St. Kilians German school open letter to DoES

v638sg7k1a92bx

Anyone see this today. When the rest of the schools in the country are seeing an uptick in grades, the German school is seeing a downgrade for what is supposed to German school. Makes you wonder what the circumstances where.

Article from the RTE is here https://www.rte.ie/news/education/2020/0908/1163950-german-results-st-killians/

Open letter from the principal, which doesn't read very well is here https://www.kilians.com/news/2020/leaving-certificate-german-results-letter-to-the-does/

Does anyone know how this situation could arise, is this school an outlier?

LW2018

I really don't think this school will be the only outlier. I feel a number of students will feel extremely let down by the system when they see the grades that were calculated for them and I do hope, for their sake, that they shout and scream about the disadvantage bestowed upon them whereby a computer played 'God' in their results

cmssjone

Clayton Purring Cow wrote: »

Anyone see this today. When the rest of the schools in the country are seeing an uptick in grades, the German school is seeing a downgrade for what is supposed to German school. Makes you wonder what the circumstances where.

Article from the RTE is here https://www.rte.ie/news/education/2020/0908/1163950-german-results-st-killians/

Open letter from the principal, which doesn't read very well is here https://www.kilians.com/news/2020/leaving-certificate-german-results-letter-to-the-does/

Does anyone know how this situation could arise, is this school an outlier?

Once the previous distribution of each individual school was omitted from the algorithm this was always going to happen. Most fee paying schools will have been hit hard in a negative way and I can see legal action being taken by a good cohort of parents. Several teachers that I know, whose students would usually score top grades have had around half of their predicted grades brought down by at least a grade. There certainly wasn’t any grade inflation in these schools...

SligoBrewer

They can resit the exam in in a few months.

byhookorbycrook

By the logic of that letter, native speakers of Irish and English should all get high marks.

Seamai

I studied German in senior cycle only and sat it in the LC (almost 40 years ago). So, does a native speaker going to St Killian's sit the exact same exam as someone who has studied it for only a few years? If so, it hardly seems like a level playing pitch.

Icsics

Seamai wrote: »

I studied German in senior cycle and sat it in the LC (almost 40 years ago). So, does a native speaker going to St Killian's sit the exact same exam as someone who has studied it for only a few years? If so, it hardly seems like a level playing pitch.

Yes, essentially they sit German as if it’s their second language. Same for all those sitting Polish etc, native speakers sitting second language papers. They can sit it in Nov

Beechwoodspark

I’ve a few contacts in schools within Eastern Leinster

The general feeling is that the dept actively averaged the results

Brought up poorer schools

Brought down better schools

RealJohn

Clayton Purring Cow wrote: »

Does anyone know how this situation could arise, is this school an outlier?

I imagine the magical algorithm they use just adjusts grades across the board, without taking school profile into account in any way, which in the case of St. Killian’s is ludicrous, and wrong.

Similarly, I imagine a good number of Gaelcholáistí had a good number of grades reduced in Irish, but the algorithm could probably take that into account more easily, because there are a lot more Gaelcholáistí than German schools. To the algorithm, St. Killian’s probably just looked like the German teachers were way too generous in their results, without accounting for the fact that they were actually being realistic in that case (and let’s be honest - they probably were still a bit generous, even if unintentionally so, because I imagine very few teachers didn’t err on the side of generosity in any school).

RealJohn

Seamai wrote: »

I studied German in senior cycle only and sat it in the LC (almost 40 years ago). So, does a native speaker going to St Killian's sit the exact same exam as someone who has studied it for only a few years? If so, it hardly seems like a level playing pitch.

If they’re a native speaker, they’re sitting all of their other subjects in their second (or even third language). I imagine that levels the playing field quite a bit. If anything, they’re still at a disadvantage.

DangerScouse

Beechwoodspark wrote: »

I’ve a few contacts in schools within Eastern Leinster

The general feeling is that the dept actively averaged the results

Brought up poorer schools

Brought down better schools

I see no problem with that approach tbh.

Idbatterim

DangerScouse wrote: »

I see no problem with that approach tbh.

Lol!

RealJohn

byhookorbycrook wrote: »

By the logic of that letter, native speakers of Irish and English should all get high marks.

