Predicted Grades Appeals

Pursefan

Teacher and parent. Daughters nursing degree jumped by 50 points. Large no of increases in points for UCHG. Steady, sloggers will be the ones to loose out.

skippy1977

scrubs33 wrote: »

Have the Dept/SEC/CAO managed to pull off the impossible? I’m not hearing too much disappointment from former 6th years here(middle of the road small town school) A good few have been in touch to say they are very happy with their offers. Management also happy as are staff in the main. Small sample I know but an outsider would say that both Monday and today have been very good days for the ‘process’. I’ve blocked everything that happened from March to August however...

My own reading of it is that middle of the road small town schools (as mine is) have done well at the expense of the normally higher achieving schools. I could be wrong but I know we average 4 maybe 5 kids over 500 points each year and this year we had 12...

scrubs33

skippy1977 wrote: »

My own reading of it is that middle of the road small town schools (as mine is) have done well at the expense of the normally higher achieving schools. I could be wrong but I know we average 4 maybe 5 kids over 500 points each year and this year we had 12...

Will be interesting to see if this is a trend but I certainly expected more backlash this week. Watching the fallout from court cases, November exams will be quite the experience I think.

Mardy Bum

skippy1977 wrote: »

My own reading of it is that middle of the road small town schools (as mine is) have done well at the expense of the normally higher achieving schools. I could be wrong but I know we average 4 maybe 5 kids over 500 points each year and this year we had 12...

Middle of the road schools and DEIS schools were the big winners.

genericgoon

I assume a contributor to the grinds/finishing schools being hit the hardest is they would not have had the cohort's Junior Cert results (since the school was feeding in student's from across many schools) for calibration. Thus, they may have simply been given the population average (using either country-wide JC or just by ignoring JC) for comparison instead. The distance between the usual expected results and the population average may have contributed to the disproportionate level of adjustment.

Mardy Bum

genericgoon wrote: »

I assume a contributor to the grinds/finishing schools being hit the hardest is they would not have had the cohort's Junior Cert results (since the school was feeding in student's from across many schools) for calibration. Thus, they may have simply been given the population average (using either country-wide JC or just by ignoring JC) for comparison instead. The distance between the usual expected results and the population average may have contributed to the disproportionate level of adjustment. I have little grá for those schools but they may have some success bumping their own results but still unlikely to have the advantage they would usually expect from going to those institutions.

Considering that students from these schools are more than likely to drop out of their course later in comparison with other schools, this may be just speeding up the process for lots.

mariaalice

Mardy Bum wrote: »

Considering that students from these schools are more than likely to drop out of their course later in comparison with other schools, this may be just speeding up the process for lots.

Depend on the subject a lot going to the grinds schools would be looking to do medician which has a very low drop out rate, the days of someone going to the institute to scrape into a place in Arts in UCD are gone there is too much choice.

Mardy Bum

mariaalice wrote: »

Depend on the subject a lot going to the grinds schools would be looking to do medician which has a very low drop out rate, the days of someone going to the institute to scrape into a place in Arts in UCD are gone there is too much choice.

ESRI report from this year found that proportionately grinds schools have the highest drop out rates.

Alqua

Caitriona Perry just mentioned the removal of "historical" school profiling on RTE news with Simon Harris - historical surely meaning since May or so? He didn't clarify. The number of people I've spoken to who think school profiling happens in the normal marking of the exams is shocking!

RealJohn

s1ippy wrote: »

https://www.echolive.ie/corknews/Six-Cork-students-celebrate-achieving-maximum-Leaving-Cert-points--b3156c41-9af3-4e34-ac2e-38a464063461-ds

How does this make any sense.

According to the school’s website, they have over 900 students, so presumably somewhere in the region of 150 leaving cert students, and probably a wide range of subjects. Not hard to imagine that they could have 8-10 H1s in any subject without mucking up the curve too much. The ones who still wound up with 625 could (and almost certainly did) have that spread over a range of 12 to 15 subjects, so it’s quite possible the teachers were (fairly) realistic in their made up grades, and they didn’t need to be changed much to fit the curve.

Mardy Bum

RealJohn wrote: »

According to the school’s website, they have over 900 students, so presumably somewhere in the region of 150 leaving cert students, and probably a wide range of subjects. Not hard to imagine that they could have 8-10 H1s in any subject without mucking up the curve too much. The ones who still wound up with 625 could (and almost certainly did) have that spread over a range of 12 to 15 subjects, so it’s quite possible the teachers were (fairly) realistic in their made up grades, and they didn’t need to be changed much to fit the curve.

