St. Kilians German school open letter to DoES

VillageIdiot71 · 09-09-2020 11:18am

crossman47 wrote: »

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.

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.

Mrsmum · 09-09-2020 11:18am

Of course students who go to fee paying schools are not inherently superior. But they will generally do well because their parents are really serious about education and being upwardly mobile so they will get their children every help they need eg extra grinds to beat the band and so forth as well as the fact they will probably be on their children's backs to do well bigtime. Also the children will be mixing with other children who are from the same backgrounds and have same values and they will feed off each other to succeed at exams and get into good college courses.

tjhook · 09-09-2020 11:19am

DangerScouse wrote: »

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

I'd say you're mostly correct. But I think most Protestant schools in this state are fee-paying, and there are supports to enable students to attend if that is their religion.

VillageIdiot71 · 09-09-2020 11:27am

tjhook wrote: »

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 you find very significant differences between schools, systematically, then can I suggest it is naive to say it doesn't take your personal circumstances into account.

If folk are paying very large sums for certain schools (pretty much all of which, incudently, are State funded), its for a reason. And the reason is, absolutely, that the system will favour folk who attend, say, a school originally set up by Jesuits over a school originally set up by a VEC.

So the model worked, up to now. Didn't it?

munchkin_utd · 09-09-2020 11:27am

Mack Dirty Butterfly wrote: »

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

+1

the german leaving cert exam is an exam to test advanced learners, whereas the standard of english and irish exams are expecting a much higher capability.

My 10 year old (native german speaking child) would likely do pretty well in the junior if not leaving cert german paper if I sat it in front of her, so I'd expect an 18 year old german native speaker to fly it

Actually, looking at a mock leaving cert paper - its not far off what they do as 10 year olds.

and thats what many here are missing, its not that its a "private" school and they have an advantage, its that they already speak German so they just will do better.

RealJohn · 09-09-2020 11:32am

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.

Where and when has this ever happened? Not a rhetorical question. I'd like to know. Can you give any examples of it?

screamer wrote: »

... you should be graded on your achievement and not on your school name, and that should always be the case.

Agreed, and it has been, until this year. This year, the students haven't been graded on their school name (in a way that's very obviously incorrect, in some cases), but they haven't been graded on their actual achievement. It's the worst of both worlds.

screamer wrote: »

Applying bell curves also affects the grades and that should be done away with also.

This just illustrates to me that you don't know why the bell curve is applied. I'll explain.
Obviously, you can't just give the same exam every year, because there would be areas of the course that never get examined (unless the exam was going to be extremely long) and people would eventually learn exactly what's coming up, so they'd just memorise it, and the leaving cert would actually become a memory test, like it's often (incorrectly) criticised for being. Therefore, the exams must change every year.

However, you want the students to be treated equally every year, so we make the assumption that the standard of intelligence and education of the students doesn't vary from year to year, and that 2020's students will achieve more or less the same grades as 2019's students did. Therefore, we assume the same proportion will get H1s, H2s, etc.

Do you think they should do away with the curve, and then, if an exam in a given subject is easier one year than it was the previous, that the students of that year should benefit, purely based on the year they happen to do the leaving cert? That wouldn't seem very fair to me.

VillageIdiot71 · 09-09-2020 11:33am

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Mrsmum wrote: »

Of course students who go to fee paying schools are not inherently superior. But they will generally do well because their parents are really serious about education and being upwardly mobile so they will get their children every help they need eg extra grinds to beat the band and so forth as well as the fact they will probably be on their children's backs to do well bigtime. Also the children will be mixing with other children who are from the same backgrounds and have same values and they will feed off each other to succeed at exams and get into good college courses.

So only parents who send their children to fee paying schools really care about their children's future?

Maybe. So, I suppose, this time the advantage will favour diligent students who don't have ambitious parents or peers.

Which I suppose means they are getting a well deserved levelling of the playing field.