No, not really. The German exam is mainly a test of the students ability to speak, write, and read German. They don’t have to study novels, poems, plays, and the media in German, like they do in Irish and english (unless it’s changed quite a bit since I did leaving cert German).
You would expect a native speaker to do very well in an exam like leaving cert German, and native speakers do better on average in Irish. I would say that in general, people who speak english as a first language do better in the english exam than those for whom it’s not their first language too, wouldn’t you agree?
Irish and english are more than just testing the student’s ability to communicate in those languages though, and the German exam isn’t, to the best of my knowledge.

screamer

I don’t agree with the schools historical performance giving students an edge, and I also think applying bell curves is a disgrace. You should be awarded what you get ( in usual sittings ), no discrimination because you can’t afford a private school. I think the whole leaving cert process needs a rethink, it seems rotten to the core.

v638sg7k1a92bx

RealJohn wrote: »

I imagine the magical algorithm they use just adjusts grades across the board, without taking school profile into account in any way, which in the case of St. Killian’s is ludicrous, and wrong.

Similarly, I imagine a good number of Gaelcholáistí had a good number of grades reduced in Irish, but the algorithm could probably take that into account more easily, because there are a lot more Gaelcholáistí than German schools. To the algorithm, St. Killian’s probably just looked like the German teachers were way too generous in their results, without accounting for the fact that they were actually being realistic in that case (and let’s be honest - they probably were still a bit generous, even if unintentionally so, because I imagine very few teachers didn’t err on the side of generosity in any school).

I don’t think Kilians does that well from a points perspective anyway. It’s not an actual full German school. The German is very light touch with an emphasis on the kids with German speaking parents.

o1s1n

<name snipped> was my German teacher from 1st to 6th year back in the day in a different school. Absolute hard as nails tiny woman who took zero ****. We used to call her Little Hitler.

If you yawned in her class and she saw you, she'd make you go over to the window, open it and stand there 'breathing in fresh air' while mortifying you the whole time.

No homework? Instant detention on Wednesday. There's be people queuing up at the end of the class with their homework notebooks awaiting her to write a detention note. If you didn't get your parent to sign it for the next class, she'd give you detention again.

At the start of the class she'd go around one by one and ask everyone a German word from a list of vocabulary we'd to learn for homework. Get too many wrong? You guessed it, detention.

I actually used to fear going to her class. :eek: had double German every Thursday morning at 9am, the horror.

ReadySteadyGo

Clayton Purring Cow wrote: »

I don’t think Kilians does that well from a points perspective anyway. It’s not an actual full German school. The German is very light touch with an emphasis on the kids with German speaking parents.

Some figures from their blog 2019 results
https://www.kilians.com/news/2019/leaving-certificate-results-2019/

9% received over 600 points
38% received over 500 points

I don't know what national percentage looks like, but this looks very good to me

ReadySteadyGo

ReadySteadyGo wrote: »

Some figures from their blog 2019 results
https://www.kilians.com/news/2019/leaving-certificate-results-2019/

9% received over 600 points
38% received over 500 points

I don't know what national percentage looks like, but this looks very good to me

https://www.kilians.com/news/2018/leaving-certificate-results-2018/

2018 finished with ten percent over 600 points.

ReadySteadyGo

ReadySteadyGo wrote: »

https://www.kilians.com/news/2018/leaving-certificate-results-2018/

2018 finished with ten percent over 600 points.

If I read this right in 2019 nationally only 1.4p.c. had over 600 points

http://www2.cao.ie/app_scoring/points_stats/lc19pts.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjc-vnEzNrrAhUQsaQKHQUUCG8QFjALegQIAhAB&usg=AOvVaw0dv-72zTdhsIGiJO7LkVnd&cshid=1599603877883

Edit: Hmm maybe this link will work

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www2.cao.ie/app_scoring/points_stats/lc19pts.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwihgYHPvdvrAhUMThUIHSdlDJ4QFjAAegQIExAC&usg=AOvVaw0dv-72zTdhsIGiJO7LkVnd

spurious

ReadySteadyGo wrote:

2018 finished with ten percent over 600 points.

How many in the class? How many children with additional needs get taken into the school in the first place?

Mardy Bum

spurious wrote: »

How many in the class? How many children with additional needs get taken into the school in the first place?

I think the point is that they were unjustly treated by the algorithm as high points is the norm in this school.

spurious

Mardy Bum wrote:

I think the point is that they were unjustly treated by the algorithm as high points is the norm in this school.

