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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?

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tjhook

VillageIdiot71 wrote: »

But that point is really addressed by the AAM post linked above.

The guy who posted the AAM says

It is really wonkish, I suspect deliberately so; it would be a brave soul who would challenge the math

The facts:

"14% of Leaving Certificate students at St Kilian's Deutsche Schule received H1 grades in German this year, compared to 41% last year"

"We calculated 19 H1 marks. This is not an inflation of grades in German for our school. We were awarded 6 H1 grades."

If you were a student at this school, or had a child who was, you wouldn't feel that the grading system has worked against you, versus students at other schools?

PhilOssophy

The leaving cert should NEVER have been cancelled. It should have been put back to September and this batch of students start in college after Christmas. Within a few weeks of the LC being cancelled, LC students were on holidays in Portugal and Spain. You couldn't make it up.

Fine Gael bowed to a small bit of pressure (and then were sneaky enough to give FF the education portfolio) and the knock-on effect is going to be the mother of all rows, starting with CAO and then followed by the predicted grades comparisons.

This was simply inevitable. It was a ludicrous call.

VillageIdiot71

tjhook wrote: »

The guy who posted the AAM says The facts:

"14% of Leaving Certificate students at St Kilian's Deutsche Schule received H1 grades in German this year, compared to 41% last year"

"We calculated 19 H1 marks. This is not an inflation of grades in German for our school. We were awarded 6 H1 grades."

If you were a student at this school, or had a child who was, you wouldn't feel that the grading system has worked against you, versus students at other schools?

Do you think that picking through the minutiae of results in one subject in one highly atypical school is a meaningful way of addressing the issue?

Systematically, what do people want? Do you want individual performance to be decreased, according to the historical performance of that individuals school?

Because we all know what that entails.

VillageIdiot71

PhilOssophy wrote: »

The leaving cert should NEVER have been cancelled. It should have been put back to September and this batch of students start in college after Christmas. Within a few weeks of the LC being cancelled, LC students were on holidays in Portugal and Spain. You couldn't make it up.

Fine Gael bowed to a small bit of pressure (and then were sneaky enough to give FF the education portfolio) and the knock-on effect is going to be the mother of all rows, starting with CAO and then followed by the predicted grades comparisons.

This was simply inevitable. It was a ludicrous call.

In fairness, there's a wider issue around that which is hard to address without sounding like Gemma O'Doherty.

And I don't mean the absence of pork sausages from Halal shops. Large scale gatherings have been curtailed everywhere, not just Ireland.

tjhook

PhilOssophy wrote: »

The leaving cert should NEVER have been cancelled. It should have been put back to September and this batch of students start in college after Christmas.

My concerns would extend to next year. We have overall grade inflation this year (albeit particular groups are put at a disadvantage)

If somebody doesn't get the course they want this year, they can apply again next year using this year's points, when presumably there will be a Leaving Cert and points will be back to normal. I.e. people doing a LC next year will be competing with people who have inflated grades from this year. Normally it might not be a huge factor, but if people feel that waiting a year will get them that coveted place on a high-demand course...

It's not inevitable. I suppose one way forward would be to "bake in" this year's grade inflation for future years. But that could have other consequences.

jimmycrackcorm

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?

My kid did both primary and secondary in gaelscoil and is obviously fluent. I was really surprised at his result for Irish as it was lower than his typical exam results. Overall did well so happy enough but I suspect that there was a algorithmic reduction.

forgottenhills

PhilOssophy wrote: »

The leaving cert should NEVER have been cancelled. It should have been put back to September and this batch of students start in college after Christmas. Within a few weeks of the LC being cancelled, LC students were on holidays in Portugal and Spain. You couldn't make it up.

Fine Gael bowed to a small bit of pressure (and then were sneaky enough to give FF the education portfolio) and the knock-on effect is going to be the mother of all rows, starting with CAO and then followed by the predicted grades comparisons.

This was simply inevitable. It was a ludicrous call.

Not at all. Teachers were rightly concerned about COVID-19 as were parents and schools were closed and on site exams cancelled to almost universal approval. If you saw the efforts that schools have had to go through to try to re-open this autumn then you would know that it would have been an impossible problem to also hold on site exams in September. Plus you would have had the problem of having students work through the summer which would be unreasonable.

v638sg7k1a92bx

There is a misconception about the level of German in St. Kilians. As a German speaker and someone who sent their kids to that school, the standard of German is not that good, especially when you consider that the kids are supposed to be speaking the language from 4 years old. The reality is that most of the kids who graduate from that school are not as proficient in German as you would expect for someone who has been speaking the language for most of their life.