RealJohn · 09-09-2020 11:34am

Mrsmum wrote: »

Was fairness an impossibility so ?

Yes, but something fairer than what we've got wasn't.

Mrsmum wrote: »

Also this bell curve system, is that also unfair ?

No.

tjhook · 09-09-2020 11:39am

VillageIdiot71 wrote: »

the system will favour folk who attend, say, a school originally set up by Jesuits over a school originally set up by a VEC.

No, the system doesn't care whether you attend a Catholic, Protestant, public, fee-paying school, or if you're home schooled. The system cares about what knowledge you end up with. That's what it tests.

You mention schools set up by Jesuits. They're not all fee-paying. Is having a religions ethos an unfair advantage for a school and its students? Because if so, maybe we should be pushing all schools to have a religious ethos. Rather than pulling everybody down to the lowest common level.

ted1 · 09-09-2020 11:39am

VillageIdiot71 wrote: »

Good luck with expanding on that line.

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

What’s to expand. It’s your words.

The exams are marked by a person who only has a number in front of him. He doesn’t see the school or peoples socioeconomic background

crossman47 · 09-09-2020 11:39am

VillageIdiot71 wrote: »

If you find very significant differences between schools, systematically, then can I suggest it is naive to say it doesn't take your personal circumstances into account.

If folk are paying very large sums for certain schools (pretty much all of which, incudently, are State funded), its for a reason. And the reason is, absolutely, that the system will favour folk who attend, say, a school originally set up by Jesuits over a school originally set up by a VEC.

So the model worked, up to now. Didn't it?

If by the system, you mean the exam, then you are wrong. The marking of the exam is blind to the school involved. But private schools do have other advantages like smaller classes, etc.

vintagecosmos · 09-09-2020 11:42am

DangerScouse wrote: »

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

Although not widespread I am sure, I know of at least half a dozen working class / single mother / one parent income families who absolutely broke their bollox to send their children to a private school. And some who had to do it all again at third level to send kids to a private college as they missed out on their course by a few points.

Some got grants from the schools and reductions in fees. Also at third level they applied for the access programme. One was on about 46k income in the household and ended up been too rich for the access programme by a few hundred quid so didnt get in. There is the HEAR scheme too for college which can give great opportunities.

But no doubt, the people I refer to above are outliers.

VillageIdiot71 · 09-09-2020 11:45am

tjhook wrote: »

No, the system doesn't care whether you attend a Catholic, Protestant, public, fee-paying school, or if you're home schooled. The system cares about what knowledge you end up with. That's what it tests.

Then you'd expect uniform results across all schools, following the same curriculum. Unless certain folk are inherently superior?

If the difference between schools is so great that it actually matters, why are people only bothered about it now?

RealJohn · 09-09-2020 11:47am

It's all well and good to say that students in fee paying schools are at an advantage (and they are, in general), but that doesn't mean that the playing field needs to be leveled to cancel out those advantages. The only fair system is one that bases reward on actual knowledge, skills, and achievement. It would be great if everyone was in the same boat, but they're not. That's something for the government to fix at a grassroots level.

It is not something for the government (or the SEC) to "fix" by penalising people who know more and do better due to having advantages that people who know less and do worse don't have, nor is it any more acceptable to reward those who haven't achieved as much as others but were disadvantaged, so they have a legitimate excuse. If you want to give extra college places to students from disadvantaged areas, that's different, but this year, the playing field is not level for people who were otherwise on a level playing field. This year, students with the same advantages or disadvantages, and the same level of ability, could be getting vastly different results, based on the ability of their teachers to assess them accurately (which most cannot do), honestly (which many have not done), and because some deeply flawed algorithm moved some of them down or up just to fit the numbers, based on only the most tenuous link to their actual ability.