It could be one child in a class of ten. Without the full picture it is cherry picking.

Every year the Leaving throws up cases of anomalies, unexpected and 'unfair' results. Most schools and students just get on with it.

ReadySteadyGo

spurious wrote: »

It could be one child in a class of ten. Without the full picture it is cherry picking.

Every year the Leaving throws up cases of anomalies, unexpected and 'unfair' results. Most schools and students just get on with it.

From the open letter, there appears to be about 40 students in 2020. (They expected 50p.c. to get h1 in german, they predicted 19 h1).

From here. https://www.education.ie/en/find-a-school/School-Detail/?roll=60630W it looks like on average 70 students? 400 students/6 years.


This thread is focussed on their German results, and it seems clear that the algorithm was unable to understand that these students/this school are very strong in german.

But it looks like this school has had very strong students/results in all subjects for several years.

There are growing noises that high performing schools have lost out this year. And I think that is a wider issue but harder to prove in general.

I wonder what their points distribution looks like this year.

HerrKuehn

I assume gaelscoil had the same issue with Irish? I mean I would expect they historically have high results. If the algorithm is not taking the school into account, surely they should be way down?

Funkfield

screamer wrote: »

I don’t agree with the schools historical performance giving students an edge, and I also think applying bell curves is a disgrace. You should be awarded what you get ( in usual sittings ), no discrimination because you can’t afford a private school. I think the whole leaving cert process needs a rethink, it seems rotten to the core.

And no discrimination because you can

It's not all D4 millionaire's children affected here. Many parents are really stretched, go without, and do everything else they can to put their child in a decent school

Cloudio9

There’s probably a load of Polish families in schools who feel hard done by but won’t have the Irish times as a platform to air their grievances.

TheValeyard

A schools previous performance should never be considered when grading a student. A student should be graded on their ability and performance on the test/task.

ReadySteadyGo

HerrKuehn wrote: »

I assume gaelscoil had the same issue with Irish? I mean I would expect they historically have high results. If the algorithm is not taking the school into account, surely they should be way down?

Potentially, although There might be sufficient numbers of them in the national historic data for the algorithm to treat them better.

It might even have given a general uplift across all subjects to any cohort of students who do above average in their Irish jc.

HerrKuehn

ReadySteadyGo wrote: »

Potentially, although There might be sufficient numbers of them in the national historic data for the algorithm to treat them better.

It might even have given a general uplift across all subjects to any cohort of students who do above average in their Irish jc.

yet, we haven't heard any complaints from them, so I assume they havent been disadvantaged in Irish

cmssjone

TheValeyard wrote: »

A schools previous performance should never be considered when grading a student. A student should be graded on their ability and performance on the test/task.

It usually is. That’s why students sit exams. It is widely known that students that attend certain schools achieve higher grades than other schools. This happens year on year and should have been incorporated into the predictive grade algorithm.

Wombatman

ReadySteadyGo wrote: »

This thread is focused on their German results, and it seems clear that the algorithm was unable to understand that these students/this school are very strong in German.

Anyone know what the formula\algorithm is?

I guess these students would be picked up as outliers for German and their results were flattened hence the outcry. Perfectly understandable outcry too.

Obviously the algorithm is not sophisticated enough to deal with cases like these.

I wouldn't be surprised to see more complaints like this coming out from high end fee paying schools.

I guess it's the nature of prediction. Never going to be perfect.

screamer

Funkfield wrote: »

And no discrimination because you can

It's not all D4 millionaire's children affected here. Many parents are really stretched, go without, and do everything else they can to put their child in a decent school

Funny how it’s been fine up to this year for the discrimination to happen when taking the historical performance into account when grading papers. It’s only now the elite schools are allegedly being discriminated against we’re seeing letters and legal action.
I don’t agree with any of it, you should be graded on your achievement and not on your school name, and that should always be the case. Applying bell curves also affects the grades and that should be done away with also. The leaving cert is just being exposed for the joke it is.

Dardania

cmssjone wrote: »

It usually is. That’s why students sit exams. It is widely known that students that attend certain schools achieve higher grades than other schools. This happens year on year and should have been incorporated into the predictive grade algorithm.

Why?

