St Kilians cheated by Leaving Cert standardisation

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Duke of Marmalade

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The technical background to this thread is covered in some obscure forum "above the line".
Here is the story.
We have Teachers Assessments.
Everybody believes and are borne out to be correct that this will lead to grade inflation.
So we need standardisation to give a normal LC result.
National standardisation would not work as schools clearly differ greatly as to their historic performance.
So the natural approach would be to standardise by school historic results.
That was the original intention and that was the approach in the UK.
But the lefties in the UK cried foul and said there was no reason for schools to do better this year just because they have historically done so.
The UK caved in and accepted the Teachers assessments as gospel.
We decided not to make that mistake.
Yes the standardisation would need to reflect how different schools do better historically.
But we would reflect that by how they did in the Junior cert for the current cohort.
They came up with a most hubristic algorithm to achieve this.
But it clearly does not work for St Kilians.
They should have used historic school performance for the standardisation, despite the leftie outcry in the UK.
 
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I don't believe there is a case for "school standardisation." If there is, there's a case for male -v-female, black - v- white, settled -v- traveller person etc in Leaving Cert predicted results.
 
My daughters speak fluent English as they are native English speakers, I don't expect them to get a H1 in English when they do the Leaving. Whilst what happened in St Killians is an "outlier" it would be impossible to put in place a system that would not in some way result in some students getting less then perhaps they would have got in the leaving. After all, why should an exceptional student be downgraded because previous years did poorly?

It would be very interesting to see a list of the schools who had grades downgraded. I wonder how many of them were private schools and did some teachers dole out H1's and 2s because it was easier to avoid grief from parents because they could "blame the department"?
 
Any system like this will round off the sharp edges on the performance graph. It's not perfect and it disadvantages some students but when you consider how unfit the whole Leaving Cert system is as a measure of a young person's intellect and potential then is this any worse overall?
 
Leper said:
I don't believe there is a case for "school standardisation." If there is, there's a case for male -v-female, black - v- white, settled -v- traveller person etc in Leaving Cert predicted results.
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This is missing the whole point about "standardisation", but you are not alone; the whole Elite Conspiracy brigade latched on to this interpretation in the UK.
Standardisation happens every year. It is to ensure that the marks reflect a similar standard year on year - alignment with historic results is key. It has nothing to do with ensuring societal fairness, that is society's problem.
So, for example, let's say that the papers are all marked and it turns out that maths was eazy peazy this year - twice as many H1s as usual. We obviously need to adjust these bare marks. I presume that normally a fairly simple approach is taken like lop 5 off everybody's marks i.e. a uniform national adjustment.
But if it had been announced that this is how standardisation would work this year, the temptation to put your own school's best foot forward would have been intolerable. The standardisation could not work as a uniform national adjustment. An adjustment to school historic would remove any temptation for a school to put forward results which are significantly better than it achieved historically.
 
Duke of Marmalade said:
This is missing the whole point about "standardisation", but you are not alone; the whole Elite Conspiracy brigade latched on to this interpretation in the UK.
Standardisation happens every year. It is to ensure that the marks reflect a similar standard year on year - alignment with historic results is key. It has nothing to do with ensuring societal fairness, that is society's problem.
So, for example, let's say that the papers are all marked and it turns out that maths was eazy peazy this year - twice as many H1s as usual. We obviously need to adjust these bare marks. I presume that normally a fairly simple approach is taken like lop 5 off everybody's marks i.e. a uniform national adjustment.
But if it had been announced that this is how standardisation would work this year, the temptation to put your own school's best foot forward would have been intolerable. The standardisation could not work as a uniform national adjustment. An adjustment to school historic would remove any temptation for a school to put forward results which are significantly better than it achieved historically.
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The alternative is for CAO points requirements to vary more each year. They either standardise the results and have roughly the same points requirements per course or they don't standardise them and see the points requirements vary more.
It's supply and demand. If there's 10 people looking to buy 5 apples and 5 of them have more money than the other 5 the price of the applies will be determined by how much money each person has but the same 5 will end up with the apples. Same with college courses.

The problem with the Leaving Cert is that someone with top marks in Maths, Engineering, History and German but no empathy can get in to medicine.
 
Purple said:
The alternative is for CAO points requirements to vary more each year. They either standardise the results and have roughly the same points requirements per course or they don't standardise them and see the points requirements vary more.
It's supply and demand. If there's 10 people looking to buy 5 apples and 5 of them have more money than the other 5 the price of the applies will be determined by how much money each person has but the same 5 will end up with the apples. Same with college courses.

