UK govt reboots A Level exam results after computer-driven fiasco: Now teacher-predicted grades will be used after all
- Reference: 1597691209
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/08/17/uk_exam_results/
- Source link:
Shortly after furious teens chanted “f**k the algorithm” outside the Department of Education in London this afternoon, the Conservative government [1]announced it would scrap the software-controlled approach that downgraded as many as 40 per cent of students' results, some by an extraordinary three grades.
I'm not British, so what the hell are you talking about? A Levels are school subjects studied by teenagers in England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and elsewhere, typically for a couple of years from the age of 16. The kids get to choose their courses – usually three or four – go to lessons, submit coursework, and take exams. Their final results are used to get into university: a particular uni course might require AAB in specific subjects. Exams were cancelled this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving officials with a choice: give the kids grades predicted by their teachers, or use software that downgraded two-in-five students. It went with the latter, and many teens expecting grades like A and B were assigned grades C, D and worse. This caused them to lose their university places.
The algorithmic approach also amplified social divisions by giving an advantage to private schools, due to their smaller class sizes, and disadvantaging state education, in which class sizes are larger. High-performing students in poorly performing schools were at risk of losing university places after they received A Level grades far lower than they expected, whereas private schools saw a significant increase in their student's estimated grades.
The [2]algorithmic system was implemented after examinations were scrapped as a result of the coronavirus outbreak. It’s still not entirely clear how the computer model decided on final grades but it is said to have been based mainly on a school’s past results and the individual’s previous grades.
Teachers and schools were asked to submit grade predictions – known as center-assessed grades – but those grades don’t appear to have had much sway in the system, despite them knowing and having taught the pupils. Teacher-decided grades will now form the basis for students’ final grades, the government said, in both A Level and GCSE results. GCSEs being subjects kids take typically from ages 14 to 16.
Exams watchdog Ofqual had argued that the algorithm was essential to produce standardized results across the country but the end result, despite being defended for days by the government, was clearly flawed. Hundreds of stories emerged of deeply unfair decisions, many shared on social media, making the issue impossible to ignore.
chants of “fuck the algorithm” as a speaker talks of losing her place at medical school because she was downgraded. [3]pic.twitter.com/P15jpuBscB — huck (@HUCKmagazine) [4]August 16, 2020
With the same system due to be used for the GCSE exam results this week, with the education secretary Gavin Williamson facing calls for his resignation, and with Ofqual at the business end of a legal challenge over its approach, the powers that be decided it was best to scrap the system than risk even greater protests this weekend.
Williamson issued a statement that he was “sorry for the distress this has caused young people and their parents,” and gave an interview in which he said he was “incredibly sorry” for the mess, claiming that over the weekend the education department had looked more closely at the results and concluded that they were indeed unfair.
He still defended the algorithm, however, arguing his department had “worked with Ofqual to construct the fairest possible model.” He also backtracked on his policy of the past week that students should use an appeals process to question the grades they were given – something that it was immediately pointed out would still result in people losing their places at universities due to the time such a process would take.
CREST cancels UK infosec accreditation exams after fresh round of 'cheat sheets' are leaked online [5]READ MORE
“It is clear that the process of allocating grades has resulted in more significant inconsistencies than can be resolved through an appeals process,” Williamson said. “We now believe it is better to offer young people and parents certainty by moving to teacher assessed grades for both A and AS level and GCSE results.”
The “screeching U-turn,” as leader of the opposition Labour Party Sir Keir Starmer put it, comes after Wales said it would revert back to teacher assessments for A Levels, Northern Ireland said it would do the same for GCSEs, and Scotland performed a similar U-turn last week with its school qualifications.
Sir Keir was quick to make political hay out of the mess. “This is a victory for the thousands of young people who have powerfully made their voices heard this past week,” he said on Monday.