Is it not an indictment of the education system that students get an inconsistent education when judged by a standard test?

micks_address

Spoke to a principal in a school last night. A lot of their H1 students were brought down to H2... he says it might not seem like a big deal but 10 points can make a big difference... also sitting the exam in November is not a realistic option... how do you prepare to be at your peak for the exam and not having had a teacher for the best part of 9 months at that stage? Seems like there were quite a few kids at the high end brought down a grade... if you you were averaging h2 etc you probably stayed at that point... Fridays points will influence a lot of decisions i suppose.. guy on prime time was funny last night... 'one of my students got a h2 but doesnt know she was downgraded'.... well she did after last night..

its a fair point people make about the junior cert as well.. while the only standardised test in the state that the cohort had taken.. there's always been ah its just the junior cert... so knuckle down for the leaving cert as thats what matter.. i guess no easy answers.. i would have thought everyone was happy till i had the conversation last night

Quantum Erasure

screamer wrote: »

Funny how it’s been fine up to this year for the discrimination to happen when taking the historical performance into account when grading papers. It’s only now the elite schools are allegedly being discriminated against we’re seeing letters and legal action.
I don’t agree with any of it, you should be graded on your achievement and not on your school name, and that should always be the case. Applying bell curves also affects the grades and that should be done away with also. The leaving cert is just being exposed for the joke it is.

Where are you getting the idea these schools were benefiting from positive discrimination from?

Geuze

A poster on AAM did a good analysis:


https://www.askaboutmoney.com/threads/leaving-cert-standardisation.219669/

davetherave

Cloudio9 wrote: »

There’s probably a load of Polish families in schools who feel hard done by but won’t have the Irish times as a platform to air their grievances.

Why would they feel hard done by? If we make the assumption that only native Polish speakers take Polish at leaving cert level then there is a nice typical bell curve over the last three years. It's not all H1's across the board.

Polish results from 2019-2017 from the National Statistics on examinations.ie. Numberswise there were 780 in 2019, 687 in 2018, and 693 in 2017





It'a the same with Latvian, Lithuanian, Hungarian, Romanian and Bulgarian, last year. H1's and H2's for these were 40.4%, 29.9%, 33.3%, 39.1%, 37.5%

Geuze

Wombatman wrote: »

Anyone know what the formula\algorithm is?

I quote from the analysis on AAM:

https://www.askaboutmoney.com/threads/leaving-cert-standardisation.219669/


"There follows my broad understanding of the approach, but I would welcome clarification/correction.

There are basically two inputs:
(1) The Teachers' Assessments
(2) Predictions from Junior cycle for that school and subject based on a regressed fitting of past Leaving Cert results to past Junior cycle performance.

(Note: regression is based on results from all schools and subjects, and includes other predictors but the Junior Cert results correlation with Leaving Cert results dominates).

These provide two probability distributions for each school and subject combination (cell).

The distribution used for standardisation is a mixture of the two. The proportion of that mixture which is Junior Cycle Prediction is decided by how many students are in that cell. The formula for deriving that mixed distribution is where it gets really wonkish but it gives the example that if there were only 6 in the cell no credibility would be given to Junior Cycle Prediction (i.e. the Teachers' Assessments would be accepted without adjustment) and vice versa, if the cell was large a greater credibility would be given to the Junior Cycle Prediction. Unfortunately we are not told the limit of this credibility but I doubt it exceeds 50%. Having combined the distributions in this way the students are fitted into this standardised distribution (for that cell) based on the marks given by the Teachers' Assessment. So if someone is middle in the class they would be given the mid point of this standardised distribution. Note that the individual's own Junior Cycle performance has no role whatever in his/her final mark. The Junior Cycle Prediction is applied at the school level."

Geuze

https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/2ed9b-leaving-certificate-2020-calculated-grades-technical-reports/

Technical reports here.

The model is in section 5.

https://assets.gov.ie/86709/aacaf08c-a32b-4e74-817b-5a3ba1e2a7e8.pdf

I quote:

"With the recent decision to remove the school historical data from consideration and to have
a greatly diminished role for the national standards, the information sources remaining
available for use are the school estimates and rank orders, and the prior attainment and
related variables of the 2020 Leaving Certificate students from when they sat their Junior
Cycle."

ted1

SligoBrewer wrote: »

They can resit the exam in in a few months.

And lose a year of their life.

ted1

TheValeyard wrote: »

A schools previous performance should never be considered when grading a student. A student should be graded on their ability and performance on the test/task.

