A Levels 2022 debate

I’m sorry, but if you don’t ask for support then how do you expect to get support? The individual teachers might not even have known you were sitting the autumn exams

How can the teachers asses if they ain’t there 🤨

Plenty of people did it ... school was face-to-face at that time too ... the OP is making excuses.

excuse me pls dont say im making excuses when you dont know my whole story.

There were plenty of schools offering resits - any school can offer them

You could have sat GCSEs anyway for key subjects if you are really concerned. Grades were inflated not depressed.

Only Oxbridge care about your GCSEs...
And if you were oxbridge material your predicted grades will be good enough to get in.

Some subjects e.g. Economics might require grade 7 in Mathematics, but again, if you are competent enough in Maths to do a economics degree you should do it for A-Level and at the very least get a 7 at GCSE.

In general as long as you get above a 4 in English and Maths universities aren't bothered. The emphasis teachers place on GCSEs is way overblown so that you don't piss about and fail, they really aren't all that important.

No no your year is having top most priority comapred to us . Trust me! Last year we had none of this... we all thought final exams were gonna happen and this lockdown thing was just for 2/3 weeks but then it became serious and its safe to say we (yr11s and 13s) were forgotten about at the start of lockdown and had no notice about our education until a month before our results were supposed to come out. And we didnt even have a chance to prove oursleves ... And you year 10s last year were watching all of this happen and we were screaming that mocks do matter and stuff. So you had notice as in anything could happen so it's better to just keep working and revising. but some of you gcse students took that warning lightly and are complaining all over social media.

And you dont even know how many subjects ive been downgraded in. For example Im a A/B students in biology but i was given a C and even after CAGs i was still put with a C (ive gotten a C ONCE in the whole 2 years) and my biology teacher and i didnt have a great relationship so obvs impression you give the teachers played a part there. If you think that its still not what your teachers think of you then another example im a D student in physics i was never the top student in physics always getting Ds and occasional Cs and i had a great relationship with my physics teacher and i was certain i was gonna get a D on results day but she passed me ... SHE GAVE ME A C when 19/80 on mocks which is like an E. So thats a clear example right there.

There's no cohort that have had it better out the 2020&2021 cohort both have had it bad. Also teachers who massively over or under predicted grades should bow there heads in shame.

Wait Oxbridge cares about your GCSEs?? No way

Why didn't you sit them in November then?

Plenty of people did it ... school was face-to-face at that time too ... the OP is making excuses.

There's no cohort that have had it better out the 2020&2021 cohort both have had it bad. Also teachers who massively over or under predicted grades should bow there heads in shame.

Delete #72 and 73 please then I'll delete this one

Agreed. Both cohorts are facing difficulties atm (I’m a current yr12 btw) and on platforms like this we should be supporting each other not having petty arguments over “who’s had it worse”. I also agree about those teachers - while I know that nothing was a disaster w my GCSEs, being marked lower than I was working at all year in a few subjects was rly frustrating


Re autumn exams, I cba to find the comment which first brought this up, I don’t think it’s fair to be bashing students who couldn’t/decided against taking them. For some people it would feel like a massive disruption to the start of A levels and it’s expensive. Everyone’s situation is different - please show some empathy for those who have struggled as a result of how the exams were handled.

The autumn exams were not technically resits - did schools charge? We didn't for our own students

At my school, they told us very strongly not to do the autumn exams and didn't actually run them at all which was disappointing for some people who wanted to retake. I didn't actually want to sit the autumn exams so I wasn't directly impacted by that decision but I felt really bad for all the students that were.
In terms of the cost, I originally thought that the school had to pay (I thought that was one of the reasons my school was suddenly SO against the autumn exams) but then again I keep hearing stories of people having to pay and it all being really difficult to find a place to sit the exams so I think the whole thing was a bit of a mess unfortunately.

The one on one meetings was a suggestion made by the exam board OCR as a way of ensuring pupils feel they get a fair grade beforehand and avoids a avalanche of appeals from pupils. However this is certainly not definite at this stage and we won't know for certain what the decision will be until next week.

What i will say is that 2020 grades were still significantly inflated above previous years so if anything the people who were disadvantaged are the people who sat exams properly in non covid years. It is not clear at this stage whether 2021 grades will be inline with 2020 grades but the key difference is 2021 are still working through the lockdowns and are in and out of school whereas the 2020 finished nearly 3months early and stopped working. The way it has worked for the 2021 cohort is different people have been disproportionately affected whereas last year they all where in the same position. It is because of this that 2021 must have a different grading approach.

The school [if a state school] could NOT refuse to enter people so I wonder why these students/their parents did not insist? We didn't have many wanting a go [and none improved their grade actually] but I think some schools just gave excuses.

It's not a state school so I think that must be why. I agree that it was pretty much just an excuse from the school
I think maybe some students had second thoughts after the school told them not to take the exams and just decided to focus on their sixth form studies.