Is it this year’s Scottish Exam Results that Have No Validity, or just the System Itself?

Now that the Scottish exam results have reverted back to those based on teacher predictions, students have done MUCH better than previous years, around 10-12% improvement, or over a grade compared to previous years.

To put this in a chart – here’s what it looks like: The middle column is what the results were last year, the last column is what they now are, with the government’s U turn.

2016-19 Ave2020 SQA moderated2020 teacher predictions
national 578.681.188.6
higher76.578.988.8
advanced higer80.484.992.8

To display this graphically – we’ve leapt from blue to yellow, while even with moderation (red) that kind of increase is just about feasible, even if unlikely.

It is highly unlikely that this year’s students on average would have achieved 10-12 % points higher than the previous year’s students, had they sat their exams, had there been no disruption.

Had they sat the exams, they would have been moderated by the exam boards so that the pass rate and A* rate was broadly in line with previous years, and then the spread of results would have probably also been broadly similar.

What’s happened instead this year is that we now have results based on teacher predictions, rather than ‘pure moderation’ by the exam boards, which broadly keeps things in line year on year.

In case you don’t know, what the exam moderating authorities do with actual exam results, is they look at the raw marks, and then tweak the fail/ pass and A* raw mark boundaries so that there’s a similar percentage passing and achieving high grades every year, but now they’ve had that power stripped from them.

Now the grades are based purely on teacher predictions and teachers always over-predict, it doesn’t take much explaining to figure out why – because of the competitive education system, and it’s one of the few rules you can bend as a teacher, so nearly every teacher does it, because they know every other teacher does it!

TBH I don’t think either system is that valid. You’ve seen the results year on year, it’s highly unlikely that there’s going to be a gradual trend upwards, without there ever being a single ‘spike year’ – but that’s what you get when exam moderating authorities ‘control’ the grades every year – a gradual increase gives the impression of credibility.

Teacher predictions might well have more credibility, because they actually know the students, but there is a problem of reliability when, for just one year, this year, 2020, you allow exam results to be determined by teachers, and then you get a massive spike compared to previous years.

Students who sat exams in 2017 to 2019 should be complaining

Students from the last three years are the one’s who are being harmed by this unjust political interference – not only do they now have a worse track record of exam results compared to this year’s students, these are the students who are now graduating into a world of contracted employment, so they’re going to have ‘worse’ results, and a longer period of unemployment on their CVs.

This year’s students by contrast, if they’re going on to 2-5 years of FE/ HE, the chances are the economy will be recovering by the time they graduate, so they’ll have a better education record and less of a track history of unemployment.

Glasgow Live: Exam Results Glasgow 2020

The Guardian

The BBC

A-Level Sociology Teaching Resources: Education Policies and Education Planning:

The Latest June 2020 additions to the Sociology Teaching Resource Subscription

I’ve just released some more extensive lesson plans, workbooks and Power Points for sale as part of my sociology teaching resources subscription package, available for only £9.99 a month!

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is sociology-teaching-resources-724x1024.png

This teaching resource bundle contains work books and Power Points covering eight lessons on the Perspectives on the Sociology of Education

Resources in June’s bundle include

  1. Education Policies: Historical Context, 1944 and 1965
  2. The 1988 Education Act
  3. New Labour’s Policies
  4. The Coalition and New Right policies
  5. Exploring selection and the priviatisation of education
  6. Should we abolish independent schools debate
  7. Globalisation and education
  8. Vocational education

Resources in the bundle include:

  • One workbook on Education policies, including privatisation, selection and globalisation.
  • Four Power Points covering most of the above lessons (not for riots or the corporate crime research lesson.
  • Eight lesson plans covering all of the above lessons.
  • Various supplementary hand-outs for some of the above lessons as necessary.

Education Planning Material

In addition to the above I also include all the education planning material for all 24 lessons in the education section (April, May and June’s updates for 2020). This includes:

  • A full student scheme of work with details of concepts, research studies, assessment Qs and links to blog posts
  • An overview scheme of work
  • All lesson plans

Fully modifiable resources

Every teacher likes to make resources their own by adding some things in and cutting other things out – and you can do this with both the work pack and the PowerPoints because I’m selling them in Word and PPT, rather than as PDFs, so you can modify them!

