of the city as chips.
I’ll match your Joan St and I’ll raise you Adelaide terrace.Although I think they don’t give change and it’s impossible to cash your chips in at the end of the game.I also think that the Newcastle edition of monopoly has to have the whole of the west end as Old Kent Rd.And they still ain’t worth the £60. | | | |
| A Level results on 19:29 - Aug 13 with 3386 views | hantssi |
| A Level results on 11:39 - Aug 13 by MrSheen |
Typical! You've given them a nice place to live, and first chance they get they want to move hundreds of miles away! Well done to your boy. Some of my daughter's friends were also accommodated with lower offers - happened to my son a few years ago anyway. |
Not for me, my daughter is going to Southampton so she can stay at home!
I can’t pay them to leave! | | | |
| A Level results on 19:46 - Aug 13 with 3360 views | DavieQPR |
If you can't get the Teachers Union to agree to take back even little kids how do you think you could get them to arrange and supervise exams, Part of the problem is giving the teachers the power to assess pupils marks. 'Oh look at me I've got so many pupils with wonderful results. What! Doesn't matter it's more than 50% of what I've achieved before'.
Not sour grapes because my daughter got in at Surrey. |  | | |
| A Level results on 20:34 - Aug 13 with 3292 views | hamptonhillhoop |
My daughter got what she needed, thank God, and is off to Nottingham. She was downgraded by one grade for one subject but luckily it didn't matter. Personally, I think they should have pulled out all the stops to let them do the exams, however, I think if they had, loads of parents wouldn't have let their kids go in, loads of kids would have had anxiety issues about it etc. It worked for my daughter so I'm not complaining, however, if it hadn't, I'd have been very upset I'd imagine as basically they've been denied the chance to pass, or fail, by actually doing the exam. I think it will always be tainted. One of my daughters friends is in danger of not getting a place at Oxford after 'only' getting an A instead of an A* [Post edited 13 Aug 2020 20:37]
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| A Level results on 21:53 - Aug 13 with 3222 views | Mistication92 |
I don't understand why they got rid of A-Level coursework a few years ago (Gove). If teachers/exam boards had that to go on there'd have been no problems because there would have been work to base the grades on. | | | |
| A Level results on 04:29 - Aug 14 with 3112 views | timcocking |
The British curriculum is (unsurprisingly) absolutely shocking. So, so poor. You could teach kids so much more, so much quicker. Why in the name of Christ British kids still spend their time and energy learning utterly useless crap like trigonometry or long division when they should be learning Russian and Chinese or whatever. It's as if the people running the country still think it's 1970 and there's no such thing as globalisation or phones and computers. They are teaching my daughter what they taught us; sod all. My daughter is in the middle of her GCSEs and she's learnt sweet fa in the last 10 years. Complete waste of time. Long division...Christalbloodymighty. Dutch kids are fluent in every main language at a young age. Would you prefer to know how to speak Chinese and Russian, or calculate the surface area of a bloody triangle? I'd bet the German curriculum no longer teaches long division. |  | | |
| A Level results on 05:24 - Aug 14 with 3108 views | nadera78 |
Some severe misunderstanding of what happened on this thread. It was not teachers sticking a finger in the air and saying "I'll give this one a B". I've copied this next bit from another site I use:
"Teachers had to base the grades on three levels of evidence.
1. High level - undertaken in exam conditions with invigilators the whole exam format everything. Obviously any of these type that actually contributed to final grades were MEANT to give added weight.
Eg as exams
2. Next came in class tests/assessments under exam conditions but where obviously kids will push boundaries but theoretically in ‘closed conditions’ lower down this scale was open book type tests. All these are routinely moderated and standardised in faculty meetings every six weeks anyway using raw and uniform mark scores from the exam boards
3. Homework’s and general class work was the lowest level of evidence.
Once this was done heads of department would liaise with individual staff and grill them on their CAGS. Each grade HAD to be justified by the. BEST evidence. Next those HODS would be questionEd by their line managers at slt level looking at trends over the last three years (or longer) or shorter if it was a newer spec exam. This involved looking at patterns or anomalies between groups of learners including male/female ALN FSM with particular notice given to ALN kids for whom extra time in exams would be allocated or if they had readers etc. We also looked at residual differences between subjects. Then I had to justify my departments with the Deputy Head in charge of standards before we both signed them off to the Head.
