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Child Item

Deferred State Exams 2020 [SEE MOD NOTE POST #1]

political analyst

I'm aware that the new LC timetable will be published this June - public health permitting.

Regarding the usual schedule, why doesn't the State Exams Commission have the exams of both papers each in English, Irish and Maths in the Leaving and Junior Cert exams take place on the first 3 days of the exam period so that students will have the exams in the main subjects over with by the end of Day 3?

After all, the sooner the exams are over and done with, the better - right?!

MOD NOTE I'm setting up this thread as the one stop shop for all discusion about the state exams, preparing for these exams and the format this may take. Discussion can also take place about Mat leave contracts and factual information regarding these.
There will be a warning for anyone who:
a) moans about teachers holidays
b) moans about teachers pay
c) moans for the sake of moaning
D) this is NOT a discussion about school closures, that thread ran its course and this is not a replacement.
Usual forum rules also apply.

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rainbowtrout

Chaya Fresh Shoehorn wrote: »

What happened to the push for comment only marking? My old school was involved in a programme on this. There would be comments only on all but term exams. And several term exams were cancelled in favour of holding block teaching and feedback meetings with students. They'll have little evidence. Teachers were completely against this but it was pushed by management.

Don't the inspectorate love that craic as well?

r93kaey5p2izun

rainbowtrout wrote: »

Don't the inspectorate love that craic as well?

But of course. They suggested the pilot to the principal and so that was that. No consultation or discussion. Teacher feedback was sought and then edited comments out of context appeared on the evaluation. Thank god I'm not left to carry the can of makey uppy grades there.

wirelessdude01

rainbowtrout wrote: »

Well our principal announced to parents through FB that we would still be teaching. He neglected to mention it to us though.

But why? Surely the students will see the year as being over?

Multipass

rainbowtrout wrote: »

Well our principal announced to parents through FB that we would still be teaching. He neglected to mention it to us though.

Received an email from my son’s principal that teaching of classes will cease immediately. Also that ‘it is essential that there is no further engagement or correspondence between teachers, parents and students regarding grades and class work to ensure the integrity of the process’

Surely this should be standardized countrywide? You can’t have some schools engaging and others not.

rainbowtrout

wirelessdude01 wrote: »

But why? Surely the students will see the year as being over?

Your guess is as good as mine.

r93kaey5p2izun

wirelessdude01 wrote: »

But why? Surely the students will see the year as being over?

I was sent 6 pages of Maths to correct this evening. He wants to sit the exam.

Bobtheman

acequion wrote: »

The bit that alarms me the most is the fact that the subject teacher is expected to use the evidence of classwork /homework. Some of us are better record keepers than others and until the closure revolutionized our digital skills and moved everything on line, records were often just physically written into physical teacher journals, pretty much up to whatever worked for the teacher, while the physical work went back to the student and is now inaccessible. I see huge problems there and an enormous weighting of responsibility onto the teacher! So only the official school exams logged into VSWARE should be used.

What do the rest of ye think? I'm getting more and more worked up and alarmed about this because it appears that a teacher has zero protection in this country!

I'm in the same boat. I rarely kept records of my 6th years because it would mainly read no h/w. However I would not over worry about it. It will mainly be based on mocks/ x mas exams etc. We will be one factor among many.

Bobtheman

Multipass wrote: »

Received an email from my son’s principal that teaching of classes will cease immediately. Also that ‘it is essential that there is no further engagement or correspondence between teachers, parents and students regarding grades and class work to ensure the integrity of the process’

Surely this should be standardized countrywide? You can’t have some schools engaging and others not.

Can we not send on our bank details?!!

acequion

Bobtheman wrote: »

I'm in the same boat. I rarely kept records of my 6th years because it would mainly read no h/w. However I would not over worry about it. It will mainly be based on mocks/ x mas exams etc. We will be one factor among many.

Thanks Bobtheman but it is a worry because this whole debacle in the mishandling of the state exams has made it very clear that teachers have no protection at all. I'm always defending the union but I feel terribly let down by them. This whole thing IS predictive grades and it essentially IS teachers state certifying their own students.

Am just looking back over my records here and while they're very clear to me,no way could they count as official evidence of anything. They're scribbly, grades not written in because the grades went back to the kids.Am referring to homework only, all exam results were logged. My own system always worked perfectly fine for me, but like my own scribbled lesson plans, I couldn't see it standing as official evidence.

