You'd think that not making sexual comments about girls who are still at school would be fairly obvious, but apparently not.

(08-05-2020, 08:52 AM)Makween Wrote: You'd think that not making sexual comments about girls who are still at school would be fairly obvious, but apparently not.

Just creepy and not even remotely funny.

But enough about...

agree :begbie:

Going back to the exam thing I'm seething this morning reading more about what people are saying

So many people saying that it had to be done because the teachers inflated the results. Who knew teachers grading based on a stress free year of learning will predict better results than kids stressed out their eyeballs sitting one shot exams

Sturgeon giving it the “if you're not happy you can appeal for free”

Having a young person's whole year of studying coming down to one final exam at the end seems mental to me. Should be like at Uni where it's an average of all your assessments. Obviously because of this but some bairn could get fucked out of going to Uni cos they've had a bad nights sleep before the exam or they're stressed out. Seems ridiculous.

A lot of my uni courses were 100% exam tbf. Thankfully only ever had to use my prelims once to appeal school results, when I was ill for my standard grade Chemistry. They ended up giving me a 1 for knowledge and understanding and a 7 for whatever the other aspect was called. Absolute shambles of a process.

(08-05-2020, 09:44 AM)Vieri Wrote: A lot of my uni courses were 100% exam tbf. Thankfully only ever had to use my prelims once to appeal school results, when I was ill for my standard grade Chemistry. They ended up giving me a 1 for knowledge and understanding and a 7 for whatever the other aspect was called. Absolute shambles of a process.

Problem solving.

Teacher at school said I was class at knowledge but bad at problem solving so I was basically a thick person that could remember stuff

What big problem did they think was going to happen?  I keep seeing this needed to happen to give credibility to the system (people also valuing the system more than the students it's actually meant to benefit funnily enough) but surely at the very worst it would see a higher percentage going to uni and maybe getting found out a bit in their first year?

I dunno if I'm thinking this is way more important and worse than it is but I just can't believe the blatant shafting kids from worse off schools are getting here and people just seem happy to accept that.  Just feels so Tory, I thought we were better than this

Was it defo impossible for the exams to be sat? Could they not have pushed them back to like June/July (with social distancing of course).

(08-05-2020, 09:47 AM)Mikey Wrote: Problem solving.

Teacher at school said I was class at knowledge but bad at problem solving so I was basically a thick person that could remember stuff

(08-05-2020, 09:50 AM)Morph Wrote: What big problem did they think was going to happen?  

Don't ask Mikey

(08-05-2020, 09:44 AM)Vieri Wrote: A lot of my uni courses were 100% exam tbf.

Quite unusual I think? Most are split 60/40 at undergrad level. Masters and up are often 100% on coursework.

(08-05-2020, 09:50 AM)Morph Wrote: What big problem did they think was going to happen?  I keep seeing this needed to happen to give credibility to the system (people also valuing the system more than the students it's actually meant to benefit funnily enough) but surely at the very worst it would see a higher percentage going to uni and maybe getting found out a bit in their first year?

I dunno if I'm thinking this is way more important and worse than it is but I just can't believe the blatant shafting kids from worse off schools are getting here and people just seem happy to accept that.  Just feels so Tory, I thought we were better than this

That's how I see it in my half-arsed view of this thing.

Why not give them the chance to punch up instead of punching down. Particularly in such a brutal year. Credibility of the system man. Nothing could undermine it more than this.

Not to worry, none of them will have any job prospects by the end of this all anyway

(08-04-2020, 06:06 PM)Vieri Wrote: I think it was a pretty impossible situation to put schools/teachers in and the whole thing seems like a complete shambles. What are other countries doing regarding exams?

That's a good question. As far as I know, most countries we'd see as similar to ours have done things differently - Germany went ahead with theirs, China and Spain postponed, Norway and the Netherlands have systems where only a proportion of the grade comes from a final exam anyway, so they've just awarded based on the other components. Not 100% sure on the details though.

