Change in CAO points structure

evolving_doors

mirrorwall14 wrote: »

We have had students fail every class test and summer test in fifth year but parents/students insist on staying at higher level. Unsurprisingly these students then go on to fail their mocks in sixth year in spectacular fashion at which point reality kicks in but they have missed so much ground that it's a struggle for them to pass the OL paper and they end up with d's and the odd C when they could have actually sat a decent paper if they had dealt with reality

How much worse will it be with this?

Yup, totally concur, we've found that the guys who decide to move to ord level relatively early achieve better than those who left it to the last minute to move down and stuck with hons for the 2 yrs.
Just think how much a sense of achievement and positive reinforcement it must have been for those to be doing well all the way through 5th and 6th yr in ordinary compared to the ones just barely scraping by in Hons for 2 years staring blankly at the teacher.

As usual it's all the teacher's fault.

RealJohn

rainbowtrout wrote: »

It's not about being more important to punish the lazy student. The examiner correcting it doesn't know if the student was lazy or weak. One way or another if they got an E, they didn't know the material they were being examined on.

But they still probably knew it better than the students who got Cs and Ds in the ordinary level.

rainbowtrout wrote: »

Some people are good at some things and rubbish at others. Why should we be rewarding someone just because they had a go, when there are countless others who not only had a go, but also achieved. I'm rubbish at art, can't draw at all. It's not where my abilities lie. It would be madness to think I could land into LC Art and be awarded 38 points because I rocked up with my crayolas and aimed high even though I had little to no ability in that area.

We're not talking about rewarding people who got 0 though. Clearly an NG in any paper deserves nothing because you don't have to put pen to paper at all to 'earn' one but if you can't tell the difference between someone who gets 38% and someone who gets less than 10% then the problem is definitely with you.

rainbowtrout wrote: »

If I rock up to my local GAA club and attend training, if I'm not in the top 15 i won't get next or near the pitch. If I'm not in the top twenty I won't get near the subs bench, and no apology will be made for me aiming high. It'll be down to my lack of sporting ability.

That's not an appropriate analogy because there is a limited number of places on a GAA team. Fortunately, I don't have to pick my 15 best for my HL classes and tell the rest that they don't make the cut. If they can kick it over the bar they can play if they want in my class.

rainbowtrout wrote: »

I don't see why the LC should be a place that we provide rewards just because someone aimed high when they were clearly not able (and often quite deluded about their abilities).

I absolutely agree that someone who has no chance of passing shouldn't be sitting the paper but again, the person missing out even by 10% probably isn't in that boat. If they only miss out by 10% then they're not completely incompetent in the exam (like you seem to be suggesting).

Furthermore, I would say that it's our job as teachers to encourage people to do aim as high as they can realistically achieve and as a consequence of that, like you said, some of them won't quite make it but it does seem very unfair to me that someone who nearly passes a higher level paper gets nothing but a student who scrapes a pass in an ordinary level paper gets credit for that even though they clearly have a far lower level of knowledge than the higher level student who failed.

I've gone into exams in the past not knowing that I'd definitely pass. By your logic I shouldn't have bother even going in.

rainbowtrout wrote: »

People have bad luck all the time. There are students every year who miss out subjects (and presumably college) because they get sick, have a death in the family. All students have to be graded on the same scale so if a student doesn't sit paper two, then it's tough luck if they don't pass. It's unfortunate for them if it's for genuine reasons and they end up missing out a college place that year, but it's not the end of the world. They can have another go.

But how is giving points to students who don't miss out by a whole lot such a terrible thing? We're still only talking about students who only miss by 10% or less and they're still only going to get a handful of points by comparison to what they might otherwise have managed.

rainbowtrout

RealJohn wrote: »

But they still probably knew it better than the students who got Cs and Ds in the ordinary level.

Not necessarily. I've seen plenty of people get Es in class over the years. Convinced that they could do higher level. Get an E in the mock. Eventually accept that they probably won't pass higher level. Drop to ordinary, get a C or D grade.

