Just got back from DCs year 11 parents' evening and i felt a slight air of panic amongst the teachers .....

Sorry, Russians, but I DO disagree with you. Getting an A rather than an A* won't stop you from getting onto ANY college course, or stop you from getting ANY job.

Getting a D instead of a C will when even basic retail jobs expect you to have a minimum of C at GCSE.

So what if you can't do medicine? At least you can GO to college or Uni and get ANY job that will actually FEED you.

Those in current Y10 that will be affected by the change in the C/D boundary may well NOT. Our local college is insistent that they will NOT relax the course requirements on any of their courses - they didn't for this years intake even with the grades fiasco.

So there IS a significant difference. And lots of these C/D pupils will have parents that CAN'T afford to support them if they are unable to receive JSA, unable to get CTC and ChB because they are no longer in education, and also unable to get even the most basic job.

In my town, even cleaners are asked to have Maths & English GCSE at a C grade or above, because there are so many applicants for each job (200 for each job), that many WILL have those grades.

So, it leaves the C/D borderline pupils with nothing to feed themselves with.

It doesn't leave an A*/A pupil in the same situation.

I HAVE another DC who will be an A/A pupil. I'm not going to worry about being able to feed him if he gets an A instead of an A. I AM worried about feeding my DD because her C's will now be D's.

"In a few years time, employers, etc won't remember that the GCSE's started being marked more harshly this year"

But in a few years the GCSE is going to be completely irrelevant any way as noone will be leaving school at 16 any more.

(Or have I misunderstood something)

January exams are going - this year was the last series for GCSE. And the November series will be resit only English and Maths - ie only open to those who sat the exams the previous June, and must be a full resit.

yup - already loads of evidence that grade boundaries WAY higher than last year in lots of controlled assessments

notnow You didn't offend me (although another poster did) but I did want to challenge the assumption that if a child gets an A or a B instead of the A* they would have got in other years, then that's fine and they should just suck it up because at least they haven't failed.

Russians, I apologise if I've offended you - it wasn't intended. I meant that there seems to be a lot less movement in the grade boundaries at the upper end of the spectrum and those pupils with high Bs to A* grades seem to have been penalised less than pupils on the C-D borderline. Again, that's only based on the changes we experienced in English last year. Actually, I agree that you have every right to be worried about Gove's pernicious effect on education, particularly for the class of 2013.

iclaudius the wonderful Mr Gove will make a grand statement about how our children have been let down by an education system that has been declining for the last 20 years. He will say that the measures, put in place by him, will help to bring back rigour to the education system, ensure teachers have high aspirations for all students and will help to restore our place in the international rankings.

The trouble is that he believes his own hype.

I am also a bit worried, though DD is only in Y9 - will her predicted grades (already doing 3yr GCSE course) be achieveable or will she be disappointed even if she works hard?

Actually, notnow I don't agree that I have much less to worry about. DD1 has significant challenges in her life and she deserves to do as well as she is predicted to do in those subjects. I am perfectly entitled to be worried about what will happen to her as a result of Gove's meddling.

BigTilly, there is no way to know in advance which sessions are 'better' - it's supposed to be bloody fair! Of course, I am not necessarily right; I'm only basing my ideas on last year's experience in English Lang and the results from the Lit modules taken in schools local to me.

Russians, if these are your DD's best subjects, you have much less to worry about. It is the pupils on course to hit D and C grades who will be in the firing line if my guess is correct.

It really makes me so sad for the pupils - there is nothing they can do about the situation they're in except work harder, work harder. It's not as though they (for the most part) don't care. Poor little buggers.

So notnow, it's better if the students sit the exams early in Jan?

notnow Oh god, really? :( English Lit and Lang are DD1's top subjects and she will be gutted if she doesn't do as well as she is hoping. :(

aargh. Sorry. Bloody laptop.

cream That may be true for some, even most, people, but it won't be true for all. There are careers and professions where even after your degree they do still look at your GCSE and A levels results when making entry level recruitment decisions. This is where it will bite, because the people applying will not all have done their GCSEs in the same year. Further down the line, the important factor is experience and performance. Earlier on, the kids will most likely (but it's not guaranteed) be competing with other kids from the same cohort, so it will matter less. But at the stage where they are looking to get into the world of work, it could well be an issue. :( Luckily for DD1 I don't think she is even slightly likely to want to pursue the sort of career where this will be an issue. But it;s still worrying for her (and me). It seems so arbitrary and unfair.

When we chose options in Y9 for DD, her grades were enough that she would pull the 3 'C' grades she needed to get into a college.

Now she has NO 'C's predicted, in Y10. Those 'C's are now 'D's.

Which will mean no college for her. No job, as even shelf stackers & retail staff here are expected to have C in Maths and English, and she'll be up against thousands that do. Too able for life skills courses at college.

And as the current Y10 are the first year that HAVE to stay on till 18 - no JSA for her either. And my Child Benefit and CTC will stop too.

So I will have to feed her on fresh air, just because some smug bastard politician decided to fuck around with the grade boundaries. I've been told that DD would have been an east C in those three subjects, now she's an easy D.

I don't give a crap that less pupils will get an A* - the difference between an A and an A star isn't going to leve them with no money for food for two years, is it?!

The one I'm particularly worried about is English Literature. The situation with the marking looks on course to be exactly the same as last year's marking for English Language - loads of results from the January exam far exceeding expectations. As these were published with fixed grades and UMS marks, it may well mean that boundaries for the controlled assessments and summer exams will be raised significantly to compensate - and schools like mine where we are sitting both exams in the summer season will suffer accordingly.

I'm worried even without the grade boundaries changing! Dd has been generally predicted A/A* for Physics - then she got Bs in the January exams, and wasn't put in for a resit - which would be fine, but the teacher said 'as you got Bs in both, we've just changed your predicted grade to B' .

That's not how predicting things works, surely?

cream That may be true for some, even most, people, but it won't be true for all. There are careers and professions where even after your degree they do still look at your GCSE and A levels results when making entry level recruitment decisions. This is where it will bite, because the people applying will not all have done their GCSEs in the same year. Further down the line, the important factor is experience and performance. Earlier on, the kids will most likely (but it's not guaranteed) be competing with other kids from the same cohort, so it will matter less. But at the stage where they are looking to get into the world of work, it could well be an issue. :( Luckily for DD1 I don't think she is even slightly likely to want to pursue the sort of career where this will be an issue. But it;s still worrying for her (and me). It seems so arbitrary and unfair.

Agree with creamteas, results are not relevant 5,10 yrs down the line, just this yr- and most serious for those who may fail, get d s etc

The political interference in marking and the constant denigrating of teachers is terrible. But I don't think worrying about the A* students is the real issue.

In the vast majority of cases, the exact pass grades you got in your GCSEs is pretty much irrelevant once you have achieved higher qualifications or been in work for a while. If the results are lower in August across the board, then sixth-forms, colleges, apprenticeship providers etc will relax their criteria (it happened last year with the English fiasco). So if the As become Bs, it won't be a problem.

The people who will really suffer are those who will get Ds instead of Cs.

I really feel that fab teachers are leaving as the whole system is arse over tit in this constant battle to "improve standards".

Anyway, best of luck to your DCs, OP! Let's hope their hard work is rewarded.

Arya, have been teaching almost 20 years. Have never felt so sad, angry, despondant about the job. I hate it at the moment, and it's not the students. I agree with you completely (apart from the tory bit)