(08-05-2020, 09:01 AM)S.J. Wrote: agree :begbie:

(08-05-2020, 09:32 AM)Morph Wrote: Going back to the exam thing I'm seething this morning reading more about what people are saying

So many people saying that it had to be done because the teachers inflated the results.  Who knew teachers grading based on a stress free year of learning will predict better results than kids stressed out their eyeballs sitting one shot exams

Sturgeon giving it the “if you're not happy you can appeal for free”

Like I said yesterday, there was no leadership from the SQA throughout the process and their guidance was abysmal. They wouldn't give teachers any sort of framework of how to actually calculate the predicted grades, or what evidence would be acceptable. In fact, they didn't even ask for any evidence. Their entire plan was to pass all the responsibility of predicting grades on to teachers under the guise of “trusting” their judgement, while (eventually)publishing a hack document that made it clear they'd be changing results, based on statistical modelling that they refused to release. None of this is a surprise. They're a joke of an organisation and always have been - but maybe what people haven't been fully aware of is that the results are manipulated every year to ensure “consistency” and “credibility”. I mark exams and the shit that they do to trip kids up and make sure that grades aren't too high is bullshit.

The difference is that this year they're manipulating the 'results' of an exam that doesn't exist - there's no standardisation, even within a school. That makes it absurd to plot the results on a bell curve and change them unilaterally. We were told to re-do our predictions 3 times because the school was changing its mind on how to calculate them. We went from predictions using prelim evidence only, to using a range of evidence, to estimating their best possible performance “on a good day with a tailwind behind them”, to a weighted system where the prelim was worth more than other tests but a bad prelim wouldn't wreck the chances of an otherwise achieving kid. My National 5 class had 4 changes - band 1 As reduced to band 2 As - but Geography was savaged, with something like 2/3 of their As reduced to Bs. We used the same system to work out our predictions.

(08-05-2020, 09:36 AM)Mikey Wrote: Having a young person's whole year of studying coming down to one final exam at the end seems mental to me. Should be like at Uni where it's an average of all your assessments. Obviously because of this but some bairn could get fucked out of going to Uni cos they've had a bad nights sleep before the exam or they're stressed out. Seems ridiculous.

Right? That's what I was saying in the Contagion thread when I was talking about this being an opportunity for reform that was being thrown away in a rush to return to normality.

They've decided that preserving the system is the priority here, and that means poor kids being thrown to the altar of the bell curve. A real lack of leadership and imagination, and job/status quo preservation being prioritised over what's actually best for young people. And of course it's poorer kids who've been disadvantaged disproportionately - the existing system perpetuates inequality, because an all-important exam advantages those from more affluent backgrounds (access to tutors and study resources, much lower rates of things like anxiety and other barriers means they have a way better chance to perform their best in an exam setting), and so trying to maintain the status quo without the exam to standardise things means that the inequality is exposed much more than normal.

(08-05-2020, 09:50 AM)Morph Wrote: What big problem did they think was going to happen?  I keep seeing this needed to happen to give credibility to the system (people also valuing the system more than the students it's actually meant to benefit funnily enough) but surely at the very worst it would see a higher percentage going to uni and maybe getting found out a bit in their first year?

I dunno if I'm thinking this is way more important and worse than it is but I just can't believe the blatant shafting kids from worse off schools are getting here and people just seem happy to accept that.  Just feels so Tory, I thought we were better than this

The very idea of poor kids doing better than “normal” after having their chance to prove themselves stripped from them was so anathema that they had to shut it down

It's actually incredible how unable we are as a society to create solutions to problems that aren't “do what we've always done”. A country full of Mikeys

They'll likely hand wave through a huge number of appeals to mitigate for this but massive damage done to the credibility of the system and the government here. Ironic, that

(08-05-2020, 09:53 AM)Aim High Wrote: Was it defo impossible for the exams to be sat? Could they not have pushed them back to like June/July (with social distancing of course).

I genuinely thought they'd sit the exams. It could have been done with a bit of will and imagination. Or, you know, just postpone them til July and they could have been sorted by now.

Folk shocked at the SNP acting toryish

The exam thing just removes another incentive for people to stay in certain areas as well and not just move to east ren/jordanhill etc.

Where we stay the catchment area is for bellahouston, or we can try to get our daughter into the gaelic school, or move. Not really creating much incentive to send her along to bellahouston now are they. Can imagine many more will feel even stronger about these things and it's just another way of reinforcing attainment gaps.

Absolutely brutal decision for so many reasons.

(08-05-2020, 11:17 AM)Little Bit Of The Boycey Wrote: A country full of Mikeys  

I went to Musselburgh Grammar, to be fair. Think it was second bottom of the league table when I was in first year

Head teacher was Terry Christie the Alloa gaffer

Went to uni with his daughter - they are Hibs.

School just got back in touch: Appeal rejected for my daughter.