I think a fairer system could have been devised by allowing schools to compare their predictions with the three previous year's ones with some moderation and testing and censure/punishment for any that were dishonest. There may be some schools that have consistently over predicted and others that under predicted to give their students a push (not saying either approach is wrong but it needs to be acknowledged). The students at schools doing the latter will have been disadvantaged.
Also there could have been an allowance for a number of special cases in each school that required justification to a panel. It was unavoidable IMO that there would be a higher number of passes, the circumstances are exceptional, but the variance should have not been higher than it has been in the past 5 years and I think a system as above would have achieved this.
An idiot could have spotted that a student that always achieved As throughout their studies shouldn't have got a B or a C. I can only think this most basic of tests did not seem to have been done.
So seeing both sides of this now. After injustice of A levels now seeing some schools have taken the piss with GCSE and others played by the rules which was always a risk and presumably why an algorithm was contemplated originally. predictable which ones it would be too.
Golfie Jnr did ok in the end - probably better than if he sat the exams in the time honoured way. In old money he got 6 "C's" & 2 "B's".
As you can see he is not academic. In years gone by he would have left school & got a job. But because Tony Blair & Gordon Brown wanted to massage the employment figures and also show how "anyone" can go to University he now has to do 2 pointless years at College.
One of my sister's friends from university is a Maths teacher, and he's told her that one of the kids he teaches got upgraded from a 5 to a 6 by the algorithm. I should imagine said student will be particularly over the moon given that they'd been entered for the Foundation Tier, which means the highest grade they could have got if they sat the exam was a 5. Definitely something odd going on there.
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Also there could have been an allowance for a number of special cases in each school that required justification to a panel. It was unavoidable IMO that there would be a higher number of passes, the circumstances are exceptional, but the variance should have not been higher than it has been in the past 5 years and I think a system as above would have achieved this.
An idiot could have spotted that a student that always achieved As throughout their studies shouldn't have got a B or a C. I can only think this most basic of tests did not seem to have been done.
predictable which ones it would be too.
As you can see he is not academic. In years gone by he would have left school & got a job. But because Tony Blair & Gordon Brown wanted to massage the employment figures and also show how "anyone" can go to University he now has to do 2 pointless years at College.
Btw......that's him in the ski-wear.