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28 minutes ago, Creative Midfielder said:

Its incredible that a government with a huge majority and a general election over 4 years away is managing, through sheer incompetence, to repeatedly back itself into corners from which the only escape is a complete u-turn.

Nevertheless I'm pretty sure you are right about the u-turn, Johnson has been invisible for the last two or three days and I doubt he'll visible this week either for obvious reasons. Presumably he'll resurface in time to remind us that all the kids must be in school at the start of next term even though he hasn't got a scooby about how to do it safely or indeed whether it is even possible. Will be interesting to see how many parents (and children) go along with it.

 

The trouble is Johnson 'purged' the Conservatives of anybody competent (the ones like Hammond) who wouldn't blindly sign up to fantasies so what you are left with are the incompetent yes men and women and their blind apologist supporters. This government is really an embaressment to Britain.

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1 hour ago, Barbe bleu said:

You are talking largely about covid here. I have been consistent in saying that I believe this government messed up the contain  phase by not investing properly in contact tracing and then in not properly protecting care homes. These are not and never were mild criticisms.  But equally I am not going to criticise unfairly because of a prior opinion of government.

If we all blindly criticised or supported without further thought what would we have. Ah yes, the brexit thread.

And for the record I dislike the idea of Boris as PM immensely.  He,  like Cameron before him, sought the top job for nothing more than the prestige of the position.  I think it a real pity that we could ever have been in a position where these two were candidates for the job, let alone actually in the job.

 

I am largely talking about Covid although many of the criticisms on that thread are also directly relevant to the fiasco being discussed in this thread. I also made it clear that I was referring to your consistent approach of supporting the government across all threads.

I presume you are accusing me of criticising the government unfairly because of a prior opinion even though as usual you fail to address any of the specifics and just drift off into meaningless generalities and your own assumptions about people. Anything I post which you disagree with but can't refute you simply ignore.

Just like you mention you were critical of the government in the contain phase (the care home bit is untrue, or at best retrospective, because I distinctly remember you rubbishing a couple of my early posts on the problems at care homes) but you completely forget to mention your consistent defence of them throughout a catastrophically late and incompetent lockdown followed by an even more shambolic unlock.

Still those are your opinions, and however repellent, you're fully entitled to them but please don't take the Johnson approach of assuming that we're all too stupid to see through you. I really don't care one iota whether you agree with me or not and I've no doubt you feel the same - probably the only thing we have in common.

But what I do care about (as much as you can care about anything on social media which in my case is again very little) is that you think I'm thick enough to believe in fairy tales like:

'What I like to do is examine the evidence and come to a balanced conclusion on the basis of that evidence, taking into account what others say'  @Barbe bleu 16th August 2020

I may have many faults but being a gullible idiot is one that I've so far managed to avoid. So jog on and waste someone else's time. I should never have unblocked you, but unlike the government you so earnestly support, I have always made a point of learning from my mistakes so perhaps we can agree that our conversations have been, right from the start, entirely pointless and leave it at that.

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You will note the same method running through all of BB, RTB and hand cranks posts

Misrepresent what others say, try to spin it as what they say is based upon 'tribalism' - while all the time trying to project himself as solely interested in seeing both sides.

Thankfully CM has long since seen through this charade - shame others have still yet to.

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44 minutes ago, Creative Midfielder said:

I am largely talking about Covid although many of the criticisms on that thread are also directly relevant to the fiasco being discussed in this thread. I also made it clear that I was referring to your consistent approach of supporting the government across all threads.

I presume you are accusing me of criticising the government unfairly because of a prior opinion even though as usual you fail to address any of the specifics and just drift off into meaningless generalities and your own assumptions about people. Anything I post which you disagree with but can't refute you simply ignore.

Just like you mention you were critical of the government in the contain phase (the care home bit is untrue, or at best retrospective, because I distinctly remember you rubbishing a couple of my early posts on the problems at care homes) but you completely forget to mention your consistent defence of them throughout a catastrophically late and incompetent lockdown followed by an even more shambolic unlock.

Still those are your opinions, and however repellent, you're fully entitled to them but please don't take the Johnson approach of assuming that we're all too stupid to see through you. I really don't care one iota whether you agree with me or not and I've no doubt you feel the same - probably the only thing we have in common.

