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

That Maths situation is appalling. I'm surprised they need 56% to get a C though - I thought the higher paper needed about 20 marks to get a C! (or is that what used to happen? or was that just media fiction?)

GCSE is (or at least supposedly is) criterion-referenced not norm-referenced which makes nonsense of the need for a large cohort to decide accurate grade boundaries. There are criteria for a piece of work to be a C grade and if they are met, then that piece of work is a C grade.

This is why it is worrying that apparently OCR have put a C grade boundary of 56% on a maths paper that only contains 50% of questions up to C grade. This would mean that to get a C grade, not only would candidates need to get 100% on the C grade stuff but they would also need to get some B grade or higher questions correct. Compare this to a student getting a C on a foundation paper where they don't have to get all the C grade stuff right to get a C and they don't even see any higher grade questions.

This would suggest that in order to satisfy the desire of Gove for passes to fall, that exam boards have decided that the pass rate falling is more important than what the candidate can actually do.

The thing is, if there is going to be a reduction in % getting a C+ in Maths or English because C grade requirements are going to be a higher level, it is going to affect thousands because hundreds of thousands of students sit the core exams.

There appears to be a spark of hope for those who got a D grade in the Leeds area, the council will be contacting all colleges and apprenticeship providers regarding the grade boundaries so college places may not be lost. Also talking about taking legal action with other councils.
newsfeed.leedsvirtualnewsroom.co.uk/2012/08/statement-from-leeds-city-council.

www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/aug/26/gcse-english-results-fall-alternative

"Ofqual said that around 20,000 pupils from independent schools and selective schools had given up GCSE English for an alternative qualification, even though the overall number of pupils taking the qualification had risen."

Really? Do independent schools really sit GCSE English? I would have thought they would have sat the GCSE English Language and GCSE English Literature combination. Maybe lazy reporting?

We haven't had my DDs individual unit scores yet - she has to go into school to collect them if she wants them.

kez its interesting that you say your DDs school seemed to be marked harshly in the production unit in drama. We seem to have had the same problem.
DD had solid As in the first two units and then got an E in the production unit. I don't know what examiners are looking for. DD gave a good performance, she spoke all her lines clearly and with conviction and acted her part well. Her teacher has taught the lesson for quite some years, so I trust his judgement that the plays they performed where acceptable for GCSE.

Again, it seems that even the really strong actors have also been marked harshly.

Sorry, my post above doesn;t follow on properly and looks rude! "Yes, that is what I said earlier" refers to...."An easy solution is to only submit CATs in June (which is standard for lots of subjects)"

Yes, that is what I said earlier.

I don't know that it would have been so much of a problem if it wasn't a completely new type of assessment using CAs. But there were huge risk factors to UMSing in January 2012 - small cohort, early sitting cohort (June entrants would have another possible 4 months of study), completely new type of assessment (CAs) and the CAs were 60% of the final mark. And with all those risks they drew up UMSs for the CAs.

Noble is right in that it is their job and, I agree, but in my mind while they may be brilliant at English and marking English exams, they have failed to see the huge risk factors staring them in the face on UMSing in January 2012. Factors which are not so evident in future Januarys because you have the experience of what went before to also help aid your judgement.

It seems very strange because AQA were one board so very reluctant to give any information on what bands might mean in terms of grades at the start of the course. I thought that meant that they had identified the risk factors and were erring on the side of caution!

Kez that's a very important point. Never mind further ed and apprenticeships etc. - what about these DCs' self-confidence and self-esteem? No-one is asking for silly inflation, just for no arbitrary shifting of boundaries for purely extraneous reasons.

It looks like the problem here is one of statistics.

A small cohort of students had work submitted in January, and this sample was UMS'd.

A far cohort submitted work in June, and this was UMS'd separately from the January cohort. Because it was a much larger sample, the statistics are more robust - there is more data to feed into the grade boundaries.

An easy solution is to only submit CATs in June (which is standard for lots of subjects)

Yellowtip - yes boundries have changed in other subjects. My daughter was 2% off a C in History in 2011. The same score would have given her a C the year before and the year before that (we didn't look back any further). She redid it this year, improved her score, but still got a D! Again boundries went up!

