A few days and a shedload of ‘analysis’ later on the #SQA results, some observations come to mind. (1/)
There’s some misunderstanding about estimated grades – most pupils I suspect don’t have a clue what their estimate was. I certainly didn’t share any. Most will have some inkling from learner conversations throughout the year but those will be different. (2)
I suspect this could explain some of the "I was predicted an A but ended up with a D" stories. There doesn't seem to me to be anything in the SQA's model that would allow that kind of grade amendment to happen, and if it did, it's clearly an administrative error. (3)
The deprivation stats issue is confusing two issues. The first is the SQA model baked in the attainment gap to their process, so even if a school had made improvements in a year or there was a particularly strong set of candidates it wouldn't make much difference overall. (4)
The other issue is individuals caught by model or effected by the waterfall process used to make sure results remained 'tolerable'. In every class in the country there are individual pupils who outperform expectations - they are the ones potentially disadvantaged. (5)
The argument that any problems with the model will be ironed out by the appeals process is problematic. Alongside gathering evidence to back up estimates there was an allowance for teacher judgement on 'inferred attainment' - that improvement that happens just before exams. (6)
I can't see how that can be neatly packaged into evidence to provide the SQA as part of an appeals process. It was based on knowing the pupils, understanding their improvement over the course of the year and their potential in the final exam. (7)
Things like "X didn't do as well as expected in the prelim but she's been to supported study every week, is doing extra homework tasks, has really grasped the final unit and has improved significantly in this part of the course as a result" - real professional judgement. (8)
Final thing. I half sarcastically tweeted yesterday that it was good everyone was waking up to the attainment gap. The bigger issues with these results is that they are further evidence of the longstanding and barely improved poverty-related attainment gap in Scottish education.
If we really want to see kids from areas of deprivation getting comparable results with kids from affluent areas we need to be asking bigger questions than just SQA modelling, including whether the millions spent on attainment projects has been effective at all.