But what I do care about (as much as you can care about anything on social media which in my case is again very little) is that you think I'm thick enough to believe in fairy tales like:

'What I like to do is examine the evidence and come to a balanced conclusion on the basis of that evidence, taking into account what others say'  @Barbe bleu 16th August 2020

I may have many faults but being a gullible idiot is one that I've so far managed to avoid. So jog on and waste someone else's time. I should never have unblocked you, but unlike the government you so earnestly support, I have always made a point of learning from my mistakes so perhaps we can agree that our conversations have been, right from the start, entirely pointless and leave it at that.

clearly I have done something that offended you.  If it was not called for I apologise.

To the main point (though this should be elsewhere) as far as i can see  my first comment on care homes was on 10 May (but for an aside on PPE) where I expressed my opinion that the government likely got it wrong.  Yes, it is retrospective but I dont think anyone was expressing a view prospectively.  I could not find my comment on what you said about care homes. I'll happily look at it again and see if I still agree with what I said if you'll post the two here.

I don’t earnestly support government.  If I was a tireless supporter I would probably avoid criticism. In this vein show me one thread where I give unqualified support with no criticism. On the covid thread I have stated clearly where I see the main faults. In this one from the outset I have said that having an algorithm without an effective means of challenging the results it gives is wrong. I haven't really expressed a political opinion anywhere else.

 

Edited by Barbe bleu

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Exam results there, dismantling the Post Office here, the start of the beginning of the end for the two governments responsible. Government incompetence and hypocrisy can be forgiven, but deliberate sabotage make people very very angry. 

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9 hours ago, Surfer said:

Exam results there, dismantling the Post Office here, the start of the beginning of the end for the two governments responsible. Government incompetence and hypocrisy can be forgiven, but deliberate sabotage make people very very angry. 

UK is 4+ years out from a GE and the disaster coming with the end of the Transistion Period is yet to come.

Starting to feel (politically) like 1993.

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2 hours ago, BigFish said:

UK is 4+ years out from a GE and the disaster coming with the end of the Transistion Period is yet to come.

Starting to feel (politically) like 1993.

Yes, there are definite similarities although one big difference stands out for me - I don't think we were facing the very real prospect of the Union breaking up then.

She may be only First Minister for Scotland but it appears that Nicola Sturgeon is rapidly becoming the de-facto Prime Minister, if not for the UK then certainly for Scotland, N.I. and Wales. Just seen that N.I. have followed her lead, and applied the obvious and fairest (imperfect though it is) fix to their exam crisis. I'll be very surprised if Wales don't follow quickly follow suit assuming that that they have the power to do so - not sure whether that power is devolved in Wales or not.

Just shows what an impact a reasonably competent politician, who can also show a bit of humility when things do go wrong, can achieve - not that there's any chance of the poor bl**dy English seeing either of those qualities 😒

 

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The more you hear the more you think this has been deliberately rigged in favour of wealthier schools. 

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4 hours ago, BigFish said:

UK is 4+ years out from a GE and the disaster coming with the end of the Transistion Period is yet to come.

Starting to feel (politically) like 1993.

steady on old fellow

it is not as if we have a Rory MP involved in a planning 'scam' (Jenrick), or waiting to be sentenced for sexual assault (Elphicke) or named for similar (?)

a PM embroiled in dodgy money from Russia scandal the same with his previous floozy,  and having an unmarried mum with illegitimate kid living in Downing St

There have been no gross failures with the government (as BB regularly assures us - no huge death toll, no failings in preparation, no shortage of medical staff or equipment

the lockdown has been clear with no u turns, as has the message to students

though there will be the 'tribalists' who will have that this has been one enormous sht storm of failure since Dec2019, and the only saving grace is that Johnson is on another holiday so there may be a temporary lull in the fck ups

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6 minutes ago, Herman said:

The more you hear the more you think this has been deliberately rigged in favour of wealthier schools. 

as if it weren't before 🙄

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17 hours ago, kick it off said:

It won't get to that stage. There are already lawsuits being lined up. The govt will U-turn and go with centre assessed grades, that's a case of when, not if, in my opinion.

I'll just leave this here. Lots of media talk about a split amongst ofqual head honchos and gavin williamson about using teacher grades for gcses.... and now this....

 

Screenshot_20200817-134109_Chrome.jpg

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24 minutes ago, Herman said:

The more you hear the more you think this has been deliberately rigged in favour of wealthier schools. 