Very annoying for the school as that would have given her the English Bacc but she is quite resigned on the basis she was clearly a borderline student and if she was really better she would have nailed a C.

We also suspect Drama productions were marked harshly this year but she got a C (and was a B/C borderline) so was happy with her result but she has friends who she says are superb and not one managed higher than a B overall even though they had really excellent CA scores going into the final production exam.

Science, RE and languages, however, seem fine and quite consistent - at least on her exam boards.

Certainly very vague.

"AQA say they will be delighted to be vigourously scrutinised to prove they have marked fairly"

Although this bit is as I said before - I suspect there is no issue with marking - its the grade boundries and awarding that are at issue here.

It will be interesting, if OFQUAL do hope it goes away with vague statements about learning lessons, what HTs do - I think they are rightly very angry - for the students and, secondary, for their HT colleagues and their staff members working in schools which will now fall under the 'failing' radar.

Is a legal challenge possible?

What would happen if they demanded a complete re-mark for every AQA script (can HTs actually even do this without getting the students agreement to each one they send for remark?)

The Telegraph has a graphic showing the change in all grades for the main subjects between last year and this. I understood grade boundaries to have shifted significantly in several subjects but that English was the most seriously affected and that this mishandling of the CA had been identified and come to the fore. There's less noise about other subjects because English seems to be the most extreme as well as having a flaw to point to. But I nevertheless thought there was serious disquiet about the shift in boundaries elsewhere.

maths, of course, is much more difficult to fudge after the paper has been set

There have been rumblings about grade boundaries in the maths section of TES too. I think there was an OCR Higher paper where you needed 56% to get a C, but only 50% of the paper is C grade or below. Students have also done better on linear papers where the grade boundaries have been much lower than on modular papers. However, this June has been the first sitting for the new maths syllabus rather than the second as it is for English so we can't compare back and say that the boards have fiddled things to increase the failure rate this June.

Can anyone tell me, is this excluusive to the GCSEs or does it affect AS and A2s as well ?

I was led to believe there was a big change at A to A as well (from a independant school press release I read yesterday - can't remember school name now! Grrr). Hardly perfect evidence I know, but two of my daughters friends expecting A/A and managing A/A* in every other subject including literature, both scored high B in language.

Noble, if there has been no wide boundry changes on the other grades then, I agree, that doesn't matter.

The other issue in this is, of course, schools near the Government's new floor target of 40% A to C including Maths and English*. The agenda being to ensure that as many of these schools as possible are turned into academies.

Someone I know well, a relatively new head at one of these schools, has achieved a HUGE (double digits) increase in the relevant measure in a single year in the face of all kinds of obstacles, in one of the most deprived constituencies and challenging schools in the country. The school has fallen short of the magic measure by a fraction of 1%, and my understanding is that the English GCSE issue has played a part in this. As a result, the school will almost certainly be forced into academy status within the next term, the head will be sacked and will almost certainly never be employed as a head again.

You can say that it is right that such schools are given 'new starts' as academies - but in this case, a new management team is already in place, they have shown huge improvements and have the capacity to make more. The political pressure on the C-D boundary in one of the key subjects (maths, of course, is much more difficult to fudge after the paper has been set), however, treats that as irrelevant so that it can ease the progress of the juggernaut which is academisation and the destruction of LEAs.... along with the destruction of the careers of some very able headteachers....

I think it's quite clear that AQA manipulated the grade boundaries by an unusual amount at the C/D borderline between Jan and June.

I'm a bit unclear of the argument that A/A grades were also artificially depressed - I know that A/A results went down, but what's the argument that this was unreasonable?

All grades are important - A* to A/B can affect top Uni entry, B to C cause a student to not choose English as an A level subject, C to D is obviously a really critical change and, quite probably, affects the largest number of students. D to E and lower grades affect those students to in their own individual ways. If there is found to be a problem all students in this cohort should be regraded under new, fairer, boundries based on production of C Grade work not purely based on being in the top x% of the cohort.

I hope they don't remark but revise boundries more fairly and re-issue new grades automatically - much quicker and cheaper and, from the evidence we have, far more likely to be the cause of the problem than marking.

Ok, point taken too, but since the top end grades are even more savagely slashed, that doesn't quite fit the theory that this is targeted at ordinary, average pupil - it's affected pupils across the board.