Additionally all pupils ALPS A Level target grade based on performance at gcse was also taken into consideration.
All the data for each staff member and faculty/department with spreadsheets and commentary on each pupil was collated on the central school drive for easy access to reference if needed prior to submission of the CAGS to exam boards."
And then, after all that, the grades were put through an algorithm that both the government and the regulator knew was biased in favour of private schools. They knew it. That's why kids attending private schools have seen a big jump in grades and kids in state schools a drop.
The government had a choice - perhaps see a slight grade inflation across the board, or use an algorithm they knew discriminated against poor people. Guess which they chose? | | | |
| A Level results on 06:44 - Aug 14 with 3083 views | flynnbo |
| A Level results on 05:24 - Aug 14 by nadera78 |
Some severe misunderstanding of what happened on this thread. It was not teachers sticking a finger in the air and saying "I'll give this one a B". I've copied this next bit from another site I use:
"Teachers had to base the grades on three levels of evidence.
1. High level - undertaken in exam conditions with invigilators the whole exam format everything. Obviously any of these type that actually contributed to final grades were MEANT to give added weight.
Eg as exams
2. Next came in class tests/assessments under exam conditions but where obviously kids will push boundaries but theoretically in ‘closed conditions’ lower down this scale was open book type tests. All these are routinely moderated and standardised in faculty meetings every six weeks anyway using raw and uniform mark scores from the exam boards
3. Homework’s and general class work was the lowest level of evidence.
Once this was done heads of department would liaise with individual staff and grill them on their CAGS. Each grade HAD to be justified by the. BEST evidence. Next those HODS would be questionEd by their line managers at slt level looking at trends over the last three years (or longer) or shorter if it was a newer spec exam. This involved looking at patterns or anomalies between groups of learners including male/female ALN FSM with particular notice given to ALN kids for whom extra time in exams would be allocated or if they had readers etc. We also looked at residual differences between subjects. Then I had to justify my departments with the Deputy Head in charge of standards before we both signed them off to the Head.
Additionally all pupils ALPS A Level target grade based on performance at gcse was also taken into consideration.
All the data for each staff member and faculty/department with spreadsheets and commentary on each pupil was collated on the central school drive for easy access to reference if needed prior to submission of the CAGS to exam boards."
And then, after all that, the grades were put through an algorithm that both the government and the regulator knew was biased in favour of private schools. They knew it. That's why kids attending private schools have seen a big jump in grades and kids in state schools a drop.
The government had a choice - perhaps see a slight grade inflation across the board, or use an algorithm they knew discriminated against poor people. Guess which they chose? |
Excellent post. [Post edited 14 Aug 2020 6:46]
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| A Level results on 07:58 - Aug 14 with 3036 views | stevec |
| A Level results on 10:53 - Aug 13 by Phildo |
No 1 son got what he needed and is off to Durham - kids have been put through the ringer this week with all the speculation about exams they never actually sat. Some mates of his who just missed on needed grades have been contacted by the unis and told don't worry you still have your place. |
Would have been interesting if the Government had given A’s to everyone on account of the problems and see if it made a blind bit of difference.
Universities had already spelt out which kids they wanted and didn’t want and Companies are fairly smart with interviews to sort the wheat from the chaff.
This obsession with getting to Uni needs to be rebalanced. We have more lawyers and accountants than you can shake your proverbial stick at. If we had a cull on these careers would we miss them? NO.
What we do need, and far more valuable to society, are bricklayers, builders, nurses and carers and we’ve never got enough of those.
I’m hoping this pandemic, if it has any plus side, has a revaluation on what jobs are important and rebalances it’s education system accordingly. |  | | |
| A Level results on 08:14 - Aug 14 with 3022 views | Phildo |
| A Level results on 07:58 - Aug 14 by stevec |
Would have been interesting if the Government had given A’s to everyone on account of the problems and see if it made a blind bit of difference.
Universities had already spelt out which kids they wanted and didn’t want and Companies are fairly smart with interviews to sort the wheat from the chaff.
This obsession with getting to Uni needs to be rebalanced. We have more lawyers and accountants than you can shake your proverbial stick at. If we had a cull on these careers would we miss them? NO.
What we do need, and far more valuable to society, are bricklayers, builders, nurses and carers and we’ve never got enough of those.