NB – I have had to remove most the pictures I use personally, for copyright reasons, but I’m sure you can find your own to fit in. It’s obvious where I’ve taken them out!

More resources to come…

I’m making resources available every month as part of this teacher resource subscription package. The schedule of release of resources is as below:

  • July – September 2020 – Families and Households Resources
  • October – December 2020 – Research Methods, including methods applied to education 
  • January – April 2021 – Global Development 
  • May – August 2021 – Crime and Deviance 
  • September – October 2021 – Theory and Methods 
  • November 2021 – January 2022 – Revision Material
  • February 2022 – Intro material. 

Please note this is a change to the original schedule of release, which I’ve changed due to the recent exam cancellations!

A-level sociology of education: course summary, schemes of work and lesson plans

I’ve been consolidating my A-level sociology planning recently, and I’ve concluded it’s useful to have several different versions of module summaries and schemes of work, as below:

  • A mind map overview/ summary
  • A Power Point overview/ summary
  • A brief scheme of work
  • A long scheme of work
  • Detailed individual lesson plans.

All of these are based on the AQA’s specification, for the education topic.

Mind map overview of education

This is mind map number 1, the Borg equivalent of Unimatrix Zero. There are many other mind maps which branch off it – each colour thread itself becomes the central focus for more mind maps!

Power Point overview of education

Should need no explanation, about as brief as it can get.

Brief education Scheme of Work

A very brief version to be displayed in classrooms, an at a glance’ version so students can see where they are in the course and what’s coming next.

Long education Scheme of Work

This is a grid consisting of sub-topics, concepts, research studies, assessment and resources for each sup-topic. This more in-depth version follows the AQA specification rigidly and should include everything students need to know.

NB this is slightly different to the overview and lesson plans as some ‘lessons’ go beyond the specification or fuse different areas of it together.

Linear versions of all of the above.

Some students may prefer the linear versions of the above, which can be quite useful if used as check lists.

Detailed Lesson Plans  

These are really for teachers only, and contain detailed minute by minute lesson plans with aims and objectives, resources and extension ideas.

New Resource: Sociology of Education teaching bundle.

All of the above are available as part of my ‘sociology of education teaching bundle’. One downloadable bundle including fully modifiable teaching resources in Microsoft Word and PowerPoint. Only £49.99, or as part of a monthly subscription package for £9.99 a month!

The bundle includes:

  • A detailed scheme of work covering the entire AQA specification for the Education topic 
  • 24 detailed lesson plans (topics below)
  • Six student work packs on Perspectives, class, gender, ethnicity and education policies. 
  • PowerPoints to accompany most lessons. 
  • Activities such as role play games, sentence sorts, gap fills. 

NB I have had to remove most of the pictures from these materials for copyright reasons, but the idea is that you can always add these in yourself to beautify them!

Lessons covered:

  1. An introduction to the sociology of education  
  2. The Functionalist perspective on education
  3. The Marxist perspective on education
  4. Neo-Marxism/ Paul Willis’ Learning to Labour
  5. The Neoliberal and New Right perspective on education
  6. The Postmodern view of education
  7. Consolidation Education Assessment Lesson – focussing on exam technique for the different types of question
  8. Exploring education, surveillance and social control.
  9. Social class and education: introduction and the role of material deprivation
  10. Social class and education: cultural deprivation and cultural capital
  11. Social class and education: the role of in school factors
  12. Ethnicity and education: introduction, material deprivation and cultural factors
  13. Ethnicity and education: the role of in-school factors
  14. Ethnicity and education: are schools institutionally racist?
  15. Gender and education: explaining gender differences in educational achievement
  16. Gender and education: gender identity in schools, subject choice and the Radical Feminist Perspective
  17. Education Policies: Historical Context, 1944 and 1965
  18. The 1988 Education Act
  19. New Labour’s Policies
  20. The Coalition and New Right policies
  21. Exploring selection and the priviatisation of education
  22. Should we abolish independent schools debate
  23. Globalisation and education
  24. Vocational education

Exam Advice from the AQA’s 2018 Examiner Report – Paper 3 (Crime and Deviance with Theory and Methods)

Below I summarise the 2018 AQA’s examiner report for crime and deviance with theory and methods and add in the questions, which aren’t in the report. You can get both the report and the question paper here!

