Is frontloading unfair?

GarIT

Is frontloading unfair? When some exams have too many people failing they move marks to the easier parts of questions to boost the overall grades. I think this is unfair on the people that got the more dificult questions right. Should all students be given a % boost rather than frontloading. If the exam is too diffult why not just give everyone 10% more marks than what they actually got. I don't mean if you got 10% you go up to 20% but go up to 11% and if you got 80% go up to 88%.

Togepi

It's unfair, but I only see it as unfair in the subject I'm good at and not the one I need a boost in. :pac: It would be fairer if they didn't do that though, but I'm not sure what the best alternative is. What you're proposing sounds like a fairly good idea I've just never heard of it 'til now!

mathstalk

Why not just mark the exam as originally intended? I don't understand this whole malarkey about "bell-curved graphs". Surely a bell-curved graph means nothing if they've tampered with the results to produce it.

ChemHickey

GarIT wrote: »

Is frontloading unfair? When some exams have too many people failing they move marks to the easier parts of questions to boost the overall grades. I think this is unfair on the people that got the more dificult questions right. Should all students be given a % boost rather than frontloading. If the exam is too diffult why not just give everyone 10% more marks than what they actually got. I don't mean if you got 10% you go up to 20% but go up to 11% and if you got 80% go up to 88%.

Maybe a percentage boost of the percent you didn't get. like getting 10% you'd get 10% of the 90% you got wrong.

Namlub

mathstalk wrote: »

Why not just mark the exam as originally intended? I don't understand this whole malarkey about "bell-curved graphs". Surely a bell-curved graph means nothing if they've tampered with the results to produce it.

I think the whole bell-curve thing exists so that a Leaving Cert from a certain year isn't more 'valuable' than another, which makes senses I guess...

fizzyorange

I'd say % boost would be much more fair, but I love front loading!

biohaiid

I dont understand how it could possibly be unfair?
Surely if someone got the most difficult parts of a questions right, they got the easier ones too.
And it'll only occur if the majority struggle on a particular question.
It's either frontloading or possible failure.
I think it's a good thing.

123 LC

in some cases it's kind of annoying like in the french listening today i got the last section right, but i know no doubt like previous years there'll be only 1 mark per question in it, it's unfair as i might lose marks in other areas while i did well there.

GarIT

ChemHickey wrote: »

Maybe a percentage boost of the percent you didn't get. like getting 10% you'd get 10% of the 90% you got wrong.

That would bring all the students closer together rather than spread the marks out.

I might Email the DOE with my suggestion and see what they say.

GarIT

biohaiid wrote: »

I dont understand how it could possibly be unfair?
Surely if someone got the most difficult parts of a questions right, they got the easier ones too.
And it'll only occur if the majority struggle on a particular question.
It's either frontloading or possible failure.
I think it's a good thing.

In Maths paper 1 there were b parts that I couldn't do but I got more of the dificult C parts which makes it unfair on me as well as some other people. Our Teacher actually said if someone is sturggling that they should go through all the a's first then b's and then c's.

Not if everyone gets a boost of a relvant % of their marks depending on how well they did. I think all subjects should have the same number of A's B's ect, its unfair that 21% of people get A's in one exam and 8% get A's in another exam.

treely

% boost sounds ridiculous. It's only awarding the better people, and pushing them further above the worser students. Front loading isnt too fair, but is a lot better than % boosting imo.

GarIT

treely wrote: »

% boost sounds ridiculous. It's only awarding the better people, and pushing them further above the worser students. Front loading isnt too fair, but is a lot better than % boosting imo.

How? It increases everyones grade in proportion to what they got. It is the fairest way. If the exam was too difficult it brings everyone up based on their ability instead of taking marks from good students and giving them to poor students.

GarIT

treely wrote: »

% boost sounds ridiculous. It's only awarding the better people, and pushing them further above the worser students. Front loading isnt too fair, but is a lot better than % boosting imo.

It brings people up in proportion to how well they did instead of frontloading which rewards poor students for doing the easy questions. it doesn't only award anyone, it keeps all students in line with every other year as well as being fair. Giving an equal % boost to everyone is much fairer than taking marks from good students.

Togepi

123 LC wrote: »

in some cases it's kind of annoying like in the french listening today i got the last section right, but i know no doubt like previous years there'll be only 1 mark per question in it, it's unfair as i might lose marks in other areas while i did well there.

They don't mess with the marking for the aural do they?! :eek: I'm certain they never have. I got the last section fully right too, they always give two marks for each question for it, eight marks in total.

spurious

GarIT wrote: »

When some exams have too many people failing they move marks to the easier parts of questions to boost the overall grades. .

In the exams I have been involved in correcting, what you have described isn't how they adjusted the scheme if too many were failing. Marks were not 'moved' to easier questions.
Where did you hear this happened?