Schools that publicise high results this year are only embarrassing themselves (even in a normal year, publicising results is crass at best).

Alex86Eire

60% of my students were marked down. I feel awful for them.
I'm in a non fee paying, generally high achieving school.
I was very realistic in the grades I gave them.

man_no_plan

Mardy Bum wrote: »

Middle of the road schools and DEIS schools were the big winners.

Is this just hearsay? I've been hearing it all week but theres no actual way to know if it's the case. Zero evidence to support this view.

I work in a deis school, we would have one or two over 590 every year and every 5-7 years we would have a 600 (or 625 as it is now).

Deis and high standards aren't mutually exclusive. Just because they're not writing letters to complain and jumping up and down on Joe duffy doesn't mean that they're not suffering the same fate.

Peterd66

The active exclusion of historic school statistics from the algorithm was the introduction of politically driven interference and bias against high performing schools.
Statisticaly and mathamtically it would be automatic to include this data to make the model and results accurate.

Treppen

man_no_plan wrote: »

Is this just hearsay? I've been hearing it all week but theres no actual way to know if it's the case. Zero evidence to support this view.

I work in a deis school, we would have one or two over 590 every year and every 5-7 years we would have a 600 (or 625 as it is now).

Deis and high standards aren't mutually exclusive. Just because they're not writing letters to complain and jumping up and down on Joe duffy doesn't mean that they're not suffering the same fate.

Suppose we won't know really.
We can only go by anecdotes and what certain principals are saying. But there's no doubt that grades were bumped down if they went above national average in a school... And what schools does that usually happen in?

Question: Norma was adamant to stress that they would not be including the socio economic profiling in August... When she said they would be doing it back in May (along with gender). Why the change?

I think it's because they knew the national grade average for each subject would take care of it and ensure the majority would be happy (as long as their own class grades confirmed to the average).
For once they didn't copy the UK.

It's a tricky situation as a lot of fee paying schools would want to keep it quiet about which students got what, and there's the implication that their teachers were over generous. So if they are going to go public they'd have to go all out fighting.
I also think they're holding off till students get to see the teachers predicted grade/ranking and let the students parents lawyer up.

There were a few schools already doing academic tracking from an Irish company and I'd be surprised if they didn't get some really good advice. One company says they have about 100 schools on the books , but it's hard enough to find these schools with Google searches (I've tried... You'll get about 5 testimonials and that's it).

RealJohn

Mardy Bum wrote: »

Schools that publicise high results this year are only embarrassing themselves (even in a normal year, publicising results is crass at best).

That’s not really relevant to the point I was making. I was just giving a possible answer to the question.

ReadySteadyGo

Treppen wrote: »

S

There were a few schools already doing academic tracking from an Irish company and I'd be surprised if they didn't get some really good advice. One company says they have about 100 schools on the books , but it's hard enough to find these schools with Google searches (I've tried... You'll get about 5 testimonials and that's it).

What's the name of the company/system?

ReadySteadyGo

Why the change?

I think it is in the docs and press releases. V1 had a higher percentage of mark downs for deis schools. Which was seen as a failing and politically unacceptable.

ted1

Did they consult with actuaries while deciding the scoring system. And did they follow their advice ?

man_no_plan

Treppen wrote: »

Suppose we won't know really.
We can only go by anecdotes and what certain principals are saying. But there's no doubt that grades were bumped down if they went above national average in a school... And what schools does that usually happen in?

Question: Norma was adamant to stress that they would not be including the socio economic profiling in August... When she said they would be doing it back in May (along with gender). Why the change?

I think it's because they knew the national grade average for each subject would take care of it and ensure the majority would be happy (as long as their own class grades confirmed to the average).
For once they didn't copy the UK.

It's a tricky situation as a lot of fee paying schools would want to keep it quiet about which students got what, and there's the implication that their teachers were over generous. So if they are going to go public they'd have to go all out fighting.
I also think they're holding off till students get to see the teachers predicted grade/ranking and let the students parents lawyer up.

There were a few schools already doing academic tracking from an Irish company and I'd be surprised if they didn't get some really good advice. One company says they have about 100 schools on the books , but it's hard enough to find these schools with Google searches (I've tried... You'll get about 5 testimonials and that's it).

I'm familiar with the tracking companies and its actually something that I'm very interested in. The problem, I think, with any system s that the output data is only as good as the input data. Rubbish in rubbish out.

If the in data is Mickey mouse chapter tests, summer tests under dubious conditions etc, there can be no question that you can't rely on any output.