The problem with the Leaving Cert is that someone with top marks in Maths, Engineering, History and German but no empathy can get in to medicine.
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Problem with that is the 20,000 deferred applicants. So there would be mixed standards applying to the same supply/demand situation. Also standardisation is desirable in a more general setting like in recruitment selection amongst applicants with a wide range of Leaving Cert vintage.
 
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Duke of Marmalade said:
Problem with that is the 20,000 deferred applicants. So there would be mixed standards applying to the same supply/demand situation. Also. standardisation is desirable in more general setting like in recruitment selection amongst applicants with a wide range of Leaving Cert vintage.
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I agree but what's the alternative. The best they can do is the best application possible of a blunt instrument; when there is no scalpel available then the have to operate with a kitchen knife.
 
Ah that place! Near the Mosque. I used to work down the road. (Wasn’t there some controversy about a decade ago?)

The big mistake here was not sitting the LC over the summer. End of!
That set a mess in motion. And there have been and will be numerous setbacks as a result.

Joe McHugh had set a date of 29th July, was it? But he saw what other countries, e.g. England, were doing and decided he’d cover himself and abandoned the summer exam. I cannot recall how far in advance of the July date he flinched, but flinch he did.
The Dept of Education should have stayed the course. The Covid cases were very low at that time.
The more I think about it though, the more incompetence I see in McHugh.
If the exams ran smoothly in July/August it’d look great for him. If not, the current minister would take the flack.

Rant over!

Regarding St Killians, won’t there be an opportunity to sit the LC in November?

Bottom line though, there’s a pandemic, it’s a once-in-a-century crisis, build a bridge, get over it.
Fair? No. Blunt? Yes. That’s just the way it is.
 
Drakon said:
Bottom line though, there’s a pandemic, it’s a once-in-a-century crisis, build a bridge, get over it.
Fair? No. Blunt? Yes. That’s just the way it is.
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Unfortunately politics has got involved with lefties wallowing in their elite conspiracy theories. I thought we were less susceptible to that looney constituency than the UK, but we decided to take no chances.

I think Kilians and possibly the grind schools will have a strong argument that they have been unfairly treated and that this should have been spotted before publication. I have suggested in another thread a much more correct standardisation process which would address these anomalies without significantly affecting the rest of schools. But will they have the political courage to do what's right?
 
Peanuts20 said:
It would be very interesting to see a list of the schools who had grades downgraded. I wonder how many of them were private schools and did some teachers dole out H1's and 2s because it was easier to avoid grief from parents because they could "blame the department"?
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I wrote this in another thread the other day:
"According to the IT Education correspondent on the radio this morning, the Private schools grade inflation was "off the Richter scale"!
And because those submitted grades got pulled back by the Dept, Solicitors are experiencing a major increase in calls since yesterday from both parents and the private schools"
 
Delboy said:
I wrote this in another thread the other day:
"According to the IT Education correspondent on the radio this morning, the Private schools grade inflation was "off the Richter scale"!
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I would like to know the basis for that comment. If it means the Teachers Assessments in these schools were way ahead of their historic achievement (compared to other schools) then they deserve everything that is coming to them.
But I don't see how the IT correspondent could be privy to that information as, after all, the schools' historic results were ignored in the process.
More likely it is a reference to a far greater number of downgrades and indeed the said schools are complaining that is what happened. But according to them that is because they were standardised so as to be no better or no worse than the average school in developing students from Junior Cert to Leaving Cert, in other words paying their fees was a waste of space.
Clearly historically this is not the case as otherwise they would not have survived commercially.
 
Purple said:
It's also some saving by the State; all those kids not consuming resources in public schools. Private schools, much like private healthcare, subsidises the public system, so lets stick to the substance of the issue and avoid any inverted snobbery.
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Do they not still get teacher salary paid for by the state?
 
gianni said:
Do they not still get teacher salary paid for by the state?
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emmDee answered that. I'll add that they also get fewer teachers paid as in the pupil teacher ratio is higher in private schools so they have to hire and pay for additional teachers out of the fees they recieve.
 
Purple said:
It's also some saving by the State; all those kids not consuming resources in public schools. Private schools, much like private healthcare, subsidises the public system, so lets stick to the substance of the issue and avoid any inverted snobbery.
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Ah, that old private school argument nugget....we're saving the Public system from being over whelmed :rolleyes:
 
Purple said:
emmDee answered that. I'll add that they also get fewer teachers paid as in the pupil teacher ratio is higher in private schools so they have to hire and pay for additional teachers out of the fees they recieve.
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I've been surprised at class numbers in the private schools I'm aware of (through in-laws and neighbours sending their kids there). The numbers seem to be close to 30 per class in those schools
 
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