“However, the Tories’ handling of this situation has been a complete fiasco. Incompetence has become this government’s watchword, whether that is on schools, testing or care homes. Boris Johnson’s failure to lead is holding Britain back.” ®
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[1] https://twitter.com/educationgovuk/status/1295395777234296833
[2] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/awarding-gcse-as-a-levels-in-summer-2020-interim-report
[3] https://t.co/P15jpuBscB
[4] https://twitter.com/HUCKmagazine/status/1294985562106015750?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/17/crest_halts_infosec_exams/
[6] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
The issue really stemmed from the "Yes, you have had straight A's for 10 years, but your poor, so here's a C"
An utter disgrace.
Presumably the C was in English ...
I have come across three business cards from Principle Engineers in my career..
My mate's mum used to have a hospital name badge which identified her as Physio The Rapist.
I think the SNP were slightly quicker to realise they fucked up. All this dick-on-table no-we're-not-changing-our-minds business going on in England has just caused further problems in the university applications process.
It's almost as if trying to award people grades without any solid evidence is a really hard problem.
Given that Grades are based on a range of actual marks I cannot see how anyone can regrade a candidate without starting with the marks originally awarded or in this case estimated. For some the loss of a single mark will result in dropping a grade, for others it might require that 10 marks be deducted.
Perhaps one needs a PPE for everything to make sense; the whole thing is something of which Kafka would have been proud.
“However, the Tories’ handling of this situation has been a complete fiasco."
Depends how cynical you are.
Maybe low initial grads to aid university selection followed by high grades a few days later to calm the masses keeps the system happy without making life hard for the universities? Because lets face it, the grades are to decide University places rather than any greater long term educational goal.
And would it be right to assume that the magical algorithm is a standard distribution curve?
Is there anything that the succesive governments of the UK can not fuck up by bloody useless software ? And as for Kier Starmer, fuck off unless you have something constructive to say. I am sick of these idiots trying to make political capital out of everything, as though their party would not have done exactly the same mess.
Really? Magically coming up with grades by asking teachers to rank students in the class then positioning said students on a curve which start and finish points are based on previous years results in the same school is what other parties would have done?
Or perhaps they would have done what other countries did, which is hold exams with social distancing, only ask questions from the first two terms of the syllabus, etc...
And if that doesn't look like enough of a car crash, Ofqual did run the same algorithm on last year's students and compared with the real results and found it produced similar failures, so it was decided to go ahead and use it to generate this year's results anyway.
Someone signed off on this knowing exactly the result it would produce and the government tried to brazen it out. But they still haven't rowed back on Btec students yet, they're still hoping to divide and conquer and hang on to some small victory.
I'm. Sorry to agree with the OP, this isn't about the u turn which I totally support, but the sh1t awful state of politics in the UK, where one party berates the other for political score.
If as a politician you disagree with the other side, do that but with why, and what you would do differently. Otherwise keep it to yourself dichead.
(political neutral, so don't badge me either way, they're all out for themselves).
Any chance of consensus politics in the UK was lost with the 2011 Alternative Vote referendum and there won't be another opportunity like that for some time.
where one party berates the other for political score
This has always happened. You just see less of it in the public record before 1963 mainly due to the deference shown to politicians by the media, but that deference died with the Profumo Affair.
Is there anything that the successive governments of the UK can not fuck up by bloody useless software ?
Do you really need to ask that question?
If yes then the answer is NO
Teachers know a lot more than government ministers
My mum told me some years ago that she'd asked my math teacher if he thought I would get a pass my A level class, apparently he told her, "Yes, he understands statistics and will answer enough questions to get an A."
I did, I got two A levels, in Abstract Art and Statistics, it's been great ever since.
Re: Teachers know a lot more than government ministers
Lucky you - my teachers were an ignorant lot who would give all their favourites good marks and me and my lot low marks. I half wondered if they really cared when they found out I got good grades in the exams and didn't have to leave education immediately. Probably not. It ended up being a struggle to get me out of education, but I eventually gave in after a PhD.
Needless to say I'm not a fan of the idea of teachers grades. If for nothing else then because of the vast variation in teachers and schools.
