The Exam Situation

Until Gove’s reforms as SoS for Education when he abolished any form of ongoing continues assessment or coursework in preference for a single terminal examination, students would have had 60% of their final grade already known and so finding a solution to this unimaginable situation would have been a little easier. Gove insisted on heading back to a single test being the only way to measure 5 years of education on a secondary school and 2 years in a sixth form so other than centre assessed grades (teachers assessment) we have nothing formal to rely upon. The initial assessment from teachers for A Levels did show a 12% increase on 2019 which the government baulked at but instead of looking at it sensibly they lurched to the right and punished the most disadvantaged. Simply shocking
 
Laughing said:
Boromike you are right as far as it goes, I think. What would happen in a usual year is marks are normalised based on averages across the country, so if 10% get an A* last year across the whole country, then the top 10% define where A* ends and an A begins, and so on.

The problem with the algorithm is it is used on a school by school basis not an average across the country. This, as you say unfairly disadvantages a school that performed poorly in recent years, irrespective of how good the class of 2020 is.

I think the disparity could be larger in smaller class sizes just because they have a small representative sample, but that could also overestimate pupils achievements. The smaller the sample size the bigger the margin of error.

My belief is the algorithm was deliberately constructed to help private schools, and by default disadvantaged the government funded school system. The decision makers at OfQual may well have kids in private education and were biased, probably intentionally towards these institutions.

The main thing that is missed in all this, is what the government have done is illegal, there is no foundation to allow this to happen, other than an 80 seat majority, of course. GDPR specifically forbids this to happen, and does so clearly and unequivocally. The government do not have a legal leg to stand on.

This will result in many legal challenges and the government will, I think, do a U-Turn when they realize the scale of the issue they are facing.
Click to expand...

I don't think it was intentional, it comes from a history of only looking at the big picture, instead of the detail contained within it. My guess is the conversation only went as far as: make the grades similar to last year, assume schools perform the same as they did last year so we don't get inflation/deflation. None of them looked at the detail until it was too late. It's more incompetence than anything. We see the same thing in every government department. GDP is up so must be good for everyone when there are hundreds of situations where there are winners and losers, and similarly it is the usual winners always winning and the usual losers always losing.

There was a semi-simple solution to the current process which would have solved a big chunk of the problems and that was instead of doing it on a school by school basis then instead they could have grouped schools into similar performing schools. That makes sample sizes go from 20 per school to 200, 500 or whatever. Anyone that has ever worked with data knows that applying models to small sample sizes causes all sorts of issues if there is any variability. Grouping schools would have kept the same number of grades but increases the chances of people being where they should be on the curve. It is unlikely to have an exceptional cohort of 200+ compared to how a couple of exceptional students in a class of 20 can make the model useless.

I'm not qualified to say whether there are GDPR issues but my guess will be that they don't use students names, they use pseudonymous data with certain metrics that results in an outcome. The school performance data comes from the school, not the student. The marking was done by exam boards still wasn't it so It's not really different to them handing grades out how they do every other year.
 
boromike85 said:
I don't think it was intentional, it comes from a history of only looking at the big picture, instead of the detail contained within it. My guess is the conversation only went as far as: make the grades similar to last year, assume schools perform the same as they did last year so we don't get inflation/deflation. None of them looked at the detail until it was too late. It's more incompetence than anything. We see the same thing in every government department. GDP is up so must be good for everyone when there are hundreds of situations where there are winners and losers, and similarly it is the usual winners always winning and the usual losers always losing.

There was a semi-simple solution to the current process which would have solved a big chunk of the problems and that was instead of doing it on a school by school basis then instead they could have grouped schools into similar performing schools. That makes sample sizes go from 20 per school to 200, 500 or whatever. Anyone that has ever worked with data knows that applying models to small sample sizes causes all sorts of issues if there is any variability. Grouping schools would have kept the same number of grades but increases the chances of people being where they should be on the curve. It is unlikely to have an exceptional cohort of 200+ compared to how a couple of exceptional students in a class of 20 can make the model useless.

I'm not qualified to say whether there are GDPR issues but my guess will be that they don't use students names, they use pseudonymous data with certain metrics that results in an outcome. The school performance data comes from the school, not the student. The marking was done by exam boards still wasn't it so It's not really different to them handing grades out how they do every other year.
Click to expand...
The GDPR issue is not to do with personal identifiable information, it is to do with machine assessment of data, from GDPR :

Article 22 of the GDPR has additional rules to protect individuals if you are carrying out solely automated decision-making that has legal or similarly significant effects on them.

It is completely unambiguous and the government have breached the regulation.
 
Laughing said:
The GDPR issue is not to do with personal identifiable information, it is to do with machine assessment of data, from GDPR :

Article 22 of the GDPR has additional rules to protect individuals if you are carrying out solely automated decision-making that has legal or similarly significant effects on them.

It is completely unambiguous and the government have breached the regulation.
Click to expand...

They would surely argue that it isn't solely automated, it is based on the schools internal ranking of the students. If they had given a list of students with no other metric and just randomly given out grades that would breach but they have the ranking which is from the school. It's different numbers but the process isn't much different. It's receive data, apply model, distribute data.
 