An E grade can be possible for a student hitting on one topic that they happen to know, e.g. hitting on one or two experiments they have learned well etc. Getting a C in ordinary level mightn't require the same level of detail in the answers, but to get 60% would require knowledge on a wider range of topics on the course.


We're not talking about rewarding people who got 0 though. Clearly an NG in any paper deserves nothing because you don't have to put pen to paper at all to 'earn' one but if you can't tell the difference between someone who gets 38% and someone who gets less than 10% then the problem is definitely with you.


Less of the insults. I'm well capable of telling the difference between 38 and 10. I'm talking about rewarding students for only being able to answer a third of an exam, typically with plenty of choice in it.

That's not an appropriate analogy because there is a limited number of places on a GAA team. Fortunately, I don't have to pick my 15 best for my HL classes and tell the rest that they don't make the cut. If they can kick it over the bar they can play if they want in my class.


The point I was making that is in the real world, nobody is getting rewarded for just turning up. They are rewarded if they are able to make the grade. This new system proposes that we reward students when they are not making the grade.


I absolutely agree that someone who has no chance of passing shouldn't be sitting the paper but again, the person missing out even by 10% probably isn't in that boat. If they only miss out by 10% then they're not completely incompetent in the exam (like you seem to be suggesting).


Missing out by 10% means they only know 30% at best. Most exams offer choice. There comes a point where they should probably do ordinary level. Would you consider a teacher who only understood a third of the material on the course they were teaching as competent?


Furthermore, I would say that it's our job as teachers to encourage people to do aim as high as they can realistically achieve and as a consequence of that, like you said, some of them won't quite make it but it does seem very unfair to me that someone who nearly passes a higher level paper gets nothing but a student who scrapes a pass in an ordinary level paper gets credit for that even though they clearly have a far lower level of knowledge than the higher level student who failed.


And I encourage as many of my students as possible to do higher level. Even the students who have done ordinary level in my subject for Junior Cert. Some make it through and I do point it out to them that it's an achievement to come up from ordinary to higher level for LC. But there comes a point in sixth year when a student is consistently failing at higher level where I have to make a professional judgement and advise them that they may be better off doing ordinary level.

The student is getting credit at ordinary level, but they are getting far less points for it, recognising that they didn't have the same level of knowledge and understanding required at higher level.


I've gone into exams in the past not knowing that I'd definitely pass. By your logic I shouldn't have bother even going in.

I never said that. All exams involve risk, for grades of different ranges. But there are a cohort of students who consistently fail a subject for two years at LC level and will probably now take higher level to get an 'E'. How does that promote achievement?


But how is giving points to students who don't miss out by a whole lot such a terrible thing? We're still only talking about students who only miss by 10% or less and they're still only going to get a handful of points by comparison to what they might otherwise have managed.


Why do we need to reward the whole way down the spectrum?

.

implausible

RealJohn wrote: »

But how is giving points to students who don't miss out by a whole lot such a terrible thing? We're still only talking about students who only miss by 10% or less and they're still only going to get a handful of points by comparison to what they might otherwise have managed.

By only 10%? In English that's 40 marks, nearly a full section of the paper. As it is a student who has decent ability can pass by doing a good paper one and making some attempt at paper two. By rewarding 30% in the exam, a student can get points by not even attempting paper two. How long do you think it's going to take some students to figure that out?

I have marked papers and I view them every year with the students and in my experience, students who fail Higher Level English fall into two camps:
1. The ones who should have done pass
2. Bad luck

I remember being stunned by how relatively easy it was to pass when I first started marking. The statistics reflect this, the failure rate this year was 1.1%.

So, very few people fail and now we want to reward those who do? :eek:

rainbowtrout

implausible wrote: »

By only 10%? In English that's 40 marks, nearly a full section of the paper. As it is a student who has decent ability can pass by doing a good paper one and making some attempt at paper two. By rewarding 30% in the exam, a student can get points by not even attempting paper two. How long do you think it's going to take some students to figure that out?

