Challenging Teacher's Controlled Assessment Mark GCSE

Also, and I am trying hard to not be argumentative here, but if your son's writing has previously consistently marked as A/A, then why is he in the group with B/A as targets? That indicates to me that counting on an A/A is perhaps optimistic?

As an English teacher and moderator for AQA, I find it highly unlikely that your son's teacher would have marked his work down. It would not be in the teacher's interests at all. As a moderator, I find very few centres that haven't standardised rigorously, and when there are marking inconsistencies, work tends to be over marked.

I know from experience what his teacher's comment implies, and whilst I realise that you are supporting your son, I wouldn't waste any more energy on trying to extract an extra mark from one CA. It's very close to the deadline anyway.

I'm sorry you're disappointed, but your DS would be far better off concentrating on his exam prep. The writing sections of the exam carry a lot of marks, and if his writing is " overly metaphorical" or too flowery it won't hit the A* assessment objectives. Get him to read some high quality journalism to see how to write descriptively and emotively, without slipping into bathos.

Roll on linear...

I thought the same oak from the op's response to the writing being judged as overly metaphoric - 'but he was told to use metaphor!'. To me, that's indicative of a B (or lower) grade writer, put all the techniques in and then be completely confused as to why they don't have full marks - because they did everything they were told to! It just doesn't work like that, sorry.

I do wonder if your son is producing "formulaic" writing. My daughter does this - she knows what a teacher will be looking for, and thus makes sure she puts in plenty of the things they like. So she will make sure every piece has metaphors, embedded clauses, rhetorical questions, semi colons, etc. Which is great, and gets her good marks in unimportant things, but it does mean her work doesn't "flow". Her teacher thinks her writing is excellent. But to me it reads "unnaturally" (and I know my grammar there is poor - but you know what I mean!)

Dancing please just accept that your son has not achieved on this one piece. School have told you it has been moderated and the grade agreed. Whatever you or you DS think you are wrong. If school are concerned he will resit.
Overly metaphorical to me sounds like he has tried too hard and created a stilted piece that has the "bits" in it but not naturally. An A* narrative/descriptive piece asks for flair. Maybe you need to accept your son is better at other types of writing.
By the way I am an English teacher and I can assure you teachers do not Mark down because they clash with a pupil (even if they have pain in the arse parents who think their DCs are perfect)

It might help to know that the exam board tolerance (how far we can be out before they adjust the entire cohorts's CA marks) for the Eng Lang controlled assessment folder is THREE. For the entire folder, which includes:

2x creative writing
1x combined spag for the creatives
1x spoken lang study
1x extended reading

So we can't be one mark out on each piece (assuming likely to be all over generous or all over harsh) without the board adjusting the marks for the whole cohort.

The teacher will NOT be deliberately marking down your dc. Because to do so would risk the external moderator downgrading the entire cohort, including those with whom her personality doesn't "clash".

Dancing, I think you have misunderstood the comment about rank order. We place work in rank order so we can standardise it and make sure that we have allocated the right mark to each piece by comparing it with pieces of a similar level. It is absolutely NOT used as a tool to hold down grades. As for the set 2 theory should have lower grades, if you teach set 2 and your class outperforms set 1 then you are feeling very pleased with yourself - you are certainly not artificially holding your pupil's grades down to make the set 1 teacher look good!
Please listen to the teachers on here - there is a vanishingly small possibility that your DC's teacher is some sort of nutter who has marked them down because of a personality clash - that would be cutting off their nose to spite their face indeed. We don't do that, no matter how many pupils would like to believe otherwise. The school WILL internally moderate - we all do this - and I really don't see how you looking at the work will help - you just are not trained to mark against the mark scheme. It does happen to lots of DC that for whatever reasons there is one piece of course work, or one exam, that just doesn't work out as well as the others. Your DC needs to take their feedback on board and move on, rather than fixating on some imaginary grudge they believe the teacher holds against them.

To answer your question about allocating grades, there is no set number/percentage of A or A grades that are allocated. If all the students produced A work then they would be given an A*.

What is it that you are concerned is happening here? Are you convinced that the teacher has either deliberately or incompetently marked the work wrongly, and the school are trying to cover it up rather than rectify it?

You can't know what the work is actually like as you haven't seen it or assessed it against the mark scheme.

Is it really harder for you to believe that your child produced B grade work, instead of the teacher and the school both being incompetent or downright unprofessional?

