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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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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.

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?

ted1

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.

On the first point. No, there would be high achiever in each year. If there was an exceptional one it could be flagged for special consideration.

ted1

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.

Well they have always been blindly corrected. So I guess they are inherently superiority

beazee

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.

The figures shown on RTE News the other night were quoting ~37% of Polish papers overall were marked at H1.
Not surprising if you look into their Saturday/Sunday Polish Schools network in Ireland (some fee paying, some PL gov financed).

crossman47

VillageIdiot71 wrote: »

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?

In the case of the German school, its clear they specialise in German and so will be an outlier nationally. That should have been the same now. Similarly, Colaiste Muire in Dublin always got high marks in Irish. Have they suffered?
More generally, the beneficiaries this year are those whose teachers were exceptionally generous.

tjhook

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.

Nope. The level playing field was the exam. The system only cared about what you knew. It didn't take into account who you are, who you know, or how you gained the knowledge. It's a brutal system, but it's blind.

If we want to take into account the advantages students have, we could reduce the marks of students who attend better schools, students who have more educated parents, students who are home-schooled, students who happen to be female. I suppose we could just go all the way and award all students 50% in all subjects.

Unless the problem is less about a level playing field, and more about others having more money and what they choose to do with it?

titan18

VillageIdiot71 wrote: »

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?

Multiple reasons imo. You likely have

Potentially better teachers (might not be the case of course)
Smaller class sizes
Higher peer pressure within the class to be smart
More supportive parents for the student to get a good education

Course won't be the case for every student. I went to a public school myself, and we were streamed, and I'd say the top class I was in was as good as any private school class, but the private schools didn't have as many of the bottom students in the bottom classes of our year.

VillageIdiot71

ted1 wrote: »

Well they have always been blindly corrected. So I guess they are inherently superiority

Good luck with expanding on that line.

Oh, and you don't need the "ity" at the end.

[Deleted User]

byhookorbycrook wrote: »

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

Don't be daft. No they clearly should not, because the curriculum for say English is obviously very different than the curriculum for German.

DangerScouse

Get Real wrote: »

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)

I highly doubt there is anyone on 45k sending their kids to private school, in Dublin anyway.