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Let's ignore everything but England - a policy which has worked perfectly well for this country since the Romans left.

So, some background for anyone not paying attention. England has a plague doing the rounds. For the first time ever, the government reacted by ordering the closure of all the schools in the country.

An unforeseen consequence of this order was that none of the annual national examinations could take place, for 16 and 18 year olds.

University places for admissions later in the summer are contingent on grades from these exams, particularly on the grades at 18.

The government chose, with an astounding lack of common sense, to allocate grades without examination of the students. Having gone down this lunatic rabbit hole they could have simply allocated the grades in alphabetical order of surname and that would have sorted the matter with a degree of fairness but no, being the government they had to screw the process up.

The governmental clerics had at their disposal the following data for each student:

• Mock exam results from before March;
• Teacher grade estimates sent with applications for university places;
• Last year's exam results for the school, by subject.
• Last year's grade distribution curves for the country, by subject.

Can you see what it is yet?



No! They can't have! I hear you cry. Oh but they did. They did some sort of meld of the estimates and the mocks, they then normalized every student by how the school performed last year and then they normalized each entire subject to last year's grades.

And then they made an error of judgement. Yes they distributed the results to the students and the universities as their actual official grade, but they also announced in passing that this normalizing involved marking 40% of the grades down from the teacher estimates. The government was then threatened with dismemberment, panicked, and finally announced that every student could have the higher of their unadjusted estimate or mock result.

This year's student cohort in England now has the best exam grade results of all time and the universities are committed, by law of contract, to taking far more students than they have places for.

Nobody, of course, has resigned.

spot wrote: ↑Thu Aug 20, 2020 6:26 am Let's ignore everything but England - a policy which has worked perfectly well for this country since the Romans left.

So, some background for anyone not paying attention. England has a plague doing the rounds. For the first time ever, the government reacted by ordering the closure of all the schools in the country.

An unforeseen consequence of this order was that none of the annual national examinations could take place, for 16 and 18 year olds.

University places for admissions later in the summer are contingent on grades from these exams, particularly on the grades at 18.

The government chose, with an astounding lack of common sense, to allocate grades without examination of the students. Having gone down this lunatic rabbit hole they could have simply allocated the grades in alphabetical order of surname and that would have sorted the matter with a degree of fairness but no, being the government they had to screw the process up.

The governmental clerics had at their disposal the following data for each student:

• Mock exam results from before March;
• Teacher grade estimates sent with applications for university places;
• Last year's exam results for the school, by subject.
• Last year's grade distribution curves for the country, by subject.

Can you see what it is yet?



No! They can't have! I hear you cry. Oh but they did. They did some sort of meld of the estimates and the mocks, they then normalized every student by how the school performed last year and then they normalized each entire subject to last year's grades.

And then they made an error of judgement. They distributed the results to the students and the universities as their actual official grade, and announced in passing that the normalizing had involved marking 40% of the grades down from the teacher estimates. The government was then threatened with dismemberment, panicked, and finally announced that every student could have the higher of their unadjusted estimate or mock result.

This year's student cohort in England now has the best exam grade results of all time and the universities are committed, by law of contract, to taking far more students than they have places for.

Nobody has resigned.

You missed out the factoid that really upset people, it was alleged that because public schools generally perform better than state schools the algorithm used upgraded public school students' results even though the teachers' assessments already tended to be overinflated (our students are the best and will get excellent grades) whereas schools in deprived areas were downgraded even though the teachers' assessments were realistic in the first place, accentuating an already large divide.

And every student who registered individually to take the exam, after home schooling, has been awarded no result at all.

spot wrote: ↑Thu Aug 20, 2020 5:56 pm And every student who registered individually to take the exam, after home schooling, has been awarded no result at all.

Ouch - I’d not picked up on that!

VCE psychology exams last week.

If this year hadn't been bad enough already. Psychology students last week lost their exams when the computers went down. Those who had finished and checking over their work lost everything. There will be a mean score given. It was caused by a multi-media platform that failed apparently.

magentaflame wrote: ↑Sun Nov 15, 2020 2:16 pm VCE psychology exams last week.

If this year hadn't been bad enough already. Psychology students last week lost their exams when the computers went down. Those who had finished and checking over their work lost everything. There will be a mean score given. It was caused by a multi-media platform that failed apparently.

Incompetence

Devastatingly so, I would imagine.

magentaflame wrote: ↑Sun Nov 15, 2020 2:16 pmPsychology students last week lost their exams when the computers went down. Those who had finished and checking over their work lost everything.

That didn't sound right, and it's not. No computers went down. Someone had included a video file interaction between the start of the review process and the start of the submission stage and then not tested the exam before releasing it live. The video file interaction couldn't be completed or bypassed, so none of the students could proceed as far as submitting their work. This was an untested provider content error, with no provision in the exam system design to react to it. The computers, as usual, were blamed.

The Donald was right. Fake news, everywhere.
[sigh]

spot wrote: ↑Mon Nov 16, 2020 2:32 am

magentaflame wrote: ↑Sun Nov 15, 2020 2:16 pmPsychology students last week lost their exams when the computers went down. Those who had finished and checking over their work lost everything.

That didn't sound right, and it's not. No computers went down. Someone had included a video file interaction between the start of the review process and the start of the submission stage and then not tested the exam before releasing it live. The video file interaction couldn't be completed or bypassed, so none of the students could proceed as far as submitting their work. This was an untested provider content error, with no provision in the exam system design to react to it. The computers, as usual, were blamed.

So I'm not allowed to sum up the situation? I have to write out the entire diatribe? In all of what you've written there ...to me ...that's a computer glitch. to me ...that a computer going down. The students LOST their work. They will not be marked on their individual work or efforts.!!!!!!!!!!

LarsMac wrote: ↑Mon Nov 16, 2020 9:00 am The Donald was right. Fake news, everywhere.
[sigh]

Fake news My Arse!!!!!

magentaflame wrote: ↑Mon Nov 16, 2020 1:17 pmThat's a computer glitch. to me ...that a computer going down.

I do entirely take your point. I suffer the misfortune of having been in computing all my working life so I'm slightly biased. My sole point is that this was a singularly appalling and unprofessional human error, not a machine error. The Information Technology director of the exam company should be fired for gross incompetence, and if they don't have one it should be the Chairman for not making what is clearly an essential appointment in a firm like that.

spot wrote: ↑Mon Nov 16, 2020 1:28 pm

magentaflame wrote: ↑Mon Nov 16, 2020 1:17 pmThat's a computer glitch. to me ...that a computer going down.

I do entirely take your point. I suffer the misfortune of having been in computing all my working life so I'm slightly biased.

I'm just hoping the students take onboard what they've learnt this year in psychology so as cope with the situation.

magentaflame wrote: ↑Mon Nov 16, 2020 1:38 pmI'm just hoping the students take onboard what they've learnt this year in psychology so as cope with the situation.

But we'll none of us know now which of them learned enough to be able to!

I now know exactly how they feel. I just wrote a very long post in a new thread and got timed out and lost the bloody lot of it . And now I'm too exhausted to try again.

magentaflame wrote: ↑Mon Nov 16, 2020 3:05 pm I now know exactly how they feel. I just wrote a very long post in a new thread and got timed out and lost the bloody lot of it . And now I'm too exhausted to try again.

OOH! I hate it when that happens.
I've taken to writing things in Notepad, then copying them over to a post.

Of course, that's only when I know I'm going to do a long message

I don't think I post anything online without copying the bulk to the clipboard first, so that if the link fails I can retrieve the text. It's a very long-standing habit.