General Advice 

  • Most students seem to have managed their time appropriately, with few signs that they were unable to complete the paper.
  • Some students showed detailed sociological knowledge and sophisticated understanding that they applied successfully to the set questions, and in general students seemed reasonably well versed in relevant material.
  • However, fewer found success in evaluating the issues raised by the questions.

Question 1

Outline Two ways in which gender may influence the risk of being a victim of crime

  • Most students successfully identified two ways in which gender may influence being a victim of crime.
  • Most answers referred to the vulnerability of women or the influence of patriarchy; many linked this with domestic abuse or sexual crimes.
  • References to male victims usually referred to socialisation and/or to violence related to masculinity, leading to men becoming victims of the violence of other men when they became gang members or spent time in the wrong places.
  • The main reason for failing to score marks was to write about committing crime rather than about being a victim.
  • Some gained partial reward for identifying a particular type of crime of which men or women are likely to be victims but without going on to elaborate on this.

Question 2

Outline three criticisms of the labelling theory of crime and deviance

  • The most frequently cited criticism was that labelling theory is deterministic; this was usually explained correctly.
  • Other frequently cited criticisms included the theory’s failure to explain primary deviance, its romanticised view of deviants or its neglect of structural factors.
  • A significant minority of answers outlined criticisms of the labelling process (for example that labelling is discriminatory or unfair), rather than of the theory.
  • Some students tended to recycle the same criticism in different guises.
  • A few wrote excessively long answers to this question.

Question 3

Sociology examiner report 2018.png

Applying material from Item A, analyse two reasons for social class differences in official crime statistics

  • Most students were able to draw on one or two appropriate points from the Item.
  • More effective answers then developed these points appropriately by employing relevant sociological concepts and studies.
  • For example, ‘agencies of the criminal justice system, such as the police’ was linked to how the police use typifications in activities such as stop and search, how justice may be negotiated etc.
  • ‘some individuals may also have greater… pressure to offend’ was applied to utilitarian crime via relative deprivation or blocked opportunities faced by the working class.
  • In less effective answers, the connection between the potential point from the Item and the material presented was less clearly made.
  • In a minority of cases, students simply offered various sociological explanations of class differences in the statistics but with no application of material from the Item.

Question 4

Applying material from Item B and your knowledge, evaluate sociological contributions to our understanding of the relationship between crime and the media (30)

Screenshot 2019-06-09 at 08.29.08.png

Good answers included…

  • the social construction of crime news;
  • media representations of crime,
  • criminals and victims; t
  • he role of the media in creating crime (for example, relative deprivation, moral panics and the deviance amplification spiral)
  • the role of new media in contributing both to crime and to its policing.
  • Good answers also had evaluation which was explicit and well linked to the specific issues raised in the answer.

Some answers took a ‘perspectives’ approach, including Marxist, functionalist, feminist or other views. Unfortunately, this approach led many to focus on tangential material, with detailed accounts of the general sociological perspectives that quickly lost sight of the media, crime, or both. However, there were a few very good answers of this type that did succeed in applying such perspectives to the set question.

Question 5

Outline and explain two disadvantages of using laboratory experiments in sociological research (10)

  • Most students could offer two disadvantages of laboratory experiments.
  • Most often these included the artificiality of the setting (often conflated with the Hawthorne effect)
  • other disadvantages included difficulties in identifying and controlling variables, a lack of representativeness or ethical problems.
  • However, many answers failed to explain or develop these points successfully; some simply described an example of an experiment that experienced such problems. Some students did not know the difference between reliability and validity.
  • A minority of students included evaluation, for which no marks were available on this question.

Question 6

Applying material from Item C and your knowledge, evaluate the advantages of using  structured interviews in sociological research [ 20 marks]

Screenshot 2019-06-09 at 08.30.17.png

  • This question proved to be quite challenging for some students.
  • Most were able to put together a list of positivist characteristics as advantages, such as objectivity, reliability, quantification and generalisability.
  • However, most could not evaluate these advantages.
  • Instead a typical response, having provided a paragraph or two on the advantages, gave a list of disadvantages, or a list of reasons why interpretivist sociologists would not like the method.
  • The result was an essay of two halves with little to link them into a coherent answer to the set question.