Newbie20

mirrorwall14 wrote: »

We've been told to continue teaching LC's to the end but cannot assess or comment on students or discuss anything to do with grading. Has anyone else been told this? Like literally everything I do right now is "do this" I correct. "Read my correction". Now "do it again". Over and over. Particularly for music composition

We haven’t heard from our principal yet and he’ll be exactly the kind of one that will tell us to keep going. The way I see it at this stage is I don’t care what he tells me. The Leaving Cert is cancelled, the students have reached the end of the line and whatever time we would have spent preparing/correcting work for them now needs to be spent on engaging with this process to get the fairest mark we can for them.

I’ve lost patience with all the changes at this stage so he can say what he likes, 6th Year is finished. It would be a complete and utter waste of time anyway because 6th will rightfully down tools now.

km79

Bobtheman wrote: »

I'm in the same boat. I rarely kept records of my 6th years because it would mainly read no h/w. However I would not over worry about it. It will mainly be based on mocks/ x mas exams etc. We will be one factor among many.

I am not in the slightest bit worried about that
They are leaving certs not first years.
My subject is mainly note taking anyway
Also
Remember that thing called GDPR that is forgotten about again
Well we were told we have to have our journals destroyed every year
Exams results are online obviously
But records of no homework are long gone
We have the facility now to enter this online from next year on

man_no_plan

Folks, get out in the sun. Enjoy the weekend. Worry about it on Monday.

Newbie20

acequion wrote: »

The bit that alarms me the most is the fact that the subject teacher is expected to use the evidence of classwork /homework. Some of us are better record keepers than others and until the closure revolutionized our digital skills and moved everything on line, records were often just physically written into physical teacher journals, pretty much up to whatever worked for the teacher, while the physical work went back to the student and is now inaccessible. I see huge problems there and an enormous weighting of responsibility onto the teacher! So only the official school exams logged into VSWARE should be used.

What do the rest of ye think? I'm getting more and more worked up and alarmed about this because it appears that a teacher has zero protection in this country!

I wouldn’t worry about it to be honest. I won’t have any access to homework or classwork. Neither will any of the teachers in my school I have spoken to. Sure the students have those, we were never expected to have records of these and can’t be expected to suddenly have it now that that it would be useful. In fact I got worse at keeping records when they started spouting all that GDPR nonsense at us a couple of years back and how we basically couldn’t have a kids name on paper.

I’ll be looking at previous results on vsware and going with how I feel the student was progressing, how likely they were to perform better in the Leaving, how hard they were working etc. I presume we’ll have to write a paragraph or something to justify our prediction as well as listing results perhaps. And you could check that the results you are giving are broadly in line with previous years though they could be better or worse depending on the year group you have this year.

They are trying to call it “calculated” grades and make it sound very scientific and statistical. It’s not, it’s predictive grading at the end of the day. All you can do is the make the best possible estimate you can make with the data you have available to you.

TheValeyard

rainbowtrout wrote: »

Well our principal announced to parents through FB that we would still be teaching. He neglected to mention it to us though.

We were told no more classes with 6th years. They finish today.

TheValeyard

man_no_plan wrote: »

Folks, get out in the sun. Enjoy the weekend. Worry about it on Monday.

You know, thats the thing. The over-riding thought in my head now, is what's the fcuking point anymore. Nothing we say or do matters with all this madness. I've kept to my timetable, done live classes, set work, but now I'm just tempted to shut up shop and fire off some work to keep them busy. Honestly feel I'm done for this year.

Bananaleaf

rainbowtrout wrote: »

Your guess is as good as mine.

Ours has directed us to continue teaching too. His reason is that for anyone who still wishes to sit the exams, they must continue to have education provided to them up until the end of the school year, which is fair enough.

jimmytwotimes 2013

Bananaleaf wrote: »

Ours has directed us to continue teaching too. His reason is that for anyone who still wishes to sit the exams, they must continue to have education provided to them up until the end of the school year, which is fair enough.

Will two weeks of face-to-face class time still be required before they sit their LC in October/November?

*joking*

Treppen

mirrorwall14 wrote: »

We've been told to continue teaching LC's to the end but cannot assess or comment on students or discuss anything to do with grading. Has anyone else been told this? Like literally everything I do right now is "do this" I correct. "Read my correction". Now "do it again". Over and over. Particularly for music composition

I suppose you just have to assume that some of those students will not accept their calculated/predicted grade and WILL be doing the sit down exam.