Laughing said:
The GDPR issue is not to do with personal identifiable information, it is to do with machine assessment of data, from GDPR :
Click to expand...
I'm guessing the usual fanboys are defending the government from a position of ignorance again, GDPR is more than just sharing of info. The government are guilty, as per normal this government takes immoral/illegal/risky actions and then plays dumb about it later.Stop being fans boys, they clearly broke the law and either didn't know which means (ironically) that they are in jobs that are beyond their mental capability OR they knew it was illegal and didn't care, which makes them morally reprehensible.
 
The middle and upper classes are starting to sh*t themselves because too many of the working class are still going to University - this is the perfect chance to stem some of that flow

I got two awards as well as my degree from Teesside Uni - had no problems getting interviews at major "Canary Wharf" corporations after leaving University - and that's the issue for the upper and middle classes - they've paid £10,000+ a year for a private education, then Juninho10 from a standard secondary school, sixth form and a "new university" gets offered the job instead of Sebastian or Rupert
 
It isn’t good enough to simply do a U Turn and that’s the end of it. Thousands of young people have faced anxiety and distress. Some will have lost out on opportunities. The government has known there would be no examinations for 5 months and in that time they could only create a monstrosity of a plan that failed miserably that they then compounded unforgivably by trying to face it down because they thought they had joe public in the bag. This shows you the arrogance of these people. Nothing is sacred and we will see post Brexit the NHS and food standards equally treated shoddily. I despise the contempt this government shows ordinary folk.
 
Duffman said:
Until Gove’s reforms as SoS for Education when he abolished any form of ongoing continues assessment or coursework in preference for a single terminal examination, students would have had 60% of their final grade already known and so finding a solution to this unimaginable situation would have been a little easier. Gove insisted on heading back to a single test being the only way to measure 5 years of education on a secondary school and 2 years in a sixth form so other than centre assessed grades (teachers assessment) we have nothing formal to rely upon. The initial assessment from teachers for A Levels did show a 12% increase on 2019 which the government baulked at but instead of looking at it sensibly they lurched to the right and punished the most disadvantaged. Simply shocking
Click to expand...

Remind me again who was Gove's advisor at Education? Wasn't erm, a certain Mr Cummings was it? Surely not. You couldn't make it up.
 
boromike85 said:
They would surely argue that it isn't solely automated, it is based on the schools internal ranking of the students. If they had given a list of students with no other metric and just randomly given out grades that would breach but they have the ranking which is from the school. It's different numbers but the process isn't much different. It's receive data, apply model, distribute data.
Click to expand...
The algorithm used the rankings as a starting point, then analysed them via the algorithm all analysis was via algorithm, Interestingly enough the legislation was passed to protect people applying for jobs that could then be discarded pro-grammatically by scanning, non-english sounding names, for example. It applies equally in this scenario, as the grades were based only on the algorithm, with no one doing a check after the algorithm ran. Had the grades been scrutinized by a human reader after the algorithm, then they would not be in breach of GDPR. They weren't so they are.
 
Laughing said:
The algorithm used the rankings as a starting point, then analysed them via the algorithm all analysis was via algorithm, Interestingly enough the legislation was passed to protect people applying for jobs that could then be discarded pro-grammatically by scanning, non-english sounding names, for example. It applies equally in this scenario, as the grades were based only on the algorithm, with no one doing a check after the algorithm ran. Had the grades been scrutinized by a human reader after the algorithm, then they would not be in breach of GDPR. They weren't so they are.
Click to expand...

Ah ok, that makes sense then, cheers. What about the ability to appeal the grade based on the mock and teacher assessment? Where does the process count as being stopped? I presume it will amount to nothing though and even if it does it will be too late for those affected.

How does it work in other years? Are they not breaching GDPR there as well? I think it's correct that every paper is given a score and they then adjust the grade boundaries so a certain number of people fit within each boundary. That must be done automatically, there are too many to check manually. Would that be a breach as well or is it different because it's boundaries and they aren't weighted/adjusted etc.?

GDPR is quite complex. I submit large amounts of patient data to NHS centrally each year so I'm aware of the bits I do or at least the things I'm not allowed to do but the rest of it I only have a brief understanding of. Some of it seems more annoying than useful at times like the email from every company I've ever dealt with telling me how they are complying with GDPR.
 
BoroMike, for previous years the mark is known, the exam result. The grades are calculated for those marks based on previous performance across the entire country so everyone's grade is relative to everyone elses, regardless of which school they went to so everyone is subject to the same process and are upgraded or downgraded by equal amounts, no one is adversely effected by the process, that is everyone is effected equally. It is true that borderline A's may be downgraded to B's, but everyone on that mark would be downgraded irrespective of their GDPR, i.e. their postcode, or more specifically the postcode of the school they attended.

The amount of downgrading done this year was based on, the schools postcode and class size, to name but 2 factors that actually have nothing to do with a childs performance and limit how high a pupil can reach, based not on their academic performance, but on the schools performance.
 
It had to happen Duffman, Johnson would have been in and out of court for the rest of the year otherwise.
 
There really doesn't seem to be an awful lot of thought goes into this governments decisions a lot of the time. I don't know whether it is an arrogance that they can do what they want, or just plain old incompetence. There is a saying "Never attribute malice where incompetence would do". Who knows.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top