 

Summary of the 2018 A-level sociology examiner report for beliefs in society, paper 2

Below I’ve reformatted the examiners report for the 2018 A-level sociology exam, paper 2 (families and households section) into bullet points and included the exam questions.

This is really just designed to make this more user friendly!

This advice is taken straight from the AQA’s examiner report on the sociology A-level exam 2018.

Beliefs in society 2018 Questions and examiner commentary 

Question 13

Outline and explain two ways in which globalisation may affect religious beliefs and practices (10)

  • Most students able to explain two ways in which globalisation may have affected religious beliefs and practices.
  • Popular answers included pluralism and greater choice, deterritorialisation and the growth of fundamentalism.
  • Some weaker answers described recent changes in beliefs or practices without making the role of globalisation clear.

Question 14

Beliefs-10-mark-question.png

Applying material from Item I, analyse two reasons why minority ethnic groups in the United Kingdom are often more religious than the majority of the population (10)

  • This question was generally answered well.
  • Popular answers included cultural defence and cultural transition (although the difference between these two concepts was not always clear), and the idea that migrants are simply more likely to be religious when placed in a secular society.
  • This question referred specifically to the United Kingdom and so answers about other countries could not be credited.

Question 15

Beliefs-20-mark-essay.png

Applying material from Item J and your knowledge, evaluate the view that an increase in spirituality in the United Kingdom has compensated for the decline of organised religion (20)

  • Answers here showed a good range of knowledge.
  • Most students took cues from the item and discussed a range of developments, such as variations of secularisation, growth of science and rationality and the growth of New Age activities.
  • There was pleasing evidence of knowledge of contemporary postmodern approaches but only the best answers explicitly addressed spirituality or considered that there might be a difference between the spiritual and the religious.

 

Exam advice from the AQA’s Examiner Reports from 2018

The AQA produces an examiner report after every exam, and it’s very good advice to look at these reports to see common mistakes students made last year, so you can avoid making the same mistakes this year!

AQA sociology examiner report 2018.png

Below I’ve selected FIVE choice pieces of advice based on the two most common errors from the 2018 Education with Theory and Methods paper.

  1. For the short answer questions, make sure you get your ID and Development the right way round – for example, last year’s 4 mark question was on ‘two reasons why marketisation policies may create social class differences in educational achievement’ – many students started with a policy rather than a reason, they should have started with a reason and then illustrated with a policy.
  2. The six marker was ‘outline three reasons for gender differences in educational achievement – the report says that many students did not get a second mark because they failed to be specific enough in their application to gender or educational achievement, so be specific!
  3. For question 5 – the methods in context question – the best answers used the hooks in the item, so use the item!
  4. At the other end of the paper – the final 10 mark theory and methods and question, a lot of students seemed to run out time to answer this, so make sure you get your timing right. Remember that it’s almost certainly going to be easier to get 4/10 for a 10 mark question than to go from 12/20 to 16/20 on a methods in context question – the bar’s lower after all!
  5. Focussing on the final 10 marker – if you get another ‘criticise a theory’ type question’ then the best answers simply used other perspectives to develop their criticisms.

It seems that the 10 marker with item and 30 mark essay question were OK!

Sources 

All information taken from the AQA’s 7192/1 examiner report.

You can read the full report here.

You can view the 2018 paper here.

A level sociology exam dates 2019!

Just a reminder of the upcoming exam dates for the three A-level sociology exams!

  • 7192/1 Education with theory and methods 2h 22 May 2019 am
  • 7192/2 Topics in Sociology 2h 04 June 2019 pm
  • 7192/3 Crime and deviance with theory and methods 2h 12 June 2019 am

Do please make sure to check the dates for yourself!

Source – cut and paste directly from the AQA’s confirmed exam timetable!

Revision Webinars

I’m offering three revision webinars on the Sundays before each of the above exams.