3 Weeks to go but I think you should ease off on setting them work and telling them to complete the rest at their own pace and email you when there's an issue.
Even when we were in school there used to be a fall off as students had to take responsibility for their own learning, you can't be teaching full classes till the very day before the exam. They need to start coming to you individually with areas they want to cover.

Also they might start to engage even more just to impress what they can to influence a calculated grade.

But keep on dropping hints about finishing out in 3 weeks, finishing the exam papers and finishing the course. Cos there might be a few who are under the impression you are going to be running free revision courses the week before the sit down exams in the 2020-2021 School year.

Actually what some might be looking for is a sense of closure, so for music get them to record a song to a click track (or accompaniment on headphones). Strip the audio and put it all into audacity.

km79

jimmytwotimes 2013 wrote: »

Will two weeks of face-to-face class time still be required before they sit their LC in October/November?

*joking*

I wasn’t joking when I asked earlier
We will no doubt be expected to continue on google classroom whilst teaching all our new classes
Wait and see

jimmytwotimes 2013

km79 wrote: »

I wasn’t joking when I asked earlier
We will no doubt be expected to continue on google classroom whilst teaching all our new classes
Wait and see

Will keep an eye on Instagram for updates

Newbie20

Bananaleaf wrote: »

Ours has directed us to continue teaching too. His reason is that for anyone who still wishes to sit the exams, they must continue to have education provided to them up until the end of the school year, which is fair enough.

But the thing is the school year would Ordinarily end for 6th Years next week anwyay. They don’t ever continue until the end of May while the other years do tests.

r93kaey5p2izun

Newbie20 wrote: »

But the thing is the school year would Ordinarily end for 6th Years next week anwyay. They don’t ever continue until the end of May while the other years do tests.

In many schools, particularly DEIS schools, they continue to the end.

Bobtheman

Schools have become bull**** factories last few years. Academic standards lowered.
Let's hope they don't use this to bring in more bull****.

Purple Mountain

Chaya Fresh Shoehorn wrote: »

In many schools, particularly DEIS schools, they continue to the end.

My question is..
When kids were told the exams wouldn't be until the end of July, I'm sure there are many who organised their revision to suit this timetable.
They thought they had another 2 months to put in work so maybe took the foot off the gas since lockdown to spread out the revision.
But now there's no more they can do, will that disadvantage some?

km79

Absolutely astonishing that there has not been a single update from the unions. I wonder what is going on at this stage.

deiseindublin

How will this full process be done and dusted in 3 weeks?

rainbowtrout

Purple Mountain wrote: »

My question is..
When kids were told the exams wouldn't be until the end of July, I'm sure there are many who organised their revision to suit this timetable.
They thought they had another 2 months to put in work so maybe took the foot off the gas since lockdown to spread out the revision.
But now there's no more they can do, will that disadvantage some?

In what way? They are not being graded on work done in the last two months. The exams are not happening in July. If they do happen it will be later on in the year. More time for revision if they choose to sit the exam.

Actually what I imagine happening is that if a student isn't happy with the grades/appeal and elects to sit the exam, they may well choose to repeat the year, to keep them in school/study mode. Sit the exams in say November or whenever they are held, if they get what they want then take the rest of the year off, if not repeat in June 2021.

Treppen

Purple Mountain wrote: »

My question is..
When kids were told the exams wouldn't be until the end of July, I'm sure there are many who organised their revision to suit this timetable.
They thought they had another 2 months to put in work so maybe took the foot off the gas since lockdown to spread out the revision.
But now there's no more they can do, will that disadvantage some?

If they are taking the calculated/predicted grade they won't be disadvantaged as to how much they took their feet of the gas.
If they are going to sit the exam then they know they can put the feet back on the gas for the last few weeks (as always).
But I imagine teachers will be finishing up the course in the next few weeks (as always).
Up to them really what pressure they want to apply to the gas pedal.

Purple Mountain

Treppen wrote: »

If they are taking the calculated/predicted grade they won't be disadvantaged as to how much they took their feet of the gas.
If they are going to sit the exam then they know they can put the feet back on the gas for the last few weeks (as always).
But I imagine teachers will be finishing up the course in the next few weeks (as always).
Up to them really what pressure they want to apply to the gas pedal.

OK, thanks I was just thinking out loud.

Chilli Con Kearney

What happens to HL students who were going to drop to OL in the last term but had not had an opportunity to do so yet? I was looking at the website FAQs and then the 12 page PDF but could find nothing on this. Are they now locked in to levels, like they were with the orals being marked at 100%?

Thanks