Who else fell foul of English 'downgrading'? Feeling glum.

although maths and english were new syllabuses, I thought 'comparable outcomes' was still supposed to be applied. I know it's hard to know what to compare with, but the idea is that similarly abled pupils would score the same on either syllabus. For maths the modular course seemed a lot harder than last years whereas the linear one wasn't which is bizarrely unfair too. In some schools where lower sets took linear and higher ones modular the lower sets outperformed the higher in many cases apparently.

True, teacher. My school is usually well above the floor target so I keep forgetting about that bit. We are, however, Outstanding and due an Ofsted so this may well scupper our chances of keeping the coveted status (not that Gove will care as he has already forced us into academy conversion by cutting our budget by 100k).

"How can kids plan for college or A-level if the rug can be pulled from under them at the last minute without warning? "

And how can heads plan for their school's future if they can slip dramatically below the 'floor target' with a stroke of the examiner's pen?

Been in touch with the head I wrote about upthread. Apparently the English marking has made between 4 and 8% difference in his '5 good GCSE' percentage (which has anyway gone up well over 10% in the one year he has been in charge - would be nearer 20% improvement in a single year without the marking problem).

Simply through that issue, he has been kept a very politically important fraction of a percent below the magic 40 figure, and fully expects the school to be forced to start the process to become an academy (and him to be sacked as part of that process) in the first weeks of next term.

Both English and Maths (and ICT) had the first sitting of a new syllabus this year. I don't know about the English syllabus, but the Maths one was tougher, with more unstructured questions and a functional maths element with Quality of Written Communication being assessed (which is why maths teachers were confused when it was announced that maths needed to be made tougher from Nov 2012, which I think has now been pushed back into 2013).

So, tbh, I expected maths results to fall this summer due to the new syllabus. But there does seem to have been some bizarre inconsistencies between exam boards and even between linear and modular courses in how grade boundaries have been set. And then there's the OCR situation of needing to produce better than C grade work in order to get a C grade in its final module. I don't think exam boards know what they're supposed to have been doing. Perhaps there was confusion between exam boards about 'comparable outcomes' when it's a brand new syllabus which wasn't supposed to be comparable. Perhaps there was the understanding that exam results weren't supposed to fall much due to a Labour set of exams and some exam boards were holding off until the new Tory tougher exams next year.

What's really annoying is that neither teachers nor students know what they're supposed to be working towards. How can kids plan for college or A-level if the rug can be pulled from under them at the last minute without warning?

The only GCSE subjects that were supposed to get tougher this year were science - and then only the new spec (mostly sat by year 10s), not the legacy ones. This was is response to a study that showed they had got too easy the last time the syllabus changed. Other subjects (English, maths geog + some others are scheduled to become tougher with new syllabuses over the next few years).

All the GCSE subjects were supposed to move to 'comparable outcomes' this time, which happened to A levels last year and was supposed to stop but not reverse grade inflation. It allegedly corrects for the fact that the longer a syllabus has been out the easier it is to get higher grades as the teaching gets better, more past papers etc. but is supposed to mean that this years cohort is neither advantaged or disadvantaged compared to last.

It seems to me that in English they have overdone it a bit. Dd fell foul, missing grade boundary (and her target) by 2/300 and the CAs (actually done in year 10) would have scored higher if submitted in Jan. I do feel a bit annoyed on her behalf, although I also accept that if you are that close to the boundary you will always risk falling the wrong side. It will only be a problem for her if she decides she wants to apply for medicine as far as I can tell though.

yelllow the double award for maths is a pilot scheme that only a small number of schools are taking part in. It was supposed to finish this year but the pilot has been extended. Rumours are that it'll never be adopted as Labour started it, although Carol Vorderman insisted that a double maths gcse was the way forward in her Gove-commissioned maths report. Suspicions are that Gove has his own ideas about the future of maths gcse.

That makes absolute sense teacher. Except that it's pretty gauche in terms of covering tracks. Seems very amateur to me.

Yellow,

I suspect that the English and Maths ones have been particularly manipulated hit this year because of their importance in judging schools - and then forcing them to become academies.

The 'ripple' effect may then have gone out as far as other 'traditional' subjects to make them look 'in line' (and because the numbers taking them, a reduction in passes in these subjects will have the desired a greater effect on the overall politically important pass rate).

I suspect that the other subjects, taken by smaller numbers of pupils, will follow suit over the next couple of years but weren't manipulated to the same degree this year because the aim of lowering the overall A*-C rate could be achieved through the larger subjects alone.

noble there's only a single Maths, not Applied and Methods. Perhaps this is the first year of the Double Award.

