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St. Kilians German school open letter to DoES

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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?

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VillageIdiot71

titan18 wrote: »

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.

Which doesn't address the point; what are you saying drives the gap in typical grades between schools? The pupils being inherently better, every year?

Because people want that gap restored, as if its a basic foundation of the whole system. So what's the driver? What's the underlying factor that they want reflected? Parental school choice? What are we missing by ignoring past school performance?

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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

- 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.

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.

Quantum Erasure

ted1 wrote: »

And lose a year of their life.

'tis only a year.

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

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

SligoBrewer wrote: »

They can resit the exam in in a few months.

And lose a year of their life.

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."

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."

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

A poster on AAM did a good analysis:

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

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?

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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.