I don't teach in a fee paying school, I didn't attend one, and I don't have kids attending one. I teach in a disadvantaged area. My students have benefitted this year and I'm delighted for them. I'm still not blind to the fact that this was completely unfair that many of those who should have done better than my students didn't (and it's also unfair to most of my students who didn't get H1s or O1s because I did my best to mark them honestly, whereas other teachers did not - my students might have got the grades they deserved but they're competing against students who got better grades than they deserved).

VillageIdiot71 · 09-09-2020 11:47am

ted1 wrote: »

What’s to expand. It’s your words.

And rote learning will serve you well under our system.

RealJohn · 09-09-2020 11:52am

VillageIdiot71 wrote: »

Then you'd expect uniform results across all schools, following the same curriculum. Unless certain folk are inherently superior?

No, you wouldn't. You'd expect better results from the students who are at an advantage, which is what happened.
That advantage is not based on where they go to school though. It's based on the fact that they know more and perform better.
Now that might well be because of the school they attend, but that's because some schools are better than others for various reasons. The exams are not favouring the better schools. They're favouring the students who perform better.

VillageIdiot71 · 09-09-2020 11:52am

crossman47 wrote: »

If by the system, you mean the exam, then you are wrong. The marking of the exam is blind to the school involved. But private schools do have other advantages like smaller classes, etc.

Which is obviously the issue. The blind marking reveals the issue, rather than being just an objective assessment of merit. If you saw an assessment system that could be broken by paying the right person, most folk in most circumstances would see that as a problem.

tjhook · 09-09-2020 11:54am

VillageIdiot71 wrote: »

Then you'd expect uniform results across all schools, following the same curriculum. Unless certain folk are inherently superior?

That's a bit naive.

Some people *are* inherently better academically. I wouldn't describe them as "inherently superior" in the general sense (That'd just be trolling). And birds of a feather flock together. If I value education, and I see students of a school consistently getting better results, I'll do what I can to get my child there. You see that even where an area has two public schools.

To bring things back on topic, high-achieving students in *that* school are being punished by the system put in place for the Leaving Cert this year. You're obviously ok with that, and that's fine. Others aren't ok with it.

VillageIdiot71 · 09-09-2020 11:57am

RealJohn wrote: »

I teach in a disadvantaged area. My students have benefitted this year and I'm delighted for them.

You are obviously not delighted for them, and you go on go say you wish other pupils got better results under this system by taking account if factors that your pupils could not have availed of.

You want your 2020 pupils to do relatively worse than they did. That's not delight.

RealJohn · 09-09-2020 12:00pm

VillageIdiot71 wrote: »

Which is obviously the issue. The blind marking reveals the issue, rather than being just an objective assessment of merit. If you saw an assessment system that could be broken by paying the right person, most folk in most circumstances would see that as a problem.

It's not being broken though. They're "paying the right person" to help them gain more knowledge and ability, in order to perform better. They're not "paying the right person" to get an undeserved grade.

VillageIdiot71 · 09-09-2020 12:02pm

tjhook wrote: »

That's a bit naive.

Some people *are* inherently better academically. I wouldn't describe them as "inherently superior" in the general sense (That'd just be trolling). And birds of a feather flock together. If I value education, and I see students of a school consistently getting better results, I'll do what I can to get my child there. You see that even where an area has two public schools.

To bring things back on topic, high-achieving students in *that* school are being punished by the system put in place for the Leaving Cert this year. You're obviously ok with that, and that's fine. Others aren't ok with it.

I'm happy that an issue has been highlighted, and I notice how folk are troubled by it.

You'll appreciate, no one is being punished for attending any school this year. That's the thing that people want to change in how results have been determined.

RealJohn · 09-09-2020 12:04pm

VillageIdiot71 wrote: »

You are obviously not delighted for them, and you go on go say you wish other pupils got better results under this system by taking account if factors that your pupils could not have availed of.

You want your 2020 pupils to do relatively worse than they did. That's not delight.

Maybe you should practice your reading, because I did not say that I "wish" anything, nor do I "want" my students to have done relatively worse than they did. I'm just not blind to the fact that they should have.

