Active discussions

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Secondary education

Connect with other parents whose children are starting secondary school on this forum.

Original poster

Has anyone ever had a successful GCSE re-mark?

81 replies

Sparklegeek · 22/08/2013 11:30

DS1 (Year 10) got his GCSE Science result this morning. His one A grade combined with 3 A grades on the component subjects to give him an overall A Sad He is absolutely devastated as he needed 360 UMS for an A & got 359. (NB - he goes to a very high-achieving grammar so despite us insisting he has done fantastically he is gutted).

So the question is - is it worth going for a re-mark in the hope a different examiner would award that extra point he needs to hit the A* boundary? Obviously I realise he could lose points as well, but I'm assuming as he's at the very very top of the A grade boundary it wouldn't actually reduce his overall grade in that event.

But is it even worth doing? Should he just accept what he's got & leave it? And does anyone know if schools pay the fees or do the parents? (Not an issue - was just wondering).

I feel so bad that he feels like this when he should by rights be celebrating his A.

OP posts:
Original poster
Sparklegeek · 22/08/2013 12:13

Oh God MrsWobble you have a very apt username!!

I can't believe I'm caught up in stressful decisions already & he doesn't even sit the rest til next summer!

OP posts:
MrsWobble · 22/08/2013 12:11

This brings back bad memories! We had 2 of dds English papers remarked because she was 2 and 3 marks off an A*. When the first one came back she had been marked down 14 marks and was only 2 marks off a B. I was a complete wreck waiting for the second one. She had been predicted As and was happy with them - we were just being greedy. Fortunately the second mark didn't go down and she kept her As.

Sonnet · 22/08/2013 12:07

hmm in this boat for Eng lit - 2 marks off an A

In mumsnet opinion is it worth it?

Original poster
Sparklegeek · 22/08/2013 12:04

Thanks for your reply glaurung. I didn't realise the charge was per paper, I thought it was per subject, so that makes deciding which to have re-marked a bit tricky.

I have seen on the AQA website that you can pay to get the paper back. Do you know if this then excludes you from applying for a re-mark or can you decide based on the marking you can see against each question?

I have emailed the school so am going to see what they say too.

OP posts:
mummytime · 22/08/2013 12:03

My son had a remark last year for Geography, he was very close to the D/C borderline (needed 2 more marks I think). We signed the form which states you may go down as well as up, but didn't see that as a risk for us (E wouldn't be that much worse than D really). He increased by 10 or so marks and was a solid C.
We got the fee refunded.

glaurung · 22/08/2013 11:57

If you have a remark you have to pay (or in very rare cases, the school might), it's quite expensive (~£20/paper I think). If the mark changes as a result of the remark then you get a refund, if not you don't. In this case you would have to choose which paper to remark - if he felt the 'A' paper had gone better then that would be the obvious choice, but one mark on any of the papers would get him the A*, so if there was one of those he felt went really well and should have had a higher mark that might be worth considering. Be careful about getting 2 or more papers remarked at once though, I know someone who got an uplift on one paper matched with a decrease in another, so overall the mark stayed the same - they would have been better getting one marked straight away, then having the other done after the first remark came back if needed (that way they'd have had a better chance of an upgrade).

I've been told that about a quarter to a third of remarks result in a change, so enough change that it's quite tempting to try, but it's more likely that it will stay the same. Also, science isn't a very subjective subject, so arguably less chance.

Whether or not you go down this path is up to you. An A is still a really good grade, but if he might want to do a really competitve course later or will spend the rest of his life regreting it if not (this seems unlikely, however distraught he seems now, GCSEs do usually pale into insignificance later on) then it might be worth it.

Swipe left for the next trending thread