UK News Belfast principal – pupils let down by calculated grades

© Stefan Rousseau The system used to award A-level grades this year has let pupils down, a Belfast school principal said (Stefan Rousseau/PA).

The system used to award A-level grades this year has let pupils down, a Belfast school principal said.

More than a third of results were lower than previously estimated after they were calculated using a standardisation method.

Exams were cancelled due to coronavirus restrictions.

Stormont Education Minister Peter Weir said official procedures were robust and the outcome more equitable for all students.

Exam results fiasco – what is happening across the nations?

It follows the announcement of the ‘triple lock’ system for students in England.The Government on Tuesday came up with an answer for England, but it still has not pleased everyone. Here is a closer look.

Proposals to increase pupil numbers in a range of Belfast schools will be brought forward in Assumption Grammar School in Ballynahinch, County Down , also plans to increase its enrolment The number of pupils transferring from primary to post-primary schools has been growing in recent

Students got a State Certificate of Calculated Grades in each leaving certificate subject. If the school has only one teacher of the subject, the ranking review will be done with the deputy principal . Leaving Certificate Calculated Grades results will be treated by the CAO (and UCAS in the UK) in the

© Provided by PA Media Children in Northern Ireland received their results on Thursday (Rebecca Black/PA).

Lagan College principal Amanda McNamee felt “disappointed and embarrassed”.

She said: “They are real children with real lives, they aren’t computers, they are not data, not anomalies, and I feel we have let them down.”

Northern Ireland’s exams board has said there will be some “anomalies”.

The school head told the BBC: “If I hear the word anomaly again being linked to an actual real person, a real child, I think I am going to scream.”

In 37% of cases teachers were over-optimistic in their prediction, while in around 5% of tests they underestimated the result, statistics published by the education authorities on Thursday showed.

Students receive A-level results after exams cancelled

School leavers are receiving calculated grades after this summer’s exams were abandoned due to the pandemic.Around 300,000 school leavers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are receiving calculated grades to help them progress onto university, work or training after this summer’s exams were cancelled due to the pandemic.

the areas where the most disadvantaged children are being let down by the education system in 2013 are no longer deprived inner city areas, instead the focus has shifted to deprived coastal towns and rural, less populous regions of the country, particularly down the East and South-East of England.

Students will be given their grades by the end of July, which will be based on a combination of their mock exam results, "non-exam assessment" and other data. Exam boards will give students their grades after receiving information from teachers and other data such as the pupil 's prior attainment.

Exams body CCEA (Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment) chief executive Justin Edwards defended its standardisation model for grading.

He said: “All of us at CCEA, working closely with the education community, have strived to ensure that students are able to progress this year.

“As a result of this collaborative work, we have delivered grades to students which we predict they would have achieved had they sat the examinations and which carry the same value as in previous years.

“Northern Ireland students have seen slight increases across grades, which are comparable with previous year-on-year performance for this particular year group.”

This is a difficult day for many young people receiving A-Level results.

The situation that many students find themselves in is unacceptable.

There needs to be an urgent resolution.

A-Levels will be discussed at the Executive & I will urge Education Minister to fix this wrong pic.twitter.com/sxXXsyG0S3

Student anger grows over A-levels as date set for appeals process to begin

Students have pledged to hold the government to account over the A-level results row, with thousands left disappointed by their grades told they will be able to start submitting appeals from Monday. Around 280,000 students saw their grades fall by one grade or more following the introduction of a new algorithm, which was put in place after the coronavirus lockdown led to exams being cancelled.But students have been left furious by the new system, with many losing their places on their chosen courses after not meeting the required grades.

Pressure is mounting on ministers to let teacher-assessed grades stand in England to avoid a second wave of exams chaos hitting GCSE results this week. About 40% of A-Level results were downgraded after the exams regulator Ofqual used an algorithm based on schools' previous results.

Graded in line with the exam board's examination standard. Before results were released, the Department for Education announced a "triple-lock", which meant that students could accept the grade calculated by Ofqual, appeal to receive a "valid mock result" or sit autumn exams.

— Michelle O’Neill (@moneillsf) August 13, 2020

Stormont deputy first minister Michelle O’Neill said it was a difficult day for many young people.

“The situation that many students find themselves in is unacceptable.

“There needs to be an urgent resolution.”

The calculation saw pupil performance increase across all grades relative to previous years.

The overall pass rate of pupils achieving an A*-E grade rose by 0.8 of a percentage point to 99.1%.

Pupils achieving the top A* grade increased by one percentage point to 9.8%, while those achieving A* or A grades rose by 2.3 percentage points to 33.2%.

Female students again outperformed male counterparts at the highest grades, with the gap broadly in line with recent years.

The calculated system also saw performance at AS level improve on 2019.

The percentage attaining a top A grade rose by 2.1 percentage points to 29.4%.

Those attaining an A-E grade rose by 0.9 of a percentage point to 96.4%.

Data indicated that the increases in attainment would have been significantly higher if the predicted grades assessed by teachers were used without standardisation.

Welsh First Minister Drakeford defends A-level grading system following U-turn

Moderation saw 42% of all predicted A-level grades lowered in Wales – angering students, teachers and unions.Like elsewhere in the UK, Welsh pupils will now be awarded results on the basis of teacher assessments rather than an algorithm following an outcry from students, teachers, unions and politicians.

Teachers are asked to predict grades every year in Northern Ireland as part of normal assessment procedures.

In 2019, around 46% of grades match the results attained by pupils and 40% proved overly-optimistic.

The CCEA standardisation model asked teachers to give a predicted grade for their pupils and then rank them in order within their class.

The exams body then used other data to standardise the results.

For A-levels, the CCEA model used pupils’ AS level results, making adjustments for those who had applied to take resits.

For AS results, the pupils’ GCSE results were used, as was the performance by their school over the previous three years.

Video: Coronavirus: How will GCSE and A Level results be worked out? (Birmingham Mail)