For anyone signing up in the next week (before May 10th, I’ll also throw in access to eight pre-recorded revision Webinars covering the entire A-level sociology syllabus, available at this blog post (password protected: if you sign up for the three Webinars, I’ll email you the password!). NB six are currently available, 2 to be uploaded next week! 

Countdown to the first exam!

Just in case you weren’t panicked enough already…

State crime and green crime – possible short answer exam questions

State crime and green crime are two of the most difficult topics within Crime and Deviance for students, below are two possible short answer questions (with answers) which could come up on A-level sociology paper 3

Outline two sociological explanations of state crime (4)

  • A modernization theory perspective would argue that it is only really ‘failed states’ which commit state crimes. This mainly happens in poorer countries where people see gaining government power as a means to siphoning off as much money for themselves as possible, hence the reason why there are higher levels of fraud and corruption in developing countries.
  • A dependency/ Marxist perspective would argue that ‘war crimes’ such as those by the British government/ army in Iraq in 2003 happen because nation states use violence on behalf of TNCS (e.g. oil companies) to secure valuable resources for them in far-away places.

Outline two reasons why people who commit ‘green crimes’ often do not get punished (4)


  • The first reason is that what green criminologists regard as ‘crimes against the environment’ are not regarded as illegal by the traditional legal system’ – for example, driving a large car, chopping down trees, even producing nuclear waste are all ‘legal’ under UK law, but are regarded as ‘crimes against the environment’ by more deep-ecological green criminologists.
  • The second reason is that companies may engage in law evasion to avoid laws which protect the environment in developed countries…. They may simply take their toxic waste, which is illegal to dump in the UK, to a country like Ghana and dump it there, where it is legal.

I’ll be covering both state and green crime as part of my upcoming ‘last minute sociology webinar series’….

 

For more information on Revision Webinars, please click the above gif, or check out this blog post.

A Level Sociology Revision Webinars

I will be running three A-level sociology revision webinars to cover both the core content and exam technique for the three A-level sociology exam papers: Education with Theory and Methods (paper 7192/1), Topics, focussing on the families and beliefs options (paper 7192/2), and Crime and Deviance with Theory and Methods (7192/3).

EDIT (June 17th 2019) – These have now ended! 

NB – I will also throw in access to 6 hours of recorded Webinars covering exam technique for the three exam papers!

The webinars are 90 minutes long and scheduled for the following dates, on the Sundays before the relevant exams:

  1. 11.00 A.M. Sunday 19th May – Education with Theory and Method
  2. 11.00 A.M. Sunday 2nd June – Families and Belief
  3. 11.00 A.M. Sunday 9th June – Crime and Deviance with Theory and Methods

All of these webinars will last 90 minutes during which I will provide a (necessarily) brief overview of the content within each topic, and a discussion of several specific exam practice questions. The main focus will be on exam technique.

Students will be able to ask questions during the Webinar, via text, and there will also be time for students to ask questions at the end.

Attendees will be able to download support materials in advance of the webinars, ask questions during the seminars via ‘chat’, and students will also be able to review the seminar afterwards as they will be recorded and stored on the site. Recordings will be available until the 16th of June (several days after the final A-level sociology exam).

Downloadable resources

The one off £29.99 registration fee not only gives you access to all of the Webinars scheduled below, the price also includes downloadable hand-outs with exemplar question and answers for all of the question types on the three exam papers. The documents included in this bundle include:

  • Exemplars of 4,6,10 and 30 mark essay questions for Education.
  • A hand-out on how to answer methods in context questions, with examples.
  • Exemplars of the two types of 10 mark questions and 20 mark essay questions for families and beliefs
  • Exemplars of 4,6,10 and 30 mark essay questions for Crime and Deviance.
  • Exemplars of 10 mark research methods questions
  • Exemplars of 20 mark ‘theory and methods’ questions.

NB – if you are already enrolled on my more extensive 12 week revision webinar series, you don’t need to sign up for this, we cover everything in these three webinars in the 12 webinar series, just in more detail.

For further details of my resources and work please see my blog – revisesociology.com

NB – I will also throw in access to 6 hours of recorded Webinars covering exam technique for the three exam papers!