I have much sympathy on the exam front.
The remoderated grades for A levels (39.1% downgraded, 2.1% upgraded) still resulted in a 2.4% increase in proportion of grades A* to C. Instead of professionally coming up with an accurate set of realistic predictions, teachers came up with a set of predictions that would mean the most immense rise in grades imaginable, and would have rendered a '2020' grade worth less than other years. That in itself is a)partially understandable, given both pressure on teachers and schools to achieve good results, and an altruistic/optimistic outlook...and b)as precise A Level grades are fairly meaningless for future career other than in terms of gaining university entrance offers, not a huge hill of beans. However, I've had discussions with former senior teachers extolling and defending the professionalism of their departments and how a grade boundary would be evidenced then get as far as the statistics and effectively say 'Oh.'
The universities will have done like airlines, made offers (sell seats) based on a certain no-show rate, calculated to a realistic proportion of exam success. Therefore, if statistically every kid gets an A-Level grade hiked, they are going to be oversubscribed. Again, unlikely to be crippling in most circumstances, but potentially slightly problematic for some very popular courses.
What the Government / Ofqual haven't done is produce the graph available on wikipedia, showing proportions of students achieving the various grade boundaries to be pretty much identical for the last ten years, and then slap onto that what the moderated predicted results look like (increased) and then for clarity, what the UNmoderated predicted grades would look like.
Plus, the audience at A Level results time is always packed with loud people who have been dissapointed, and silent people who have been satisfied. The disappointed will normally talk about appeals etc, but typically at least have the fact that they sat an exam objectively to set against their sense of unfairness. Now, the disappointed have none of that, plus an inexplicable algorithm established to try to compensate for teacher's over-predictions to rail against.
The government COULD have said 'we;'ll let the grades stand, but just look at what teachers have predicted compared with what they normally achieve - tut, tut, can't be trusted to mark their own work, huh? INstead they aimed to repair the unrepairable, in the face of the every person who is disappointed inevitably feeling hard done by, and from teh algorithm anecdotal reports, some with good reason.