I seem to remember this being a problem in particular in OL Irish for years, before the oral was changed to 40%. Students used to tell me that they didn't really need to write anything for paper 2 (prose and poetry) because they'd have enough marks for a pass from paper 1/oral. Cue no study done for paper 2, and a mass exodus from paper 2 exam after the required 30 minutes. Some were proud to say that they wrote less than a page for the whole exam. Particularly bad in a year when a world cup was on and exams clashed with match times.

implausible wrote: »

I have marked papers and I view them every year with the students and in my experience, students who fail Higher Level English fall into two camps:
1. The ones who should have done pass
2. Bad luck

I remember being stunned by how relatively easy it was to pass when I first started marking. The statistics reflect this, the failure rate this year was 1.1%.

So, very few people fail and now we want to reward those who do? :eek:

I'd agree with all of this.

r93kaey5p2izun

RealJohn wrote: »

But they still probably knew it better than the students who got Cs and Ds in the ordinary level.

Absolutely not in my experience - and definitely not with the ridiculous project maths marking schemes where writing down a few formulae and drawing a couple of graphs can get you an E. But not my experience with biology either.

From what I see students who are getting an E (particularly below 35%) on a HL paper are usually around the 55-60% mark on an OL paper, in my subjects at least.

Personally I cannot believe the points they will receive for an E! I'm not against getting something for an E at HL, but I really don't think it should be any more than you get now for a D1 at OL at the very most.

implausible

Tommy Drab Stinger wrote: »

From what I see students who are getting an E (particularly below 35%) on a HL paper are usually around the 55-60% mark on an OL paper, in my subjects at least.

Personally I cannot believe the points they will receive for an E! I'm not against getting something for an E at HL, but I really don't think it should be any more than you get now for a D1 at OL at the very most.

I would agree with this too. You'd think that students who drop down from HL would excel at OL, but this is usually not the case, particularly when it's a late change of levels. Getting an A in OL English is difficult and achievable only when a student has consistently worked hard at that level.

There is a clear difference in the higher order thinking skills required for HL versus OL, those who fail either don't possess those skills or were lazy. Either way, holding out the carrot of points to the student who cannot or will not do the work required for HL is ridiculous.

RealJohn

rainbowtrout wrote: »

Not necessarily. I've seen plenty of people get Es in class over the years. Convinced that they could do higher level. Get an E in the mock. Eventually accept that they probably won't pass higher level. Drop to ordinary, get a C or D grade.

And this is often because they're not practiced in the structure of the ordinary level paper coupled with less interest in doing well because they're no longer counting on the subject for points, not necessarily due to a lack of knowledge. A student who has some knowledge of area of the course that only appear on the HL exam has a wider range of knowledge than those who only did the OL course but that knowledge gets no credit whatsoever in the ordinary level exam, even though it's 'higher order' knowledge.

rainbowtrout wrote: »

An E grade can be possible for a student hitting on one topic that they happen to know, e.g. hitting on one or two experiments they have learned well etc. Getting a C in ordinary level mightn't require the same level of detail in the answers, but to get 60% would require knowledge on a wider range of topics on the course.

That's a problem with the structure or the exam, not a problem with the grading of it and the rewarding of those grades.

rainbowtrout wrote: »

Less of the insults. I'm well capable of telling the difference between 38 and 10. I'm talking about rewarding students for only being able to answer a third of an exam, typically with plenty of choice in it.

Less of the insults? You're the one who started talking about people "rocking up with their crayolas for an art exam so either you were insulting me by suggesting that I was claiming we should reward any old effort at all when I clearly wasn't (in which case you can take mine as a retort to your initial insult) or you don't understand the difference between 10% and 38% (in which case my point was simply an accurate observation and not insulting at all). Take your pick but don't give it out if you can't take it back.

rainbowtrout wrote: »

The point I was making that is in the real world, nobody is getting rewarded for just turning up. They are rewarded if they are able to make the grade. This new system proposes that we reward students when they are not making the grade.

