Daughter not happy with LC results - anyone else?

Upthewalls1 wrote: »

Is my daughter the only one that isnt happy with her results? I feel for her, she worked so so hard from after Halloween last year, she really was set to do quite well in the exams (alot better than her predicted grades anyway). She had a bad 5th year, health and personal problems and her class tests wouldnt have been great. Shes so sad that her hard work was never seen or taken into account. And to add to it, the whole country seems to have done better than expected! She has more points than would be needed for her course going on last years points requirments but how much will they rise I wonder? What do people think? Are they likely to go up by 10, 20 points? 50 points? The wait til Friday is torture.

Your daughter is not the only one my son in same boat got about 40 points less than a conservative estimate - no grade inflation here. It would appears that he and maybe your daughter are 2 of the students in the 4.4% who got lower grades than the teachers predicted the Department probable pull the grades down - very unfair.

Gerry T wrote: »

I've twins that just finished the leaving (boy and girl). I would say their both about 40pts below what was expected. some strange results in say 2 or 3 subjects, where grades are 1 or 2 levels below what was normally got.
Happy enough as both have exceed last yrs points for the courses they want by over 20pts.
talking with friends it seems to be a common enough story, most people below what they wanted, a good few are well below their mocks which seems very unfair. I feel for a couple that got around 500 and are missing their course by 10 or 20 points.
We'll see on monday when the eachers grades are made available.

When you say they received 40 points below what was expected is that 40 points below what was expected if they sat the exam or 40 point below the inflated grading?

StackSteevens wrote: »

Was the option to sit the LC in November not specially designed to facilitate such disappointed students?

That will be too late to count towards college this year.

StackSteevens wrote: »

Was the option to sit the LC in November not specially designed to facilitate such disappointed students?

No

If all students had inflated grades then the cao could sort it out by increasing the points but it appears that some students had their predicted grades reduced by the Department which puts them at a serious disadvantage
How did the Department select the students which they reduced the grades on? Seems to me to be very unfair.

https://www.kilians.com/news/2020/leaving-certificate-german-results-letter-to-the-does/

Shows how this years ignoring school history is deeply flawed.

I’m aware of a huge no of very disappointed pupils. From schools with very strong track records (admittedly a privileged cohort). Based on what is in public domain so far I think methodology was something like this...

We now know they methodology finally adopted involved disregarding the prior record of the school and generally taking teacher’s predictions at face value. We also know they would look at class ranking and junior cert results in the standardization process.

So for illustration let’s say the average historically nationally for a H1 in maths is 3 per 100. The results of the teachers grade predictions have in fact been much higher, lets say 5 per hundred. So, under standardization nationally a reduction by 17% was decided upon (let’s say 20% to keep numbers simple) which results in a maximum available 4 H1s per hundred pupils.

As there is no regard to schools historical results, which in many cases (but not all) are very consistent, the computer algorithm, broadly speaking, plucks out and accepts all H1s in schools for those students who teachers ranked as 1, 2, 3 or 4 (per 100) in class. Anyone awarded a H1 with a class ranking greater than 4 may have lost out.

So, for some schools who historically consistently achieve, say 10 H1s each year those pupils who were ranked by teachers as 5 to 10 may have been reduced to a H2.

For schools who rarely get a H1 in maths, if they allocated 4 this year they would probably have been accepted (unless say, they had a poor junior cert). And in fairness, who can say they didn’t have a strong cohort this year.

For completeness the other data point that was looked at was junior cert. So if someone did a poor junior cert this could also be factored in to the above along the way.

Anyway. OP, I’d be pretty hopeful with a 50 point buffer your daughter should be fine. Best of luck to all (notwithstanding that’s not possible!). Many pupils who should be safe will need to do the Nov exams which is tantamount to losing a year. Life sometimes sucks. Really feel for the class of 2020. They’ve had a tough year. And Friday yet to come....

Upthewalls1 wrote: »

Although most people wanted the schools track record taken out of the system, it was more fair to keep it in.

No they didn't, I for one wanted the school's track record kept in. If reading the post above yours from Meathdub it suggests that if you took 2 schools, one with a track record of very high results and another at the other end of the scale. IF they both had 100 LC students, then both schools would be allocated the same number of H1, H2 etc....How is that fair ???
The students that are most likely to get adjusted downward by the algorithm would be from historically high achieving schools.

Anyone with a very basic understand of statistics would understand you have a severely flawed data standardisation by ignoring school historic data as illustrated very well in the above example.

However it may not have been as simple as that - according to the IT article today in a slightly unclear manner, they seemed to use the "the aggregate Junior Cert results.... of the class of 2020". If this article is correct, then a high performing school would have higher aggregate JC scores, than a lower performing school and thus should get a greater "allocation" of H1's which probably shouldn't be far off the same effect as using historic school LC grades, you would think?

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/education/grade-calculation-the-precise-method-of-marking-1.4349038?mode=amp&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter&__twitter_impression=true&s=08

What pisses me off is the imprecise and dangerous use of language in this debate by politicians and journalists, here and the UK, which has lead to this mess. The school standardisation proposed was not socioeconomic based and should not have been refereed to as such, it was actually performance based and should have been clearly explained as such.

I am not naive and understand that socioeconomic factors are one of the elements that play into the difference in school performance and this is something that should be addressed, but the standardisation was not socioeconomic.

zetor 4911 wrote: »

If all students had inflated grades then the cao could sort it out by increasing the points but it appears that some students had their predicted grades reduced by the Department which puts them at a serious disadvantage
How did the Department select the students which they reduced the grades on? Seems to me to be very unfair.

The CAO is not in charge of the college point system and neither are the colleges themselves. From what I recall the only prerequisites for a college course are specific grades in certain subjects other then that its just a battle royal of highest points gets the first available space in the course and so on until all the spaces are filled and the points of the last student admitted is the minimum points listed on the CAO and college website. So you can see that it is impossible to really tell what a minimum points for a certain course will be this year until the last student is admitted into the course but with the inflated scores I would expect to see a substantial rise in most courses.

Upthewalls1 wrote: »

I'm not here to debate the issue but was just wondering was my daughter the only one, as all the media coverage is taking about record high results and I havent heard one other person of my friends kids and my daughters friends that are disappointed with what they got. Like others have said here my dd got a few "strange" results like a H2 in a subject that she has never ever gotten below H1 results and another subject where she got a grade below the mocks and they hadnt finished the course at the time of the mocks. The problem with the November exams is that its so close. My daughter stopped studying when the plan to go with calculated grades was announced. If they were going ahead maybe in February that would be better but November is quite close. I was just interested to see how many points people thought this years requirements would be over last year. My daughter has about 50 points more than last years cut off for the course she wants.

I'd say courses will go up by around 30 points across the board, maybe higher increases in the 350 - 450 range

I may be forgetting something, but I'm pretty sure there was a concerted campaign by parents and students to have this years exams abandoned. Weren't the students polled and the vast majority wanted them called off?

I guess for some students it's a case of be careful of what you wish for.

IMO the exams should've been conducted in July/August as they had originally intended to.