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Original poster

80% for a grade 9 on Cambridge iGCSE Maths

32 replies

noblegiraffe · 11/08/2017 01:15

Grade boundaries have been released for one of the first 9-1 maths exams.

I have no idea how the iGCSE paper compares to other exam boards, but their grade 9 threshold % is actually lower than their A* percentage from last year.

I'm slightly horrified by the foundation grade boundaries so for these I'm going to assume that the paper was very different to Edexcel.

Still, it seems that getting a 9 might not require as high marks as people were thinking.

80% for a grade 9 on Cambridge iGCSE Maths
OP posts:
Original poster
noblegiraffe · 11/08/2017 17:59

My lot are doomed if the Edexcel foundation boundaries come out that high - we were internally working on about 50% (120 marks) being a 4 when calculating our passes so 140 would be a disaster. I wish I could see the iGCSE paper for comparison of difficulty! It's not unusual for grade boundaries to be very different between exam boards though, old OCR foundation was about 55% for a C where to get a C on Edexcel you needed over 70%.

Universally - the grade boundaries for foundation will be pegged for a 1 and a 4, to the proportion getting a G and a C last year. The 2 and the 3 will then be put at even intervals between those points, regardless of the distribution of pupils. Where the 5 will go is anyone's guess, as they need it to be comparable to the Higher 5.

27% to 'standard' pass maths GCSE on Higher for this board. What would the Daily Mail make of that I wonder? It shows the papers actually are harder than last year for a start.

OP posts:
OhYouBadBadKitten · 11/08/2017 16:38

It's going to be fascinating (if awful) to have a look at the normal gcse boundaries.

UniversallyUnchallenged · 11/08/2017 10:09

Thank you giraffe
Very interesting- particularly the 5 and 4 information. I don't think this will necessarily correlate to the 'mainstream' GCSE maths closely for equivalent grade boundaries, particularly at the bottom end where I would expect much more clumping (though maybe I'm just kidding myself as our weaker students found the papers just too hard and I thought it would be hard to separate them out), I'd appreciate your thoughts on the matter.

tiggytape · 11/08/2017 09:56

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

relaxitllbeok · 11/08/2017 08:16

Well, it's GCSE level maths; there's a limit to how hard it can be to get 80% or more. Also, people have now seen the paper (but not the mark scheme? still, again, a perfect answer will get full marks and teachers know what one is). So I bet many children, teachers and parents are now breathing a sigh of relief because they did the whole paper confidently and couldn't possibly have got less than that boundary.

On the negative side, I was pretty horrified by that - can it really be the case that a single figure percentage of entrants will do that well? I predict it'll be very, very lumpy in that case, with lots of instances of entire top sets or even entire cohorts at certain schools getting 9s. That'll be fun, particularly if the other boards are similar.

AnguaResurgam · 11/08/2017 07:19

It all depends on the distribution curve of marks for all candidates though.

If only 2% (or whatever) of candidates reached the mark, then it's harder to attain than the same mark on a paper that 6% reached (about 6.5% of 2016 GCSEs were A*)

MidLifeCrisis007 · 11/08/2017 07:11

Thanks for sharing.

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