r/Glasgow Tools

Title
Author	Cannonieri
Comment	All this talk about grades is infuriating me as an ex teacher. The public don't understand what grades are. An A, B, or C etc. are all meaningless. What grades are meant to do is show that X person is in the top 10% of pupils at a subject, y person is in the top 20% etc. For all the hate the exam system gets, it's fair. Kids are marked and scored on their performance in an exam, with the marker knowing nothing else about them. As we saw last year, teachers made an absolute hash of grading pupils by pushing everyone up and giving people the benefit of the doubt. They were rightly criticised but the public defended them and they got their pay rise because "a teacher knows their pupils best". Wrong. Teachers have biases, and they are incentivised for their pupils to score highly. That's why they don't mark their own kids' exams. What then happened was grades overall inflated massively, meaning that an A no longer meant you were in the top 10% of pupils but the top 20% for example. Now the grades become meaningless, as they don't accurately show where a kid falls in relation to his peers, and so then universities literally had to start guessing who to accept onto courses. How did they do this? By taking kids based on their background as opposed to their performance. Appeals have been a much smaller example of the above for years. They were always a guaranteed way to get your favourite pupils an undeserved upgrade, and were basically giving out to pupils who were well behaved or whose parents put pressure on teachers. It's only fair that this is changed from a guaranteed upgrade to a potential downgrade as well. But yeah, rant over. I just hate how all this media coverage acts as though this stuff doesn't benefit students. Wrong. It benefits students who actually work hard and fair. It stops privileged kids from getting a leg up over the rest by getting undeserved upgrades.
Reddit Link	https://www.reddit.com/r/glasgow/comments/nr8hjl/young_people_forced_to_take_perverse_gamble_on/h0f6i05/
Created	Thu 3rd Jun 2021 9:57am
Status	normal ()

All this talk about grades is infuriating me as an ex teacher.

The public don't understand what grades are. An A, B, or C etc. are all meaningless. What grades are meant to do is show that X person is in the top 10% of pupils at a subject, y person is in the top 20% etc. For all the hate the exam system gets, it's fair. Kids are marked and scored on their performance in an exam, with the marker knowing nothing else about them.

As we saw last year, teachers made an absolute hash of grading pupils by pushing everyone up and giving people the benefit of the doubt. They were rightly criticised but the public defended them and they got their pay rise because "a teacher knows their pupils best". Wrong. Teachers have biases, and they are incentivised for their pupils to score highly. That's why they don't mark their own kids' exams. What then happened was grades overall inflated massively, meaning that an A no longer meant you were in the top 10% of pupils but the top 20% for example. Now the grades become meaningless, as they don't accurately show where a kid falls in relation to his peers, and so then universities literally had to start guessing who to accept onto courses. How did they do this? By taking kids based on their background as opposed to their performance.

Appeals have been a much smaller example of the above for years. They were always a guaranteed way to get your favourite pupils an undeserved upgrade, and were basically giving out to pupils who were well behaved or whose parents put pressure on teachers. It's only fair that this is changed from a guaranteed upgrade to a potential downgrade as well.

But yeah, rant over. I just hate how all this media coverage acts as though this stuff doesn't benefit students. Wrong. It benefits students who actually work hard and fair. It stops privileged kids from getting a leg up over the rest by getting undeserved upgrades.