I’m hoping this pandemic, if it has any plus side, has a revaluation on what jobs are important and rebalances it’s education system accordingly. |
cannot agree - it is now clear - although my son was fortunate- a complete Horlick was made of this and young people have been penalised unnecessarily. They had time to stop it as well having seen what happened in Scotland.
We need people skilled in all the things you mention but we do also need lawyers and accountants- not least so you can stop abuses of power from those who happen to govern us at a given time.
Shakespeare said lets kill all the lawyers but I prefer Robert Bolts version:
“William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”
Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”
William Roper: “Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!”
Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!”
― Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons | | | |
| A Level results on 08:20 - Aug 14 with 3011 views | Watford_Ranger |
| A Level results on 07:58 - Aug 14 by stevec |
Would have been interesting if the Government had given A’s to everyone on account of the problems and see if it made a blind bit of difference.
Universities had already spelt out which kids they wanted and didn’t want and Companies are fairly smart with interviews to sort the wheat from the chaff.
This obsession with getting to Uni needs to be rebalanced. We have more lawyers and accountants than you can shake your proverbial stick at. If we had a cull on these careers would we miss them? NO.
What we do need, and far more valuable to society, are bricklayers, builders, nurses and carers and we’ve never got enough of those.
I’m hoping this pandemic, if it has any plus side, has a revaluation on what jobs are important and rebalances it’s education system accordingly. |
Law and Accounting degrees are great ones to have and will teach skills applicable to more careers than the obvious routes of continuing on to qualify as a lawyer/accountant. We do need more builders and nurses but I doubt you’ll find many in the pool of kids hoping to be lawyers/accountants. In fact you’ll do well to find anywhere near enough in this country at all so we’d best be grateful to those coming here to do such jobs.
The actual degree you do isn’t even that relevant for most careers. I did a degree that was dull as fk and difficult for the most part because it was drilled into us at school that we should do a ‘serious’ subject. Wish I’d done something interesting like Psychology in hindsight.
Unsurprisingly it’s the kids from poor backgrounds with loads of potential who have been screwed over. Gavin Williamson would surely resign if anyone resigned for anything any more. | | | |
| A Level results on 09:34 - Aug 14 with 2953 views | wood_hoop |
This must be absolute torture for so many of those young people who have tried to reach certain levels in education to help gain a foothold on that long ladder of life.
Education at what ever level, academic or other can make such a massive difference to their whole life, I am very fortunate, both my son and daughter have master degrees in subjects they adore, son is now in final throws of gaining a PHD, but getting there was sheer bloody hard work and determination, going way above what was expected by the teachers at their comp school, very ordinary run of the mill school where no doubt pupils would have been marked down, as seems by the latest round of repression by our so called 'leaders'
Using 'class levels' as a means to grading pupils is an appaling system of grading the work of so many kids from 'ordinary' families, one can only hope that what ever further education institution the kids are trying to reach can be sympathetic and help keep the dreams alive of so many of our future genaration.
The higher ends of the education system in this country is tilted so sharply towards families who had previous generations in higher education,that this pandemic will keep the status quo just where Johnson and his team of half wits could only dream of.
My heart goes out to all who post on here and have kids currently battling against the odds and wish them every success. |  | | |
| A Level results on 09:48 - Aug 14 with 2923 views | stevec |
| A Level results on 08:14 - Aug 14 by Phildo |
cannot agree - it is now clear - although my son was fortunate- a complete Horlick was made of this and young people have been penalised unnecessarily. They had time to stop it as well having seen what happened in Scotland.
We need people skilled in all the things you mention but we do also need lawyers and accountants- not least so you can stop abuses of power from those who happen to govern us at a given time.
Shakespeare said lets kill all the lawyers but I prefer Robert Bolts version:
“William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”
Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”
William Roper: “Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!”
Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!”
― Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons |
A cull was not suggesting getting rid of all lawyers (or accountants) they’re commendable subjects and as Watford Ranger says, lead to various other good jobs. But I still say we have far too many particularly when we have such a huge shortage of jobs in other areas that should be valued far higher than they actually are.
It’s up to the education system to reflect that and it’s not happening on the scale required. | | | |
| A Level results on 10:14 - Aug 14 with 2896 views | slmrstid |
Not sure where the idea there's too many accountants comes from...working within the industry there's definitely plenty of gaps in the market for them, and finding decent ones who can actually, well, account, can be even harder still. |  | | |
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