The language issue in St. Kilians is a big sticking point for many parents and many parents have left the school because of it.

v638sg7k1a92bx

VillageIdiot71 wrote: »

In fairness, there's a wider issue around that which is hard to address without sounding like Gemma O'Doherty.

And I don't mean the absence of pork sausages from Halal shops. Large scale gatherings have been curtailed everywhere, not just Ireland.

Not as much in Sweden.

tjhook

VillageIdiot71 wrote: »

Do you think that picking through the minutiae of results in one subject in one highly atypical school is a meaningful way of addressing the issue?

Systematically, what do people want? Do you want individual performance to be decreased, according to the historical performance of that individuals school?

I think the grading system is constructed in a way that disadvantages students in high-achieving schools/classes. St Killian's is an example of this. I do find that meaningful. Ignoring it might suit people with a particular outlook, but I don't find it fair.

I'm not an educator. But at the risk of making a fool of myself, perhaps a better system would:

- receive calculated grades from teachers
- compare these grades to previous years LC results in the same school/class.
- Accept those calculated grades *unless they are inconsistent with previous years*.
- If they are inconsistent with previous years, then look closer at the students' junior cycle performance, term tests etc. Only if those are out of whack with the estimated grades, then up/downgrading that class.
- Finally, when there are grades for everybody, apply a bell-curve nationally to the overall result set. Similar to what I believe is done every year anyway.

Now I don't really know if this would work, and it's certainly no replacement for a proper LC. But if not, surely there's *some* grading system that treats everybody the same.

Quantum Erasure

RealJohn wrote: »

No one is punished for attending any school any year.

Apart from this year...

micks_address

i disagree with the sentiment of your post... if people get stuff for free then great... do they deserve it? did they put the work into get it? its a general point... might sound like jealousy but that's not the point.. either everyone gets stuff for free or no one.. its not fair to hand out free money to some of the people on the road and leave out others.. its essentially the same thing..

VillageIdiot71 wrote: »

What you need to reflect on is that folk are seeking historical school level performance to be recognised, not individual ability, skill or knowledge.
Again, you need to reflect on your post and the hollowness of your 'delight'.

Anything more to be said? Significant inequality of opportunity is fine, so long as you can buy your way out of it.

Only a problem when, unexpectedly, school is removed as a factor.

Normal service will resume in 2021.

Treppen

Geuze wrote: »

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."

In the appendix E what they went with seems to be a composite of Irish, English, Maths + 2 other strongest subjects in the JC....Pg. 91

". To address this, prior performance could be combined into a single composite score.
However, the advice of the psychometricians is that the greatest gain would be achieved by using a
subset of the JC subjects in the model. These would be Irish, English and mathematics (taken by the
very great majority of candidates) and the best two of each candidate’s other subjects. The advice is
that a single composite will be less valuable than a relatively small number of predictors, such as the
set suggested. Taking more subjects would only add very slightly to the predictive power of
candidates’ prior performance and would begin to reintroduce the problem of missing data as more
(less often taken) subjects were added."

Hence why I think St. Killian's German results got lost in the mix. So their JC German only partially counted.

Also i think the dept took a sledgehammer and went with national % in each subject and moved a lot of schools towards that %, ignoring past results

Peterd66

VillageIdiot71 wrote:

What you need to reflect on is that folk are seeking historical school level performance to be recognised, not individual ability, skill or knowledge.

This is incorrect, if it was indvdual performance, then they would get their teachers assessment. The problem is their individual deserved results was downgraded by a statistical strandardisation that ignored a key factor, school rather than national performance.

Treppen

A friend in a well to do school said they hired a consultant.

What he thinks happened (going by talking to other teachers who tried to piece it together) was they were told to bump a lot of the goodish generous grades down in particular subjects as it would affect the high flyers who would also get dragged down.

Loads of teachers 'advised' by school to bump down in various subjects , which had the teachers confused at first, but overall those students came out ok in other subjects and did well in points overall.

Record number of +500 and +600 points in the school.

Money well spent.

If you're playing a poker game and you look around the table and and can't tell who the sucker is, it's you.

His theory was that the company/ Department just looked at the overall bell curve % and applied it to individual schools.
Schools who did better than national average in that subject got bumped, students who got less were increased.
So technically Norma was right, Socio Economic profile wasn't used.... But it kinda was.

Junior cert results were used... But they kinda weren't.

Apparently the courts are full for September and October so won't be hearing any new cases till.... Surprise surprise... After November.

Treppen

Clayton Purring Cow wrote: »

There is a misconception about the level of German in St. Kilians. As a German speaker and someone who sent their kids to that school, the standard of German is not that good, especially when you consider that the kids are supposed to be speaking the language from 4 years old. The reality is that most of the kids who graduate from that school are not as proficient in German as you would expect for someone who has been speaking the language for most of their life.