First of all, that's not true. Lots of people are being rewarded for just turning up. That's not right but it happens and it happens all across the spectrum from public sector to private sector to the unemployed. That's not the point though. The point is that, as I've already explained, not that any old effort should be rewarded but that it should be acknowledged that an E in HL is usually because the student has a greater depth of knowledge than a student who gets a C or a D in OL and should be rewarded as such. If a few people who just learned a single section well slip through the cracks, so be it.
I agree with Arlessienne, by the way, that the points for an E should still discourage people from simply sticking with the HL because the points for an E are higher than for say a C in OL but up until now, the person who gets 38% in HL gets 0 whereas the person who gets 40 in OL gets 5. The person who knew a third of the harder course gets nothing while the person who knows barely more than that fraction of the easier course (and in some subjects, it's far, far easier) gets rewarded.

rainbowtrout wrote: »

Missing out by 10% means they only know 30% at best. Most exams offer choice. There comes a point where they should probably do ordinary level. Would you consider a teacher who only understood a third of the material on the course they were teaching as competent?

You seem to be a big fan of not comparing like with like.
Of course a teacher who only understand a third of the course material is incompetent but then, so is a teacher who understands less than 100% of the course material. A teacher should understand more than 100% of the course material (ie. they should have a depth of knowledge greater than will ever be needed by their best students sitting the exam). Students, on the other hand, are not employed to do their exams and are not responsible for anyone other than themselves. 30% isn't nothing. Knowing a third of the HL course material in some subjects is still a lot of knowledge by comparison to knowing 50% of the OL material.

rainbowtrout wrote: »

And I encourage as many of my students as possible to do higher level. Even the students who have done ordinary level in my subject for Junior Cert. Some make it through and I do point it out to them that it's an achievement to come up from ordinary to higher level for LC. But there comes a point in sixth year when a student is consistently failing at higher level where I have to make a professional judgement and advise them that they may be better off doing ordinary level.

The student is getting credit at ordinary level, but they are getting far less points for it, recognising that they didn't have the same level of knowledge and understanding required at higher level.

I agree with all of that and I agree that students should be 'rewarded' to some extent for being able to recognise their limitations. I simply don't accept that a person who gets 38% should be treated the same as a person who gets less than 10%, as has been the case up until now, when taking a HL subject. I had a student last year who got an NG in a LC HL exam (and taking OL wouldn't have saved the student - they didn't do any work). In the same class, I had a student who got an E in the same exam, who was close to the D but just didn't quite make it. One had every right to attempt the exam. The other didn't. The student who got the E though might as well have not turned up though because they're now being treated the same as the NG who didn't do a tap for two years. That's simply not a fair system.

rainbowtrout wrote: »

I never said that. All exams involve risk, for grades of different ranges. But there are a cohort of students who consistently fail a subject for two years at LC level and will probably now take higher level to get an 'E'. How does that promote achievement?

I agree but there's a difference between a cohort who consistently get Es, some of whom will have the subject 'click' for them towards the end of the course who will go on to get Ds and maybe even Cs (and again, that's happened to me in the past) and there are some who will simply never reach the standard. It's not always possible to identify who those students will be but as things stand, the students who don't manage it are harshly punished for doing what their teachers probably should have been encouraging them to do.

rainbowtrout wrote: »

Why do we need to reward the whole way down the spectrum?

Actually I'd argue that there might be a case for giving one level of exam for every subject with lower order and higher order questions and a grading and reward system that reflects that. That way, you could reward those who know the subject very well appropriately and those who don't know it so well wouldn't be stuck with the decision of either risking a fail at HL or not reaching their potential by taking the safer option of OL but that might result in weaker students being disheartened by the fact that there are questions on their exam that they can't even attempt (given the depth, or lack thereof, of their knowledge) and underperforming. It might also help avoid the situation I've seen many times before where HL students are quite good at the HL material but less practiced and relatively poor at more basic skills (say, in maths, they know how to attempt the question but they'll add before they multiply and get the answer wrong even though they've followed the correct procedure in the supposedly higher order steps). In such a system, there should still be a threshold below which you get nothing for your efforts of course but I feel that at very least, there should be a system whereby the HL course is an extension of the OL course and that, if a student was to switch from HL to OL when they might have been borderline and didn't make the decision until late on in the course that their lack of familiarity with the OL course structure isn't a disadvantage. The structure of the course shouldn't be affecting student achievement. It should be based on the students' ability in the subject only.

implausible wrote: »

By only 10%? In English that's 40 marks, nearly a full section of the paper. As it is a student who has decent ability can pass by doing a good paper one and making some attempt at paper two. By rewarding 30% in the exam, a student can get points by not even attempting paper two. How long do you think it's going to take some students to figure that out?

