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Comment by corin_ | Hacker News Reader

Independant schools (private schools) received 4.7% more A/A* grades than they did in 2019. The most common type of non-private school, Secondary Comprehensive, received only 2% more A/A* grades than in 2019.

The algorithm didn't keep the gap between paid and unpaid education, it expanded it.

(Source for these numbers and more in my first comment.)

I was lucky enough to not only go to two private schools, but the second one was ranked #1 in England for exam ranks 2 of the 3 years I was there (and helped me get good grades despite being extremely unmotivated and lazy). But at least my privilege was to be given a good education that made learning / passing exams (the latter more) easy, not that the government decided my school deserved an artificial grades boost compared to state schools.

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Right, and what was the previous yoy disparity?

If the previous YoY was also 5%/2%, then it is just repeating the trend.

It isnt the job of statisticians to "fix" social inequality by BSing some grades. Its their job to estimate likely exam results based on previous performance.

There's absolutely no grounds on which to assume that growth in A*/A across these demographics would be the same; and of course, very many reasons to presume they'd be different.

I can't find that data easily, if I'm bored tomorrow I might try to do the research myself - all the data is available but raw not top level overview at https://www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/downlo...

It's only been a couple of days, we'll get more data journalists breaking it down better soon.

You know what would be really helpful? If the algorithm was released to be publicly reviewed. Oh, but the government is refusing to do that, and Ofqual made anyone consulting on this project sign a 5 year NDA or they couldn't get involved. Hmm.

Edit: and while I'm pretty sure the data will show schools weren't on track for that inflation, actually no I disagree with you that it would be fair to extrapolate previous cohort improvements to this year's anyway.

I agree. It should be published.

However more important than the algorithm is just the media reporting on what ofqual actually say. I've barely read any of their actual analysis in news on the issue.

Key facts: students are always ranked and graded on a curve. Student populations have a fixed number of grades awarded every year, etc.

The system is specifically designed in recognition that grades are positional goods, ie., they are valuable only to the degree that other people do not have them.

That's the view of the education system every year. And its the basic assumption of this process. They will never over-award A grades specifically because they want universities/business/etc. to index them to a percentile performance in the population.

> Key facts: students are always ranked and graded on a curve. Student populations have a fixed number of grades awarded every year, etc.

I'm pretty sure that's not correct, please find a source suggesting that. There have been major reforms (primarily the changing A Levels back from the modular version that Labour had previously introduced) and these were specifically aimed at reducing grade inflation. If there were a fixed number of grades each year there wouldn't be any inflation to counter.

Starting with the 2010 introduction of the A* grade, the proportion of grades awarded has been almost constant (25% A/A*, 25% B, 25% C). This is in contrast to the consistent 'grade inflation' visible for the previous twenty years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grade_inflation#UK_A-Level_cla...

Isn't that due to the attempted curbing of grade inflation working well? As far as I know they haven't returned to actually grading on a curve ranking like they did decades ago, in theory if next year every student somehow handed in the perfect papers they'd all get top scores.

>Student populations have a fixed number of grades awarded every year, etc.

Yes, for the national cohort. This is different, the predicted results were weighted on a per-school basis. For example, a particular child taking, say, a history exam, in a school which had previously had no pupils that achieved A* in history over the past four years had probably no chance of getting an A*, even if that was their teachers' prediction. Purely on the basis of which school they went to. A weak cohort (compared to previous years) at a good school would be upweighted.

Previous YoY was -1.9%/-1.5%.

How could +5% possibly be an actual trend? What new magic teaching innovation have independent schools done for this year's cohort, that wasn't available in previous years or to teachers in the state sector?

Table 9-10: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

You're making very strong statements over a huge assumption that you have no data to back up. This is not like previous years. The students sat no exam, they were ranked within their school, and then assigned grades based on the previous performance of their school. It is reverse affirmative action.

What are the strong statements you think he’s making?

They sat for mocks.

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