UnknownSpecies

It's very hard to call. I would say frontloading is the fairest way but I had a situation in my LC where it could have gone against me. I had hardly any time left in Maths. One question left, so betwenn the part a), b) and c), I had to choose which would be most valuable to my final mark as I only had time to do one. I picked the part c), barely got it done but got it correct. If this part c) was chosen for overloading, I'd have lost out even though I answered the tougher question.

GarIT

spurious wrote: »

In the exams I have been involved in correcting, what you have described isn't how they adjusted the scheme if too many were failing. Marks were not 'moved' to easier questions.
Where did you hear this happened?

Easier parts of the questions. Not whole questions. They take say 5 marks from a C part and move it to the A part to make the marks on that question look better.

GarIT

dorgasm wrote: »

It's very hard to call. I would say frontloading is the fairest way but I had a situation in my LC where it could have gone against me. I had hardly any time left in Maths. One question left, so betwenn the part a), b) and c), I had to choose which would be most valuable to my final mark as I only had time to do one. I picked the part c), barely got it done but got it correct. If this part c) was chosen for overloading, I'd have lost out even though I answered the tougher question.

But how is changing things around fairer than saying the overall exam was harder then the previous years so we will give everyone an equal representitive boost.

Lamie

Not really fond of frontloading. I tend to better in the c part to maths questions then any other. Does it apply to all exam or just maths? Don't really see how it could be done in english

Mista

Lamie wrote: »

Not really fond of frontloading. I tend to better in the c part to maths questions then any other. Does it apply to all exam or just maths? Don't really see how it could be done in english

Probably just mark certain questions harder/easier.

Togepi

Lamie wrote: »

Not really fond of frontloading. I tend to better in the c part to maths questions then any other. Does it apply to all exam or just maths? Don't really see how it could be done in english

I know that they have introduced it in French in recent years. The first 10 question parts for the comprehensions used to be 5 marks each, now they can change them to 2 or 3 if the majority didn't get the right answer. Quite unfair when people who get it right may have spent ages trying to get the answer, when they could have been improving their written answers.

Same applies for Phys/Chem.

spurious

GarIT wrote: »

Easier parts of the questions. Not whole questions. They take say 5 marks from a C part and move it to the A part to make the marks on that question look better.

But that isn't what they do.
Where did you hear that?

_Bella_

spurious wrote: »

But that isn't what they do.
Where did you hear that?

They definitely do it. If you look at the 2011 marking scheme in maths, the q8 part c is usually 20 marks but they reduced it to 10 and gave the earlier parts of the question more.

Togepi

spurious wrote: »

But that isn't what they do.
Where did you hear that?

They do it in Maths. Maybe it was just for last year's Paper 1, where they gave 15 marks for some (a) parts. I remember for ordinary though, our teacher told us not to spend ages on the final parts of part (c)s, that they might only be worth 5 marks. They've probably done it for a few years now, to stop people failing.

spurious

Well they certainly don't do it in History or Geography.
It's a ridiculously clumsy way of adjusting a marking scheme and there are many far less clunky ways to achieve the same thing.

A smart lawyer could take a case in the event of a candidate expecting a part (c) to be worth x marks only to find it's worth less.

finality

spurious wrote: »

Well they certainly don't do it in History or Geography.
It's a ridiculously clumsy way of adjusting a marking scheme and there are many far less clunky ways to achieve the same thing.

A smart lawyer could take a case in the event of a candidate expecting a part (c) to be worth x marks only to find it's worth less.

But in maths they don't tell you how many marks each part of a question is worth. All you know is that each full question is 50 marks, they have every right to distribute those 50 marks any way they like between the a, b and c parts. It says nowhere how many marks each part is 'supposed' to be worth.

spurious

finality wrote: »

But in maths they don't tell you how many marks each part of a question is worth. All you know is that each full question is 50 marks, they have every right to distribute those 50 marks any way they like between the a, b and c parts. It says nowhere how many marks each part is 'supposed' to be worth.

Ahah, I see, thanks.
That explains a lot. They probably do that on purpose, so that they can do this silly moving of marks.

Cruel Sun

From doing this Leaving cert and joining this site I've learned that the leaving cert is an unbelievably flawed and unethical exam.

GarIT

Some of the exams are becoming a sham. In Physics you're asked loads of different definitions or explain a term and things like that. One year they asked you to explain what is meant by a circuit breaker. It was answered so badly that in the end they accepted it breaks a circuit or just safety for full marks. Its not fair on the student who wrote 4 lines explaining the difference in current b't the live and neutral.

Canard

123 LC wrote: »

in some cases it's kind of annoying like in the french listening today i got the last section right, but i know no doubt like previous years there'll be only 1 mark per question in it, it's unfair as i might lose marks in other areas while i did well there.

If anything I'd imagine they'd frontload the bit on excuses - most people I know didnt get the frozen food thing, but the news items were ridiculously easy I thought.

AnnaTorvFan

I'm not a leaving cert, so i guess i shoudnt be posting here, but personally, i do not think frontloading is fair at all, its rather annoying tbh >.<