The language issue in St. Kilians is a big sticking point for many parents and many parents have left the school because of it.

Proficiency in Language and Grades in The Subject are two very different things. I got a B in higher French but speek only a petit pois comme le pigeon.

German grades in the school are way higher than the national average year on year... except for this year.

RealJohn

Quantum Erasure wrote: »

Apart from this year...

Well yes, but you know both the person I was quoting and I were referring to previous years.

ReadySteadyGo

VillageIdiot71 wrote: »

If you have a look at the post on AAM, its pretty good at explaining that something is missing from the statement that school issued. If any school cohort had an unusually high performance at Junior Cert, that would have been taken into account for their Leaving results by the model.

If the model did what it was supposed to do. It appears the model wasn't nuanced enough. Presumably many of these students got top marks in german in the junior cert

VillageIdiot71

micks_address wrote: »

i disagree with the sentiment of your post... if people get stuff for free then great... do they deserve it? did they put the work into get it? its a general point... might sound like jealousy but that's not the point.. either everyone gets stuff for free or no one.. its not fair to hand out free money to some of the people on the road and leave out others.. its essentially the same thing..

The issue is, absolutely, what constitutes individual merit.

But, you'll appreciate, the sentiment you are expressing could equally be made about what the outcome in every other year indicates about equality of opportunity. Which is why I'd ask why this is only an issue now.

ReadySteadyGo

Treppen wrote: »

In the appendix E what they went with seems to be a composite of Irish, English, Maths + 2 other strongest subjects in the JC....Pg. 91

". To address this, prior performance could be combined into a single composite score.
However, the advice of the psychometricians is that the greatest gain would be achieved by using a
subset of the JC subjects in the model. These would be Irish, English and mathematics (taken by the
very great majority of candidates) and the best two of each candidate’s other subjects. The advice is
that a single composite will be less valuable than a relatively small number of predictors, such as the
set suggested. Taking more subjects would only add very slightly to the predictive power of
candidates’ prior performance and would begin to reintroduce the problem of missing data as more
(less often taken) subjects were added."

Hence why I think St. Killian's German results got lost in the mix. So their JC German only partially counted.

Also i think the dept took a sledgehammer and went with national % in each subject and moved a lot of schools towards that %, ignoring past results

Well spotted. Additionally, many of that population might not have done Irish (there are some exemptions for foreign mother tongue speakers), which may have reduced further accuracy of model.

Treppen

Going by other discussions what appears to be happening is that most were moved to the national average in each subject.

In a way I was disappointed that schools were releasing predicted grades and ranking before the appeal... but now I'm kind of happy because it takes the blame off teachers from angry students who only would have got only one grade. Now they can see how fair their teacher was and how much of a ***** the department was.

VillageIdiot71

Peterd66 wrote: »

This is incorrect, if it was indvdual performance, then they would get their teachers assessment. The problem is their individual deserved results was downgraded by a statistical strandardisation that ignored a key factor, school rather than national performance.

You need to think for thirty seconds more about why school, and not national performance, should be a key factor in forming an individual result.

Then you need to think for another thirty seconds about what that means.

Treppen

VillageIdiot71 wrote: »

You need to think for thirty seconds more about why school, and not national performance, should be a key factor in forming an individual result.

Then you need to think for another thirty seconds about what that means.

I'm doing a a lot of different thinking here... can you just give us the answer sir, I'm tired today.

What does it mean?

VillageIdiot71

tjhook wrote: »

I think the grading system is constructed in a way that disadvantages students in high-achieving schools/classes. St Killian's is an example of this. I do find that meaningful. Ignoring it might suit people with a particular outlook, but I don't find it fair.

Ignoring the outcome every other year might similarly suit people with a predetermined outlook. And similarly would not be fair.

You'll appreciate, the system pretty much does take account of the factors you suggest. And we all appreciate the system has to estimate performance in the absence of an exam.

Takes account of everything. Apart from previous years school level leaving cert results. Take away the exam, and folk want it to hinge on the school attended. And don't seem to appreciate what they are saying about every other year.

PhilOssophy

forgottenhills wrote: »

Not at all. Teachers were rightly concerned about COVID-19 as were parents and schools were closed and on site exams cancelled to almost universal approval. If you saw the efforts that schools have had to go through to try to re-open this autumn then you would know that it would have been an impossible problem to also hold on site exams in September. Plus you would have had the problem of having students work through the summer which would be unreasonable.

Almost universal approval is false claim. There were lots of people who rightly pointed out that while it was popular at the time, that there was going to be an inevitable row against teachers / dept of ed once the results were given out.
It wouldn't have been impossible to hold the exams with a social distance between the students.
If they had to work over the summer, so be it. We live in unusual times.