RealJohn · 09-09-2020 12:05pm

VillageIdiot71 wrote: »

You'll appreciate, no one is being punished for attending any school this year. That's the thing that people want to change in how results have been determined.

No one is punished for attending any school any year.

VillageIdiot71 · 09-09-2020 12:07pm

RealJohn wrote: »

It's not being broken though. They're "paying the right person" to help them gain more knowledge and ability, in order to perform better. They're not "paying the right person" to get an undeserved grade.

Oh, please. If performance is so closely related to what school you attended, it means pupils face significantly uneven opportunities.

And, really, reread your post above and reflect on what you say about your own pupils. Because I do appreciate you just have a blind spot on this.

tjhook · 09-09-2020 12:08pm

VillageIdiot71 wrote: »

You'll appreciate, no one is being punished for attending any school this year. That's the thing that people want to change in how results have been determined.

Two students produce great (identical) work in the German subject. One of them is in St. Killan's. The other is in School X. The student in St. Killian's is graded down because they attend a school with others who also do great at German. The student in School X keeps the high grade because there are fewer students with such German skills. But they have the same proficiency.

That's the very point of this thread.

rainbowtrout · 09-09-2020 12:13pm

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.

Except they're not. Papers are graded anonymously. Examiners don't know what schools the papers come from. Students are only identified by exam number.

RealJohn · 09-09-2020 12:15pm

VillageIdiot71 wrote: »

If performance is so closely related to what school you attended, it means pupils face significantly uneven opportunities.

Nobody's denying that, but that isn't the point. Rewarding people equally when one person is clearly more able/skilled/knowledgable than the other is not fair, and it's not right. The fact that they face uneven opportunities is not fair either, but that should be addressed by addressing the unevenness of opportunity, not by pretending that the achievements are equal.

VillageIdiot71 wrote: »

And, really, reread your post above and reflect on what you say about your own pupils. Because I do appreciate you just have a blind spot on this.

If you can't read, that's your problem, not mine. If you have to misrepresent me to make your case, it just shows that you have no case.

VillageIdiot71 · 09-09-2020 12:35pm

tjhook wrote: »

Two students produce great (identical) work in the German subject. One of them is in St. Killan's. The other is in School X. The student in St. Killian's is graded down because they attend a school with others who also do great at German. The student in School X keeps the high grade because there are fewer students with such German skills. But they have the same proficiency.

That's the very point of this thread.

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

VillageIdiot71 · 09-09-2020 12:42pm

RealJohn wrote: »

Nobody's denying that, but that isn't the point. Rewarding people equally when one person is clearly more able/skilled/knowledgable than the other is not fair, and it's not right. The fact that they face uneven opportunities is not fair either, but that should be addressed by addressing the unevenness of opportunity, not by pretending that the achievements are equal.

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

RealJohn wrote: »

If you can't read, that's your problem, not mine. If you have to misrepresent me to make your case, it just shows that you have no case.

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.

forgottenhills · 09-09-2020 12:43pm

Mrsmum wrote: »

Of course students who go to fee paying schools are not inherently superior. But they will generally do well because their parents are really serious about education and being upwardly mobile so they will get their children every help they need eg extra grinds to beat the band and so forth as well as the fact they will probably be on their children's backs to do well bigtime. Also the children will be mixing with other children who are from the same backgrounds and have same values and they will feed off each other to succeed at exams and get into good college courses.

This is really lazy stuff. There are plenty of parents who have the choice and means to send their children to private schools or to public schools, care deeply about their education and choose the latter. This is because in almost all areas there are many public schools available where their kids will do just as well academically as private schools and there won't be the danger of inculcated arrogance or entitlement.

Having said that and getting back on topic St Kilians clearly looks to be a special case in relation to German as a subject and the Department should have taken steps to treat special cases like this correctly.

St. Kilians German school open letter to DoES

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