Re: Teachers know a lot more than government ministers
Yes the reason for paying for the best teachers.
If you pay 50grand a year for the right school you can be sure the teachers will say you'll get the right grades and you can be sure the right universities will believe them
Pity the poor kids whose teachers gave honest estimates, they have been screwed by the lazy teachers giving everyone an A. Or is it A*** now.
.... wait for how the story develops over the next few days as the Universities try to work out how to cope with the fact that their reliance on 20+% of applicants get lower than their predicted grades (someting they've seen for years) has evaoprated this year ... apparentlly Oxofrd and Cambridge each have 20% more applicants meeting their offer grades than there are places available. They and other Universities are already telling applicants that they've got a place, but not until next year, so next year's applicants are going to have even fewer places at the top Universities available to them + also probably having to use exam based results.
The problem
isn't that we're led by tories or socialists despite what people think: it's that we are led by idiots. Worse, we're led by idiots who don't know they are idiots.
Re: The problem
Worse, we're led by idiots who don't know they are idiots.
Dunning Kruger effect, methinks. The "See Also" at the bottom of the Wikipedia page on the subject is interesting, in a rather frightening sort of way.
One simple lesson
Don't vote Tory.
Re: One simple lesson
Who can we vote for while we wait for the "Party of altruistic world class experts in all beneficial disciplines" to organise itself?
Re: One simple lesson
Because other parties haven't made the same screw up... Who governs in Wales and Scotland again? Think the moment exams were cancelled rather than delayed this car crash was coming and all polictical parties bought into that decision.
If Scotland, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland had just announced grades based on teacher's predic ted grades the media headlines would have been about rampant grade inflation and variations in how the teachers predicted pupils' grades rather than the injustice of an algorithm. But this is the world today, negativity and dividing the world into them and us,
Too late for some.
[QUOTE}High-performing students in poorly performing schools were at risk of losing university places after they received A Level grades far lower than they expected, whereas private schools saw a significant increase in their student's estimated grades.[/QUOTE}
Some already have lost their place this year.
Re: Too late for some.
Universities will now have to review their chosen students some pupils who were awarded better grades than their mocks will now have only their mocks grade which might not be good enough for that university. Expect a lot of changes and a lot of anger. Luckily for universities they have got a slight get out of jail free card in that the number of foreign students are expected to be low, freeing up spaces for english students this year.
Re: Too late for some.
Apparently, the switch to teacher assements improve grades for students in more affluent areas more than for ones in deprived areas .... anyone remember when teacher assessments were first suggested that lots of people on the left were in uproar as "private schools always over-estimate grades" and were demanding some form of "moderation". to avoid an increase in the educational divide
fuck the algorithm indeed but only after all of the private schools pupils mysteriously got unadjusted results allowing all of their pupils onto their chosen university course, I'm sure some private pupils even manage to upgrade their course using this algorithmic results.
The RSS had flagged up the problems of this back in June - but why listen to people who understand statistics?
https://rss.org.uk/RSS/media/File-library/News/2020/06082020-RSS-EPAG-statement-on-grade-adjustment-2020-exams-in-UK-FINAL.pdf"> Press release 6 August
2 Royal Statistical Society news story, RSS alerts Ofqual to stats issues relating to 2020 exam grading, 6 May
2020, accessed 5 August 2020,https://rss.org.uk/news-publication/news-publications/2020/general-news/rssalerts-ofqual-to-stats-issues-relating-to-2020/
Obviously haven't posted enough this year and lost my html privileges along with the silver badge...
Too late for one
This lad, [1]Oliver Strode , was the son of one of my wife's work colleagues.
[1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8169427/Body-woodland-police-hunting-boy-17-vanished-amid-coronavirus-panic.html
“However, the Tories’ handling of this situation has been a complete fiasco."
Yes, an utter shambles. Much like the handling of the exact same problem by the Scottish (SNP) and Welsh (Labour/Lib Dem) governments.
It's almost as if trying to award people grades without any solid evidence is a really hard problem.