VillageIdiot71

Treppen wrote: »

I'm doing a a lot of different thinking here... can you just give us the answer sir, I'm tired today.

What does it mean?

And that, people, is why Project Maths was doomed to fail from the start.

Peterd66

VillageIdiot71 wrote: »

You need to think for thirty seconds more about why school, and not national performance, should be a key factor in forming an individual result.

Then you need to think for another thirty seconds about what that means.

I have thought about both. The issue here is language and maths. It also about confusing statistical accuracy with fairness/equality.

The language has been wrong and lazy from the beginning, e.g. private schools vs DEIS schools. From a language and more importantly a statistical point of view it is about high performing schools and low performing schools and any standardisation should have taken that into account.

To exclude that is actually inaccurate, as the calculated grades were supposed to be an estimate of what a student would have achieved and downgrading students from an accurate assessment in high performing schools to fit into a national bell curve is statistically inaccurate.

As has been pointed out above private and DEIS schools can fall into either category, in fact I know many private schools that would fall into low performing category and public schools that are high peforming. There are a number of factors that contribute to the factors that lead to high performing school include the quality of the teachers, the headmaster,schools ethos and socioeconomic factors. These are the unfair factors that should be addressed for equality.

RealJohn

VillageIdiot71 wrote: »

Ignoring the outcome every other year might similarly suit people with a predetermined outlook. And similarly would not be fair.

You'll appreciate, the system pretty much does take account of the factors you suggest. And we all appreciate the system has to estimate performance in the absence of an exam.

Takes account of everything. Apart from previous years school level leaving cert results. Take away the exam, and folk want it to hinge on the school attended. And don't seem to appreciate what they are saying about every other year.

Are you saying that actual knowledge/skill/ability/competence shouldn't matter then, if someone is coming from a position of advantage or disadvantage?

rainbowtrout

VillageIdiot71 wrote: »

Takes account of everything. Apart from previous years school level leaving cert results. Take away the exam, and folk want it to hinge on the school attended. And don't seem to appreciate what they are saying about every other year.

That’s where you’re wrong and have been harping on about this point all day. School results don’t change wildly from year to year because the cohort of students sitting the Leaving cert in that school don’t change wildly from year to year. That’s why the schools previous performance can be an indicator of how this years cohort are likely to perform as a whole.

And it’s for the following reason: socio economic background.

If you take the St Killian's case as an example, they would have a similar type of group going through every year. Students have German as a first language and are first or second generation German speakers. It’s a fee paying school so by and large students come from a relatively affluent background. The point was made earlier about the bus driver who scrimps and saves to send their kid to the fee paying school, but the overall factor here is that the parent is the driving force in wanting their child to avail of the best education possible. Many parents believe that is in a fee paying school.

As a result you end up with a cohort of students whose parents have literally invested in their education and want them to succeed. That feeds into their home background. Parents keep on top of them to make sure homework and projects are completed. They make sure they have all the resources necessary for school - from the essentials like pens and copies to the extras such as revise wise type revision books, Christmas and Easter revision courses and grinds.

The culture of the school therefore is one where students have a supportive home background and are expected to work and achieve and going to college is an automatic assumption, therefore you get competition between students.

Now go to your local community college, where it’s the only school in a town. It takes in everyone from all backgrounds. There are still the type of students described above but the effect is diluted as there are also middle of the road students and also students who have no support from home and are lucky to come to school in the morning as there is nobody at home who will drag them out of bed if they don’t do it themselves.

You get far more variable results from the few who are highly motivated and have all the supports and also the natural ability and get top marks to those who have no supports at home, no interest and struggle academically. Results will largely land on a typical curve here. I work in a school similar to this.

Then you have schools that are located in hugely disadvantaged areas - high unemployment, low educational attainment among parents, higher than average drop out rates, crime or anti social behaviour may also be factor. Students here generally do not achieve as well and schools/ teachers can only do so much.

Results for a year group are not going to change wildly for any of the above year on year because the background of your leaving cert cohort does not change wildly from year to year.

v638sg7k1a92bx

Out of interest, does anyone know what the results were for Lycee Francais (LFI) which is actually in the same building and classrooms as Kilians. I could be wrong but I think the LFI students actually sit the LC under the St. Kilians roll number because LFI is a fully private school.

If that is the case, then surely the French students would have the same issue with grades as the German students and unlike Kilians, the students in LFI speak French almost 100% of the time whereas in Kilians German is taught as a subject and everything else is in English?

If you've ever been on campus it's interesting to see because all the students are mixing in the same corridors but you can hear the French students speaking French among each other but Kilians all speak in English.