I have a colleague who has recently started in our school and is still very much in touch with his old school. He maintains that his former colleagues all predicted a score and them added a grade as a sort of insurance. In fact he had some sort of a spreadsheet they were using that added up JC, summer, Christmas, mock with a weighting for each and produced a 'Result' , crazy stuff.

I have taught in a grind school too, and I would have seen my students there achieve far better than those in my own place statistically speaking. Where I had ten of my own i might have an A1 every year and a smattering of A2, B1 down along in a class of ten in the grind school i would have had maybe two A1s. That's 10% v 20%.

What i found with that setup was a lot of repeat stu8who were going for broke on the second time or students who started in 6th year for one year as they were, presumably, swinging the lead in 5th year in their own school and parents wanted them to work in a different environment.

I found that the poorest performers were the 2 year lc people who thought a new school that cost money was the answer rather than hard work.

Overall though I dont know how much of a deal needs to be made of it if 80% of students got their first choice or whatever the stat is. I cant remember a year where someone wasn't disappointed.

So as for saving the DEIS schools, I'm not sure, I know that our grades put in were very much in line with what we would generally get, a bit higher than last year because we had a way stronger group, but no higher than the previous two or three years.

We were happy enough with what came out in our department, a borderline guy might have come down. If I had been that convinced that they deserved the grade in the outcome maybe they wouldn't have been hovering so close to the edge 81 would be hard to hold on to, anyone who ever marked knows that those at the edges are most likely to move.

gaiscioch

man_no_plan wrote: »

If I had been that convinced that they deserved the grade in the outcome maybe they wouldn't have been hovering so close to the edge 81 would be hard to hold on to, anyone who ever marked knows that those at the edges are most likely to move.

I know of two students who received scores of 93.5% and 94% respectively so not exactly marks on the edge. However, as their positions were the lowest of that teacher's H1 grades, they were each given a H2 as the system presumably decided that some H1 quota had been reached for that teacher's classes.

Treppen

man_no_plan wrote: »

So as for saving the DEIS schools, I'm not sure, I know that our grades put in were very much in line with what we would generally get, a bit higher than last year because we had a way stronger group, but no higher than the previous two or three years.

We were happy enough with what came out in our department, a borderline guy might have come down. If I had been that convinced that they deserved the grade in the outcome maybe they wouldn't have been hovering so close to the edge 81 would be hard to hold on to, anyone who ever marked knows that those at the edges are most likely to move.

Out of interest... Were the grades you put in for your department roughly in line with the national average for that subjects?
It seems to be that way in our school, if it was near the national it wasn't touched if it was over it was bumped.... Irrespective of previous years grades.

I'm asking because I've noticed a few pull downs and push ups were close to that subject norm.
I know Killian's was only one incident but their 40% German got pushed to the national average of 14%.

Treppen

gaiscioch wrote: »

I know of two students who received scores of 93.5% and 94% respectively so not exactly marks on the edge. However, as their positions were the lowest of that teacher's H1 grades, they were each given a H2 as the system presumably decided that some H1 quota had been reached for that teacher's classes.

Any way you could get the % of those H1s and compare it to the national average for that subject.
I have a hypothesis. :pac:

Treppen

ted1 wrote: »

Did they consult with actuaries while deciding the scoring system. And did they follow their advice ?

Looks like they used polymetrika , they're a company involved in Pisa. I could be wrong though.
They're on their data protection list for students.

https://www.education.ie/en/The-Department/Data-Protection/gdpr/parents-children/privacy-notice-students-calculated-grades-leaving-certificate-2020.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiq0Yn8mePrAhUNO8AKHRGWDo4QFjAAegQICxAC&usg=AOvVaw3U0oYDz4fzOUnoLt4ApP-l

Did they take their advice?

I reckon it's a case of presenting about 4 different scenarios. And then the department will act ...ahem... 'in the best interests of the country' :pac:

Treppen

Have to say, I'm getting sick of Brian Mooney defending the system .



Any time he's on media he avoids any implication that students were wronged or that there was any flaw in the grading, he'll go on mansplaning how calculated grading prices works then make sure to mention 'generous teachers' then focus on students who got good grades. Maybe it's just the career guidance teacher in him saying ah well you just gotta deal with it and move on sonny...

....Or maybe he's looking for that cushy advisor job down the line.

amacca

Treppen wrote: »

Have to say, I'm getting sick of Brian Mooney defending the system .