I have marked papers and I view them every year with the students and in my experience, students who fail Higher Level English fall into two camps:
1. The ones who should have done pass
2. Bad luck

I remember being stunned by how relatively easy it was to pass when I first started marking. The statistics reflect this, the failure rate this year was 1.1%.

So, very few people fail and now we want to reward those who do? :eek:

To me, that just tells me that the course is poorly designed. I would argue that given that english is the de facto first language of the country (for better or worse) that we should be expecting a very high standard from the HL students. We (used to) expect it of maths students. Why not of english? A subject in which the failure rate is that low means that the exam isn't hard enough and that needs to be adjusted. Otherwise the pass is worthless anyway.

On an aside rainbowtrout, I'd appreciate it if you'd take the time to quote my posts properly so that it's easier for me to reply to your posts. I took the time to separate your post into its separate sections but trying to reply to yours was so cumbersome on my phone that I was forced to reply on my desktop. I'm not trying to be difficult or insulting here. I'd just like to be able to reply to you without having to resort to a whole load of copying and pasting.

implausible

RealJohn wrote: »

To me, that just tells me that the course is poorly designed. I would argue that given that english is the de facto first language of the country (for better or worse) that we should be expecting a very high standard from the HL students. We (used to) expect it of maths students. Why not of english? A subject in which the failure rate is that low means that the exam isn't hard enough and that needs to be adjusted. Otherwise the pass is worthless anyway.

So, you'd be in favour of making the HL exam harder and keeping the points for an E, effectively making an E a pass? That would cancel out any increase in students taking HL caused by awarding point for Es. If it meant I had only students capable of HL sitting in front of me, I'd probably be in favour of it, if the alternative was what they are currently proposing.

However, I still have a problem with rewarding students for knowing less than 1/3 of a course, any course, at any level. It's dumbing down and lowering standards.

RealJohn

implausible wrote: »

So, you'd be in favour of making the HL exam harder and keeping the points for an E, effectively making an E a pass? That would cancel out any increase in students taking HL caused by awarding point for Es. If it meant I had only students capable of HL sitting in front of me, I'd probably be in favour of it, if the alternative was what they are currently proposing.

However, I still have a problem with rewarding students for knowing less than 1/3 of a course, any course, at any level. It's dumbing down and lowering standards.

You've either misinterpreted me or you're addressing two separate points as one here.
My points were:
1. Any supposedly higher level exam with a 1.1% failure rate in worthless. It means the standard is too low for the students who are sitting it. Yes, they know at least 40% of the course (in theory - I learned one poet for my leaving cert english and got well above 40% though, from the little I've heard about the changes to the course, that's less doable these days, if it's possible at all) but if that 40% doesn't represent a suitably high standard then you might as well be awarding points for an E anyway because they're getting points for a D that is of a pretty poor standard so not doing so is basically punishing students based on a pass/fail mark that is entirely arbitrary since those who pass still know very little worth knowing.

My second point was that while I'm not inclined to award 'failure', I'm also not inclined to punish those who take a risk and aim for higher level when they might be borderline. Now granted, in a mixed ability class, there is less of an argument in favour of this as all of the students can learn the higher level material and make a reasonable decision on whether or not they're able for the exam but not all students have that opportunity. I simply don't see the problem with recognising an E at higher level in a well designed subject as being equivalent to some grade in ordinary level. They already recognise the reverse to an extent in some of the universities - those who got As and sometimes even Bs in OL maths were invited to try HL maths when I started university anyway - so if we can say that an OL A is somewhat equivalent to a C in HL (something which the points also reflect) then I don't see why we wouldn't allow an E in HL to be somewhat equivalent to say a C in OL. In the case of someone who genuinely put the effort in, it's probably actually worth more.