Its quite the accusation to say that the system was deliberately rigged in order to favour wealthier schools.

What i would say though is that the system has had that impact. I i think though that  it is more true to say that it is due these schools having very strong recent records in exams and because the algorithm increasingly favours teacher predictions with decreasing class size.

It is an indirect rather than a direct effect.   

I have posted above the idea of putting a 'fudge factor' into the algorithm to compensate for the inequality that has likely resulted.  Private school kids without top grades won't like it but there is no ideal solution. 

an inequality compensator could be combined with a 'f*** up factor' where the lower grades of previous years are ignored entirely as these are disproportionately the result of those unexpected events that could happen to anyone per KIOs post above.

In aggregate terms this would mean much higehr grades this year than in the past but would still maintain the basic idea.

Any outstanding issues to be resolved by evidence based appeals and, if it comes to it, re sits. 

Whatever is decided elite universities must work to enlarge capacity next year's entrance and for the next few to ensure fairness within this year and between year groups. (Note that some Oxford colleges are honouring offers on the basis that some students may have to defer, thus reducing places available to the 2021 cohort)

Edited by Barbe bleu

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9 minutes ago, Barbe bleu said:

Its quite the accusation to say that the system was deliberately rigged in order to favour wealthier schools.

No it's not. They excluded small class groups from the algorithm that downgraded 40% of grades. Small class groups which are almost never existing in state schools but frequently exist in private schools.

That's not "quite the accusation", it's a fact.

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16 minutes ago, Barbe bleu said:

Any outstanding issues to be resolved by evidence based appeals and, if it comes to it, re sits. 

You're talking about literally millions of appeals. How long do you think it will take to sort through them all? and as before discussed, the "if it comes to it, resits" doesn't hold any water because there is nowhere for them to do the resits unless you are closing schools back down.

Edited by kick it off

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23 minutes ago, Herman said:

The more you hear the more you think this has been deliberately rigged in favour of wealthier schools. 

I'm tempted to say that they're not bright enough to manage this, certainly that is what their track record to date indicates.

But on reflection I guess Ofqual must have a few statisticians who are quite capable of it, and they certainly can't claim that it is accidental or unintended because there have been warnings a plenty for some time from all over the education and university sectors - and let's not forget the Scottish government who kindly provided a week's warning to the numpties in Westminister who proceeded to do absolutely nothing with it - not even getting a viable appeals process ready.

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5 minutes ago, kick it off said:

No it's not. They excluded small class groups from the algorithm that downgraded 40% of grades. Small class groups which are almost never existing in state schools but frequently exist in private schools.

That's not "quite the accusation", it's a fact.

The accusation was that it was deliberately rigged in order to favour wealthy schools.

In my response I say that the effect has been that it favours these schools (for the reason you give and for another) but there is no reason to believe that ofqual set out with this intention

Honestly read my post again and I suspect you'll find that we are largely in agreement.

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6 minutes ago, Barbe bleu said:

The accusation was that it was deliberately rigged in order to favour wealthy schools.

In my response I say that the effect has been that it favours these schools (for the reason you give and for another) but there is no reason to believe that ofqual set out with this intention

Honestly read my post again and I suspect you'll find that we are largely in agreement.

We'll have to agree to disagree. I read your post but given that the Tories are in the pocket of private schools and an awful lot of them attended one, I don't buy this was "unintended consequence". Call me cynical, but I think it was very much intentional.

Edited by kick it off
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Let's be generous and put it down to gross incompetence

as with

buying PPE that proved not fit for purpose

£400m on OneWeb satellite system

and the supposed 'world beating'  track and trace app

 

how much of those failings were ideological, and how much down to sheer incompetence is a moot point

but neither will help those who have died, and those who have seen their years of study fu cked up by the most incompetent government these past few centuries

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17 minutes ago, kick it off said:

We'll have to agree to disagree. I read your post but given that the Tories are in the pocket of private schools and an awful lot of them attended one, I don't buy this was "unintended consequence". Call me cynical, but I think it was very much intentional.

Thats fair enough.  I tend to give the benefit of the doubt whereas you take a more cynical approach based on your perception and experience of the government. 

In terms of appeals I was thinking that about 750,000 kids entered these exams and 39% have been downgraded so up to 300,000 appeals.   Most could be submitted by the school enmass and for a large number could be accepted on the basis of mock exam results with little fuss.