No, the schools performance should be. Because it’ll give a accurate description

ted1

screamer wrote: »

Funny how it’s been fine up to this year for the discrimination to happen when taking the historical performance into account when grading papers.

They’ve never done that before

Quantum Erasure

ted1 wrote: »

And lose a year of their life.

'tis only a year.

PaulieC

I think we all know that if this was happening to children in DEIS schools there would be holy f*ckin murder in the media and among the SJWs on social media. If it is unfair to target DEIS students with profiling then the same applies to these students.
And it's very flippant for us to say sure they can do it again in November, but that effectively takes away a year of their lives. Plus, rounding them down while everyone else is being rounded up is disadvantageous in CAO terms.

Everyone counts or no one does.

tjhook

- If a school's previous performance was taken into account it could have disadvantaged higher achievers in poorer schools.

- If a school's previous performance wasn't taken into account, it's more likely to disadvantage higher achievers in schools with better performance (often fee-paying schools).

In this country, it's obvious which one of those options was going to be politically viable.

Mrsmum

tjhook wrote: »

- If a school's previous performance was taken into account it could have disadvantaged higher achievers in poorer schools.

- If a school's previous performance wasn't taken into account, it's more likely to disadvantage higher achievers in schools with better performance (often fee-paying schools).

Was fairness an impossibility so ?

Also this bell curve system, is that also unfair ?

tjhook

Mrsmum wrote: »

Was fairness an impossibility so ?

Also this bell curve system, is that also unfair ?

I think some unfairness was inevitable. It was inevitable that some people were going to gain, some were going to lose out. I think there would be fewer anomalies if the system took into account the fact that each year grades aren't evenly distributed across all sectors and schools.

I suppose they could also have "evened out" the fact that girls perform better than boys, but my understanding is that that wasn't done. Why is it ok to ignore the fact that students in some schools do better than those in others, but make efforts to maintain a pattern of girls doing better than boys?

A choice was made about which groups can be disadvantaged by this grading system and which groups can't.

Get Real

Funkfield wrote: »

And no discrimination because you can

It's not all D4 millionaire's children affected here. Many parents are really stretched, go without, and do everything else they can to put their child in a decent school

Agree. You could have a fella working in Dublin Bus earning 45k a year, smokes 20 a day and goes for 5 pints and a chipper on a Saturday. He's not part of the "elite". Just a respectable, working man.

His colleague could be in the same boat, but doesn't drink or smoke. The 5k saved on not doing that puts the young lad at this school. Or his missus might work weekends in the local corner shop.

Yet, somehow, it's "private school cnts" because the parents chose to send the kid there. While colleague A rants about the millionaires as he lights up a smoke on his way for a pint.

(nothing wrong with that BTW, but there's always a "poor me" attitude when in actual fact, some who complain, if they really wanted to, could have done the same. You can't have it both ways)

VillageIdiot71

tjhook wrote: »

- If a school's previous performance was taken into account it could have disadvantaged higher achievers in poorer schools.

- If a school's previous performance wasn't taken into account, it's more likely to disadvantage higher achievers in schools with better performance (often fee-paying schools).

In this country, it's obvious which one of those options was going to be politically viable.

Which, tbh, probably means its the first time high achievers in poorer schools have faced a level playing field that reduces the environmental constraint they've had to contend with.

Unless you're saying folk in (mostly) fee paying schools are inherently superior, and that explains the historical results in those schools.

titan18

VillageIdiot71 wrote: »

Which, tbh, probably means its the first time high achievers in poorer schools have faced a level playing field that reduces the environmental constraint they've had to contend with.

Unless you're saying folk in (mostly) fee paying schools are inherently superior, and that explains the historical results in those schools.

It's always been a level playing field with exams though. The corrector has no idea that student a is from a private school and student b is from a public school.

crossman47

screamer wrote: »

Funny how it’s been fine up to this year for the discrimination to happen when taking the historical performance into account when grading papers. It’s only now the elite schools are allegedly being discriminated against we’re seeing letters and legal action.
I don’t agree with any of it, you should be graded on your achievement and not on your school name, and that should always be the case. Applying bell curves also affects the grades and that should be done away with also. The leaving cert is just being exposed for the joke it is.

But historic performance was never taken into account before. it should have been this time because high achieving schools and schools who graded honestly have now been let down. They have been downgraded the same as those who got inflated grades.