Old letter and new number GCSEs

[lljkk]

DD was told today that the new grade 7 will correspond to the current/ old A* (in science, anyway).

Now I know someone will say the 2 exams are different, apples and pears, but as much as you can find rough equivalents, is that about right? Future 7 = today's A*?

[TheSecondOfHerName]

No, that doesn't sound right. Grade 9 and the very top portion of grade 8 are supposed to be equivalent to the current A*.

[Kez100]

Yeah, it goes up to 9.

[IguanaTail]

It goes up to 9, and while there is no direct correlation between the two, the point is to stretch them more and so the 9 is the equivalent of higher than an A*.

Here is what Ofqual have produced:

[bigTillyMint]

I have heard/read the same as Iguana - Grade 9 is so they can separate out the highest achieving A's from the rest of the A's. Because that is what this government wants.

I'm not sure how helpful it will be for those scraping C's.

[Sparklingbrook]

I reckon they have only had 9 as the top so they can add a 10, and an 11 etc.......

[titchy]

I agree sparkling.....

OP - yes a 7 will be equivalent to a low/mid A in the current grading system.

[Sparklingbrook]

Give it two years and there will be threads saying 'DS got a 13 is that good'?

Why could '1' not be the top grade?

[Lurkedforever1]

I've heard same as iguana. I think it's good, currently there is too big a gap between what's required for gcse top grade and a-level top grade.

[lifesalongsong]

I'm pretty sure that the reason that 1 isn't top is that you wouldn't then be add anything if you wanted to split out those with even higher marks - you couldn't have a grade of 1/2 or 1/4 but you can keep on adding as much as you like if you make 1 the lowest.

It makes sense to me.

I'm not worried about the numbers, once we have some sittings with them it will all sort itself out.

There will always be show off threads from people humble bragging about their childs results whatever the grading system is.

[UhtredOfBebbanburg]

Sparkling - there are still - just! - people in employment who had O levels that were scored rather than graded. In those days the scores had 1 as the highest (I am told but do not necessarily believe, that 1-2 was equivalent to an A, 2-3 equivalent to a B and so on). So these new numbers need to be different. Also, it allows for future grade inflation/hikes in standards because you can add numbers on. I imagine that when the numbers get added to, in say 5 years, our DCs will note on their CVs that their GCSEs were scored out of 9. The next lot will note scored out of whatever, once their framework has been superseded, and so on.

[Sparklingbrook]

but you can keep on adding as much as you like if you make 1 the lowest.

But why does anything need adding?

And YY to the bragging threads it's always been the same.

[roamer2]

As teachers get used to the tests they can teach them better so grades tend to inflate over time. So they expect they will need to add numbers in future

[Sparklingbrook]

Hopefully I can get DS2 through the GCSEs before they start tinkering again.

[Dexterwasright]

Only the top 3% of papers sat will be a 9. The idea is it will help universities identify the really high flyers. What will be interesting is whether it will cause problems with admissions from private schools who are likely to stick with IGCSE. Their A will only identify the applicant as being in the top7/8.

[lifesalongsong]

That's interesting about private schools and IGCSEs, the private schools in my area use AQA/Edexcel the same as most of the state schools.

Which ones use IGSCEs?

Is it only the 9 grade that will have a fixed percentage, that doesn't seem like the best way to do it. Will it still work with a UMS type system?

[senua]

Sparkling - there are still - just! - people in employment who had O levels that were scored rather than graded.

If only! Due to changes in the retirement age, me and my Grade 2 Maths have still got about 10 years of employment to go.
Don't forget that we were norm-referenced.

[UhtredOfBebbanburg]

Senua grades were norm referenced too when they came in. Norm referencing was only abandoned in about 1986.

[Racundra]

Lifesalong, I thought it was 10% across 8 and 9, (old A*) but that might be A2.

[noblegiraffe]

Grade 5 will be seen as a good pass and will be roughly equivalent to the top half of grade C's under the current system (so children who got a low C in the current system might not be deemed to get a good pass under the new system).

Grade 5 is supposed to be set at a standard similar to that of 16 year olds performing highly internationally. God knows what that means in reality. What will probably happen is that because grade 4 boundaries will be set by the percentage of students who previously got C and above, and grade 7 boundaries will be set by the percentage of students who got A and above, grade boundaries for 5 and 6 will just be shoved at roughly equal intervals between 4 and 7.

[Stickerrocks]

We've been told that a chunk of material from the current AS syllabus will drop into the new top level GCSE paper, so that the bright students will be really stretched. Only the top 2-3% can expect to get a grade 9 and a lot of pupils sitting the paper will struggle to answer every question.

I was in the last year of O levels and you had to be exceptionally bright to get a majority of A grades. You could tell the age of parents at our recent curriculum evening, because the O'level generation smiled & nodded when we were told that coursework was largely being abandoned whilst the gcse generation looked as though exam based assessment was a form of child abuse!

[IguanaTail]

I think basing the entire assessment of 2 years on a single exam in an afternoon in June is madness. I think I would like half to be done in an exam at the end of y10 as well.

[MrsSchadenfreude]

Iguana - that's how it worked for O and A levels back in the day. None of this coursework nonsense, apart from subjects like art!

[Ricardian]

The idea is it will help universities identify the really high flyers.

Which is a solution in search of a problem. Detailed GCSE results are only used for admission in a tiny minority of cases, and on a list of "admission things which are most likely to cause you long-term problems over access" demanding perfectly groomed lows of top grades is pretty much the number one item. Gove and Cummings, neither of whom have either worked in a university or have any science and maths background, thought they were experts on how universities do admission to STEM courses.

There's some evidence that getting broadly decent GCSE results is an indicator of doing broadly well in higher education, although evidence that not having a GCSEs of that standard is a predictor of doing badly is notable by its absence. There's no evidence at all that a row of As and a row of A*s lead to different outcomes, and plenty of anecdote at least that says the opposite.

Here's a thought experiment. Two universities with similar admission resources are heavily over-subscribed for a course that has 50 places. One decides to take a point-scoring approach to GCSE and takes only the top 300 forward into the rest of the admissions process. The other takes a relatively low floor standard (say, 8 at B or better) and then randomly chooses 300 to take forward into the rest of the admissions process. Who ends up with the better students? The answer is "no-one knows".

[SheGotAllDaMoves]

I work for a university which places importance on GCSE results.

However, I don't think we currently struggle to find high achievers as we also routinely receive raw scores in AS and set pre tests and ask for essays and interview...

I suppose when AS are properly decoupled, GCSE may take on more importance in many more universities? Otherwise they will be making offers based purely on predictions (a problem may arise where some students still take the de coupled AS so have something concrete to offer at application stage. Not fair really, as this is a school not an applicatnt choice).

The trouble seems to be, that in order to get an 8/9 a student will need to have covered certain material. Material that some schools will see no advantage in covering (as most students will not benefit from covering it).
And of course many private schools will stick with IGCSE ad to hell with it.