GCSE German coursework mark puzzle

yes for MFL pupils can complete as many essays as they like (all written in exam conditions), teachers hand in the best 2. The marks are not submitted to the board. This can produce the situation in that pupils think they have say a grade B for writing, but they don't. This is only the teachers estimate. There are actually very few marks between the grade boundaries so it isn't really surprising if the final result differs a little. However A* to C is a big discrepancy.

The choosing of essays is not the case for Geography though is it - this is a single piece of controlled assessment work based on a field trip. As I understood it, as for the three sciences the controlled assessment work is marked by the teachers and then a random selection only are moderated with the marks of the others going up or down as appropriate. (Might be wrong.)

Re language written work - I didn't realise the teacher could choose which to send in - DD studied four topics, did one piece of writing at end of year 9 and another in year 10 under school exam conditions ( both jsut for practice) and then two more essays written in GCSE exam conditions in November of year 11 and then in June, which were the ones they submitted.

Marks for these and the three sciences investigations were as marked by the teacher. Ditto history assessment. Just the Geography completely out.

Your DD's teacher has marked it as an A* but these marks are not passed on to the exam board. The teachers only mark the written work so that a. they can give advice for improvement and b. they know which 2 essays should be submitted.

It is unusual for there to be such a discrepancy between the 2 marks and if it seems to be the case for the whole cohort - ie the whole lot have been marked down then the school might ask for a re-mark. I'm a French teacher and we had a re-mark last year and won our appeal. In our case we are a department of 6 so our written work is looked at by 6 different people thus we felt confident in our marking against the exam criteria. However it may be that in your daughter's school the German dept is small in which case there might not have been much moderation....

Not the same but a similar situation here. DD2s Geography coursework marked internally and awarded 56/60 which was clear A*, but appeared on exam paper as a C.

Apparently all the Geography students coursework has been downgraded ( many quite substantially like DD2) so the teacher is appealing on behalf of whole year. Don't really understand what could have happened. It may be of course that the teachers at school completely misinterpreted the marking and assessment guidelines and so gave the wrong guidance to the pupils. Guess the pupils lose out in that scenario. School was absolutely rigid on observing the time allowances and controlled assessment nature of the task, to the extent that no papers from their field work could be taken home and no work could be done outside the classroom and the computers they used were barred from accessing any files or internet sites while they did the write up - all what should be done of course, but you do wonder if all school interpreted the rules quite so strictly. Again though, no comeback for the pupils if that should be the case. Or it could be that the person moderating this school's coursework did so too harshly so the grades will be lifted ( fingers crossed).

So re the German, I would have thought the first thing to do is to find out whether the coursework was marked down for your DS's peers as well. In any event you should approach the tecaher and ask how the downgrade could have happened. Hope it works out OK for you.