Mordion I was trying to avoid getting pilloried, but I was looking at the stats for Hospitality, Prep. for Life, Home Economics, Media etc. The trend is the opposite way.

@yellowtip not quite sure what you mean by rigorous subjects and 'softer options'?

Think DS fell foul
He got a B C D for his various modules in english language, with a C overall. He didnt have any Ds before the exam and the B was 72% which looking at the origianal grade boundaries was an A which i linked to on a thread i started a few days ago. He was targeted an A but that was always going to be in doubt because he has dyslexic problems.
English lit he resat a paper he got a C on and got an A* and think the other modules were a B and a C with a B overall.

Thanks NobleGiraffe I will speak to the school next week.

What do you mean by differentiating maths, yellow?

voldemort, the usual rules when you sit a GCSE multiple times is that the best mark counts so I would have thought the B would count. However that would be for GCSEs sat at different sessions. I've also heard of students being entered for modular and linear with different exam boards, in which case both boards would issue a certificate. I've never heard of a student sitting the same subject twice with the same exam board in the same series, to be honest I thought it wasn't allowed. Perhaps they issued the certificate with the C because the final module was sat after the final linear paper so it was the latest result? I think you need to get in contact with the exam board to clarify, as this is an unusual situation. I hope she can use the B and it's just an admin error, in all other circumstances she would be able to.

Another thing I don't quite get, having glanced at the 'softer' options: why do these seem not to have been hit by grade deflation whereas the rigorous subjects have?

That's the graphic I meant noble, it's very interesting. But they don't differentiate Maths - not sure why not.

noblegiraffe maybe you can help me with my query.

DD was entered for the Edexcel maths higher papers. On the first two units she scraped C grades. Her teachers took the decision to put her in for Linear incase she got a poor grade in the third unit, which might pull her down to an overall D.

The understanding was, if DD only managed a D on the modular maths but a C on linear, she would be awarded the C grade.

However DD managed to get her overall C in modular maths and a B in Linear. She has been awarded points for both results but her Edexcel certificate only specifies Maths grade C.

So can she use the linear result or does she have to take the lower C grade.

magenta if you use this tool on the Telegraph website and look at different subjects (A*s on the left down to U on the right) you can see that the percentage of passes for English has dropped by more than for maths, but if you look at Science (who also had a new syllabus) the pass rate there has also gone down, by possibly as much as English although it needs a clearer scale. French passes are also down, I know MFL have been complaining about bizarre grade boundaries for a while now.

I don't think the issue is CA myself, and the Jan thing is a red herring - the grade boundaries are changed by the largest amount for the exam, not the CA. The exam is out of 80. The marks students get out of 80 is called the 'raw mark'. This is then converted to a UMS Mark - students have to get 72 to get a 'C' grade. In January and the previous June, a raw mark of 43/44 would get you a 72 and a 'C' grade. This year, you would have to get 53 raw marks to get 72 UMS marks. The CA boundary has only altered by 3 marks.

It is a disgrace and if my DC's had been affected I would be furious. The exam is the same for English GCSE and English Language GCSE so all are affected, although the grade boundaries for the higher tier stayed the same at 44 - if a student took the higher paper and got the 53 needed for a 'C' grade on the Foundation paper they would get a 'B'.

Noblegiraffe is it only English and Maths that has been effected? The cynic in me fears it is due to Dave and Gove wanting to Academise as many schools as they possibly can.

DominoDonkey - I'm not a Teacher just a very concerned parent of a yr10 DD who is C/D borderline for GCSE English Language

Ahh, my bad (as the in-kids say) I was thinking only of linear (that's what our school does). I had forgotton there were modular Maths routes as well.

Oh, and for Edexcel linear, you needed 26% to get a C on the higher paper.

My school does Edexcel not OCR so I'm not completely clear about how their papers work but for their modular higher GCSE
Module 1 40% was a C
Module 2 40% was a C
Module 3 56% was a C

In contrast, on the linear paper, 31% was a C. Now as in maths topics are graded (so Pythagoras is C grade, trigonometry is B grade etc) there should have been roughly the same distribution of grades of questions over both types of paper in total.

At least one teacher posted on TES that their top 2 sets took OCR modular and ended up with worse results than lower sets who took linear.

Yes, you cannot have criterion referenced AND a set number of students pass. Well, maybe you can once in a hundred years! Chances are so slim they would both meet.