Need help understanding new gcse grading.(year9)

[mint123]

Hi all,

Just got my son's end of the year school report. He is in year 9 going to year 10. Our school uses the 1-9 grading system. At the last parents evening I was told that he is one of those students who expected to get As. His report doesn't seem too good for me tho. It would be very helpfull if someone could translate his grades into the old grades such as 6a, 7c... what are the expected levels at the end of year 9 using the new grading?

His levels are:
Core assesment

English 4+
Mathematics 3+
Science 4-


Foundation assessments

English 4+
Mathematics 3+
Scince 3+
History 5-

[mint123]

Help with new grading

[mint123]

Thank you both for explaining. I got a bit confused as at the last parents evening one of the teacher said the students are expected to maintain their level,so if they are working at level 5+ they should be at that level at the end of year 11.

[mint123]

Tiggytape do you by any chance know what the new grades are equal to comparing them to the old ones? I didn't mean gcse grades, I mean those levels that they receive in primary school. For example my son's present grade in English is a 4+ is that about a level 7c?

[mimbleandlittlemy]

Helpful diagram:

www.cgpbooks.co.uk/gcse_grades_9_1_explained

[mint123]

Thanks tiggytape. The English grading system was anyway new to me,when I finilly managed to understand it,it changed to the new one. What concerns me and makes me confused is supposedly they are to keep their whatever level they are at until year 11. So I was told if he is at level 4 in year 9 he should maintain that level as level 4 in year 10 is more harder therefore if he is able to keep it he is making progress. On the other hand his form teacher said his levels are really good anf he isaid most likely be able to archive As and Bs.

[mint123]

Sorry for the missspelling.. archive= achieve

[mint123]

It would be so much easier if the schools would give out a guideline of the expected grade that a child should achieve in each year group. It seems like lots of people are having trouble understanding this new grading system(even the old one).
I don't think is fair on those children that have to take the new gcses without really giving them an idea what is expected of them. Seems like even the teachers have no idea of the expectations. Why they didn't start to introduce the new system from year 7 instead of dropping the present year 9-10 student "into deep water"? In what way is it going to be harder I wonder,is the course work more harder or the grading system is more stricter? If it's the course work then again why not start from year 7 so they can get them ready by year 11?

[noblegiraffe]

What this report means is that the teachers have been asked to make something up. There is absolutely no way that a maths teacher would be able to say with any degree of confidence that your DS is working at a grade 3, let alone a 3+ (way to give you an illusion of accuracy with the plus, it's total nonsense).

My Y10s have just sat a new GCSE style set of papers where a private company are collating the results over a few hundred schools. They are then going to attempt to put together some grade boundaries so that we can have some idea what sort of grade our Y10 students are currently achieving. I've also seem some teachers on Twitter trying to pool their results for a specimen paper to try to do similar. Given that we don't know how Y10s who have sat a full set of papers are performing, the idea that your Y9 can be graded is ridiculous.

We won't have any real idea of how students will perform until this first cohort go through the exams. However, if I was asked to give a grade to a Y9 student who was expected to get an A at GCSE, I would be giving them higher than a 3, probably more like a 5. But that would be just me making something up.

That's also for maths, where students will be taking the exams next year and we have already been teaching the course for over a year. Subjects like History won't have even started teaching the new GCSE yet!

[Everytimeref]

Have to agree with noblegiraffa. No can tell you what the levels mean because no one knows. It pure quess work.

[Everytimeref]

Sorry should read noblegiraffe
phone fail!

[Feistymum1]

Hi thoughts appreciated please. My daughter goes to private school and is a B/C/A level student. She is sitting her GCSEs next year and I am surprised to have just been asked if she can sit the foundation level science instead of higher tier. It's completely out of the blue- she didn't do brilliantly in her end of year exams. I was wondering if schools have been told they have to do a few foundation level exams and she is an easy pick. Thanks, Fuming mum.

[noblegiraffe]

I responded on the other thread you posted on, Feisty

[Feistymum1]

Thank you. X