A lot of this comes back to my earlier criticism.   If the schools were given this data ahead of the official release a lot of problems could have been resolved.

Do we agree that universities, especially elite ones, need to do their best to up capacity for the next few years to compensate for the higher number of top grades this year (and by extension I guess the government should be prepared to support the less elite ones who might struggle to fill spaces this year)?

Edited by Barbe bleu

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15 minutes ago, kick it off said:

We'll have to agree to disagree. I read your post but given that the Tories are in the pocket of private schools and an awful lot of them attended one, I don't buy this was "unintended consequence". Call me cynical, but I think it was very much intentional.

I don't think there was any intended malice in what happened, but I do think that the results would have been highlighted and ministers didn't feel obliged to do anything about it once it came to light what the results would have been. I was a relatively high achiever in a pretty standard state school and were I in the shoes of these kids today I'd have been screaming bloody murder from every rooftop I could find. I understand a lot of people defending what happened as being a result of "teacher bias" where teachers may have inflated grades of the pupils, possibly with the aim of achieving better results (and lord knows how focused on league tables etc the current govt are) but what has happened to try and counter that has turned into an utter farce.

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7 minutes ago, Barbe bleu said:

In terms of appeals I was thinking that about 750,000 kids entered these exams and 39% have been downgraded so up to 300,000 appeals.   Most could be submitted by the school enmass and for a large number could be accepted on the basis of mock exam results with little fuss.

750,000 taking 3 A-levels on average with 40% being downgraded = 900,000

Approx 550,000 GCSE students, taking 10 GCSEs on average. 40% of those downgraded (hypothetical) = 2.2 million.

We've already discussed mock exams. Many results wouldn't be eligible because they were taken in a classroom or library instead of the school hall. Teachers don't use the mark scheme or correct grade boundaries for various reasons. Many schools only do half-papers. Students ALWAYS do better in real exams than mocks (collectively). They are in no way, shape or form fit for purpose as a standardised basis for grading. That would be worse than the algorithm.

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7 minutes ago, kick it off said:

750,000 taking 3 A-levels on average with 40% being downgraded = 900,000

Approx 550,000 GCSE students, taking 10 GCSEs on average. 40% of those downgraded (hypothetical) = 2.2 million.

We've already discussed mock exams. Many results wouldn't be eligible because they were taken in a classroom or library instead of the school hall. Teachers don't use the mark scheme or correct grade boundaries for various reasons. Many schools only do half-papers. Students ALWAYS do better in real exams than mocks (collectively). They are in no way, shape or form fit for purpose as a standardised basis for grading. That would be worse than the algorithm.

OK, I thought about 750,000 was the total number of a levels entered. Which I got from here

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/provisional-entries-for-gcse-as-and-a-level-summer-2020-exam-series/provisional-entries-for-gcse-as-and-a-level-summer-2020-exam-series

 Yes, i read your comments on mock exams.   This i said as an obvious example of how performance could be evidenced but there could be others, perhaps deviation from related GCSEs? Or perhaps the school could ask for an allocation of higher grades on the basis of evidence of a improvement trajectory in past A levels or between GCSEs taken by this cohort compared to the others? All stuff that could have been happening  behind the scenes had these tests been sent out for consultation earlier.

 

 

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U-Turn at 4pm. Govet to announce CAGs to be used.

The right decision (even if it creates a headache for universities). What gets me is how on earth the government manages to get itself into these utter shambles in the first place. there seems to be nobody competent to say "hang on a moment" when the latest algorithm or modelling related shambles is proposed or implemented. In my opinion it was never reasonable or possible (or probably legal) for grades to be awarded on the basis of an algorithm taking into account past performance of schools and previous pupils. Someone, somewhere should have been alive to this right from the outset or, at the very least, once the results became clear prior to formal publication.

Yes there will be some grade inflation this year. So what. Everyone knows its not been a normal year, better to give a few a leg up than destroy the futures of thousands of kids. 

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1 hour ago, Creative Midfielder said:

I'm tempted to say that they're not bright enough to manage this, certainly that is what their track record to date indicates.

But on reflection I guess Ofqual must have a few statisticians who are quite capable of it, and they certainly can't claim that it is accidental or unintended because there have been warnings a plenty for some time from all over the education and university sectors - and let's not forget the Scottish government who kindly provided a week's warning to the numpties in Westminister who proceeded to do absolutely nothing with it - not even getting a viable appeals process ready.