Any time he's on media he avoids any implication that students were wronged or that there was any flaw in the grading, he'll go on mansplaning how calculated grading prices works then make sure to mention 'generous teachers' then focus on students who got good grades. Maybe it's just the career guidance teacher in him saying ah well you just gotta deal with it and move on sonny...

....Or maybe he's looking for that cushy advisor job down the line.

Any individual that has a headline above an article blaming teachers for this is either a moron (unlikely) ...or a self interested pole climber with an agenda imo

The Dept were bounced into this fiasco by media/public pressure and some shockingly poor analysis/opinion that contributed to building that momentum/pressure from said media figures

Teachers in the main were not calling for predicted/"calculated" grades, did not want to do this and lets not forget were asked to grade on the basis of what the students best performance on the day would be along with a whole load of other unquantifiable wooly fudge instructions designed to shift blame in the end.....lets also not forget they were asked to provide a ranking and told their grades would be adjusted.............interesting that the headline doesn't highlight where the real **** ups were

Its because of this kind of bolloxolgy teachers fought to have an independent assessment system and not assess students for the purposes of certification in the past.


I for one think exceptionally poor journalism/public commentary by craven self serving media figures/columnists with divisive headlines needs to be challenged

Its crap like this when its let fester and unduly sway public opinion causes some of the worst of short term political decisions and long term damage to a country/economy/stability......I still think about the likes of that Troll Ciara Kelly calling for certainty for the students.......she really achieved that didnt she

Look at Trump, Boris etc and tell me the bull**** people consume in those countries and the unnecessary divisions isnt at least in part responsible for whats going on.

Guys like Mooney have a lot to answer for if they know what they are at......There should be a way to incentivise accurate factual reporting and minimise thrash like that...dare I say propagandist thrash.

man_no_plan

Treppen wrote: »

Out of interest... Were the grades you put in for your department roughly in line with the national average for that subjects?
It seems to be that way in our school, if it was near the national it wasn't touched if it was over it was bumped.... Irrespective of previous years grades.

I'm asking because I've noticed a few pull downs and push ups were close to that subject norm.
I know Killian's was only one incident but their 40% German got pushed to the national average of 14%.

They would have been above really, 100% doing higher level, and weighted to the front with no tail in the h7 h8, run of the mill really. We didn't get creative with grades, put in what we thought they would get.

I assume that your theory is that if you were in or around the national average you were left alone?

Treppen

man_no_plan wrote: »

They would have been above really, 100% doing higher level, and weighted to the front with no tail in the h7 h8, run of the mill really. We didn't get creative with grades, put in what we thought they would get.

I assume that your theory is that if you were in or around the national average you were left alone?

Ya that's what I'm thinking. That's why our school was very careful to moderate what teachers were doing and bumped down a few before submitting.

From what I can gather (open to correction) The technical report says they did use a composite of individual grades at junior cert but selected only Irish, English,Maths +2 highest others. So that may have had some baring on the LC moderation if they were out of kilter that way.
I wonder if you had an Irish exemption in the JC would they take account of the missing grade?

Also with grinds schools students students mightn't necessarily have had great JC results, but often with enough work put in they'd get high grades. Maybe that's where they lost out with JC/LC moderation.

A lot to read in that report.

gaiscioch

Treppen wrote: »

Any way you could get the % of those H1s and compare it to the national average for that subject.
I have a hypothesis. :pac:

I don’t think the national statistics per subject for this year are out, are they? If so, I could.

Anybody know when we are allowed answer our students? Tomorrow, Monday, when they’ll see the grade we gave them or do we have to wait until the end of some other process?

Treppen

gaiscioch wrote: »

I don’t think the national statistics per subject for this year are out, are they? If so, I could.

Anybody know when we are allowed answer our students? Tomorrow, Monday, when they’ll see the grade we gave them or do we have to wait until the end of some other process?

I meant compare it to previous years . Which is what I think the high achieving schools got pulled towards... So the averages Will be maintained with a bit extra to trot out the 'generous teachers' whipping boy.

As regards teacher silence... Well now , the agreement was that teachers keep quiet until the appeals process is over! But haven't-a-clue-Norma said otherwise.

In saying that nobody cares any more. Although our school is giving students the teachers grades and ranking next week... But still telling teacher to keep quiet and refer all queries to management ! Which is fine by us.

I think it's up to students and schools now to carry on the fight, teachers were shafted enough so expect to get bashed again next week by Brian Mooney about how teachers were 'over generous' and it was their fault students got downgraded and how great the system was, except for not taking into account his suggestion to hold places for 2019 LCs.