Surely there must be an internal appeals procedure for Controlled Assessments? Ask the school for its policy.

I'm quite surprised you have been given a definite grade for one piece of CA - the conversion charts are not released until after submission. And whilst many teachers give a guideline based on last year's figures, these apply to a full CA folder - so out of 80 marks. One creative writing piece is worth 10 marks and is also assessed jointly with the 2nd piece for a mark out of 10 for accuracy. Has the same teacher marked the other pieces of CA? Are you happy with that marking?

Work in internal moderation doesn't just get a cursory glance, or I wouldn't have to spent hours doing it! It is examined and then re-marked, if your DC's work was called for external moderation then it could cause havoc for the whole year group if it was marked wrongly.
Your best tack now is to contact the teacher or HoD and explain that your DC is concerned about their mark and what is the best course of action for example is there any way of resitting it, would someone be able to explain to you where your DC lost marks so that you can help with exam. You could also ask for a meeting with the HoD to explain how it was marked. Controlled assessed work doesn't go home. Next course after that would be the head, and then governors after that.
I would be very surprised of the school were "happy" with one grade off your DC's target grade, with the emphasis on progress rather than A-C passes it means that meeting target grades are crucial.

No teacher wants to deliberately mark low - the pressure to get those top grades is huge. I think you might have to accept this wasn't your child's strongest piece of work. Creative writing is quite a skill and it's easy to become too cliched to hit the top marks.
My classes all do more pieces than necessary. We only have to submit 2 writing tasks and they can use the highest. Hopefully this is the case for yours.
If you're still not convinced you could request that your child's folder is internally moderated before the final marks are sent off, but as others said - be careful of accusing the teacher of deliberately being mean. Calling their professionalism into question is serious and needs some actual evidence if that's the route you want to take.
My advice would be that an odd coursework mark here and there makes a small difference whereas every mark in the exam matters so spend your time and energy helping them prepare for this now.

Op- could you say why you think a teacher would shoot herself in the foot by marking down a pupil because of a personality clash when her salary and professional advancement depends on getting as many kids to as high a standard as possible?

I am also a moderator for AQA and find it incredible you feel this could be a 'personal' mark. You also have to consider the importance of the centre getting the rank order correct, if there were a lot of stronger pieces that would highlight weaknesses in your DC's work. Whilst imagery is important it can very easily be overdone and that would lower scores. Such a piece would lack sophistication which would limit the band it could be placed in.

If you look online you should be able to see an A* exemplar, the standard is very high.

The mark scheme for Band 5 is subjective in many respects - 'delightful', 'flair', 'reasons for wanting to read the piece'. I'm a moderator for AQA and all schools are as generous as they can be - they want the marks to be as high as possible and being 'within one grade of target' wouldn't be enough at my school, we would be having to explain ourselves if an A grade student was getting a B.

I don't know how to say it without being patronising, but teachers are trained to use the mark scheme and even with an English degree, just looking at it yourself and applying it to a piece of work you haven't actually seen isn't going to be accurate. Feedback on creative writing will be stylistic - that's a major part of the criteria. If the piece was 'overly metaphorical' it might be that the student over-enthusiastically followed the instructions to use metaphor and simile and consequently wrote something that didn't make sense.

It would be highly unusual for a teacher to deliberately mark down a piece when scrutiny of targets and achievement is so intense and teachers are held so accountable for every grade. But it's entirely fair and reasonable for a parent to be concerned about their child's progress and as you are worried, you need to phone up and speak to the HoD and request that he/she looks at the piece and gives you their Feedback. External moderation isn't possible for an individual piece. The school can't send controlled assessment home, but if you went in for a meeting they could show it to you.

You'd do better to find out how he can resit the CA tbh, and accepting he had an off day than continuing to insist the teacher is wrong particularly as you haven't even seen the work

Ask specifically for a second teacher to review the mark. Ask for a meeting with the HoY/HoD/Headteacher to discuss the outcome of this.

Ask for an explanation of how this CA mark might affect the overall grade and how your child can mitigate this mark to achieve the overall target grade (A/A* was it?). Do all this via email so there is a record. I suppose you could speak to the governors if you aren't happy with the response, then ultimately OFSTED if you're convinced that there is malpractice going on.

I'm not an English teacher but I doubt that the difference between a B and an A is down to mistakes and grammar. It seems likely that at the top end it is a question of style and flair rather than just the mechanics of language.