I don;t think its rigged to benefit state schools and indeed the way it has been portrayed in the media as benefiting those schools has I think been misleading, there are a lot of pupils from independent schools who have had results downgraded. Possibly in some cases less than in the state sector but that's likely to be because there are historically less lower grade in the top independent schools. But they have been downgraded. 

It's to do with cohort size really because of the idiotic algorithm that was imposed. 

 

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Just now, Jim Smith said:

I don;t think its rigged to benefit state schools and indeed the way it has been portrayed in the media as benefiting those schools has I think been misleading, there are a lot of pupils from independent schools who have had results downgraded. Possibly in some cases less than in the state sector but that's likely to be because there are historically less lower grade in the top independent schools. But they have been downgraded. 

It's to do with cohort size really because of the idiotic algorithm that was imposed. 

 

Sorry that should say rigged to benefit private schools. 

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11 minutes ago, Barbe bleu said:

OK, I thought about 750,000 was the total number of a levels entered. Which I got from here

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/provisional-entries-for-gcse-as-and-a-level-summer-2020-exam-series/provisional-entries-for-gcse-as-and-a-level-summer-2020-exam-series

 Yes, i read your comments on mock exams.   This i said as an obvious example of how performance could be evidenced but there could be others, perhaps deviation from related GCSEs? Or perhaps the school could ask for an allocation of higher grades on the basis of evidence of a improvement trajectory in past A levels or between GCSEs taken by this cohort compared to the others? All stuff that could have been happening  behind the scenes had these tests been sent out for consultation earlier.

Think you're right on the 750,000 looking at that site.

GCSE numbers I posted were actually underestimated though, so add another 100k appeals on to that figure!

The problem that I'm sure you recognise, is it is getting increasingly complex with the more ideas you throw out there. The more complex it becomes, the more of a mess is made, and the more tangled the web becomes.

You're right, the government could and should have sorted this out. There is no reason aside from sheer incompetence that it has come to this. I and many other teachers saw this coming miles off. It should have been teacher grades with evidence based moderation for centres that were predicting wildly out of line with their results. Simple, clean and fair. The result of the government's stupidity is schools like mine which took this incredibly seriously, and engaged in a rigourous and fair process to get to the grades we did, which are broadly in line with our historic results, are now punished whilst those that caused the problem by inflating grades artificially will escape any recourse whatsoever.

Williamson has got to go. Nothing else is acceptable, and I don';t give a **** how much "confidence" Boris has in him, because Boris is certainly not one capable of assessing competence, and not one teacher in the country has an ounce of confidence in Williamson. The guy is clueless to the point of being embarrassing.

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6 minutes ago, kick it off said:

Think you're right on the 750,000 looking at that site.

GCSE numbers I posted were actually underestimated though, so add another 100k appeals on to that figure!

The problem that I'm sure you recognise, is it is getting increasingly complex with the more ideas you throw out there. The more complex it becomes, the more of a mess is made, and the more tangled the web becomes.

You're right, the government could and should have sorted this out. There is no reason aside from sheer incompetence that it has come to this. I and many other teachers saw this coming miles off. It should have been teacher grades with evidence based moderation for centres that were predicting wildly out of line with their results. Simple, clean and fair. The result of the government's stupidity is schools like mine which took this incredibly seriously, and engaged in a rigourous and fair process to get to the grades we did, which are broadly in line with our historic results, are now punished whilst those that caused the problem by inflating grades artificially will escape any recourse.

I am in agreement with you on this one. And I don’t think we have really been in disagreement at all as neither of us think that this has been done especially well even if we accept that some form of moderation was probably needed

You did your best to be realistic and I suspect that moderation of your results was therefore relatively light.  Other schools will have been over taken by enthusiasm, hence the predicted grades were way over what has ever been the case (and even with moderation and 39% downgrades this is still a record year). 

Problem now for your kids is that, if predicted grades are accepted as is suspected,  they are in effect being punished for your doing your job professionally, diligently and as directed, whereas less able kids elsewhere will have had an artificial boost if their teachers  weren't  hyper-conscious of their unconscious biases etc. This wouldn't necessarily be a problem if they weren't competing for the same limited spaces in universities and employment....

 I do hope though that the kids that got boosted up three grades and not now downgraded!

 

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