GCSE Results Day 2017

DS has gone off to college for a course confirmation meeting. Looks like he will be doing a Btec level 3 in Sports and Exercise Science and is also going to query doing A Level PE alongside it.
He continues to express his relief at not having to go to his school sixth form to do A Levels.

And that D in further maths... that turned out to mean Distinction.

Why the results pages weren't easier to understand (WJEC) I don't know.

DD had been and enrolled in her A level college. They were suitably impressed with her results, but did joke with her that she must be annoyed with her one B.

She bloody well is, but seemed to take it in the light hearted way they meant it.

Overall she got 5 A*s and 7 As. And that B. She's hoping it's enough to get her on the Seren network, but I can't find out what their requirements are so we will wait and see.

Glad I'm not alone café. DS would barely allow us in the building on results day but they did have all those remark stations and stuff : no marks available for English I guess, unless you were one of the favoured few being dragged aside by the HOD, am supposing,

To be fair she replied to my email request really quickly . It was that one killer sentence which was unnecessary : I am not even sure what she meant to imply by it !And all I had done was email (not her. as it goes) to ask for the marks; hadn't even mentioned re-marks or disappointment!

Meant to say somewhere in there that as he's doing lit A level, he would have loved those few extra marks to have nailed the 8 but I'm confident (ish) that his abilities lie in answering the longer analytical questions not the 8 markers, so A level should be fine.

Ds did better in paper 2 for both lit and Lang which is the opposite way round to how he's performed in mocks and essays for two years.

I think his Lang paper 1 was under marked because his spag is amazing and so is his creative writing. He got a 7 and two friends who are much less creative got 9s. However, ds probably underperformed on the day in the first half of the paper.

With lit, ds and most of the others must have done v well with unseen poetry. That can go either way on the day, can't it?

Ds just a few marks off an 8 but can't see it's worth a remark because of the risk of going down. He has a beautiful but unique style of constructing an argument and I'm not convinced a second marker might not get him at all!

You can get just one paper remarked if that's any help.
Our school had special printed out sheets to fill out at the 'Remark Station'! They also called the deemed-worthy 'jumping girls' in early for photos. I think there would be enough material for a dark comedy series. No one know any body else's results except the straight Aers on the website.

piggy this is my DS, but the other way around. Better in Lang than Lit, and Lit was by far his stronger subject. He was close to the grade above in Lit but I'm wary of getting a remark in case he drops down a grade. It was also AQA, so it can't be reviewed online to see how it was marked and where (if anywhere...) he went wrong. I don't know how far off the grade he was in Lang (above or below) but am going to see the school's examination officer this week and get the breakdown. He's leaving to go to 6th form college and the school have been pretty unhelpful frankly. One of his other exams was 1 UMS off the next grade up, and a second exam paper had a wildly odd score (13/100) which I wanted reviewed, as it was in one of his stronger subjects. If I hadn't asked for the papers to be looked at again, no one was going to bother. Maybe this is usual, but it seemed pretty crap to me, especially as I had offered to pay. Your HOD email was replicated here, congratulating everyone on their stellar results. Cheers for that.

won a bursary not one!!

Now she is having last minute doubts about which 6th form she is going to!! She has a place at her school and another higher achieving school. she has accepted both places and has until Thursday to finalise. All holiday she has said she will stay and now that the other school got much better A Level results she wants to go there. I'd like her to stay where she is for various reasons, one being that she has one a high achieving bursary. Should I butt out?

Interestingly she got the same grade in both.

Harry some schools did do this : they preferred the way different boards asked or structured questions, for example.

Not in my DS's case and I suspect quite a few boys. he did a whole two grades better in P2. P1 seems obsessed with florid lit such as DuMaurier and is often quite dull! He quite likes the factual element of P2.

he has never made a spelling mistake in his life (slight hyperbole...) but his creative writing stinks.

Still no word from my DD's school! She did AQA Eng Lang and OCR Eng Lit. Why would a school do this? Any teachers know?

Piggywaspushed
Ah yes. I forgot about that! Not like there's an entire 3rd section on paper 2 Oops.

ProfessorLayton1
I think paper 1 is familiar because it's fiction. Question 1 is straightforward if they read it carefully. Q2 is language analysis which is easy. Q3 is a bit more tricky because it's isolated structute analysis. Q4 is worth the most marks and is evaluation but it's easy to teach and opens up the higher bands. Writing section is atories and description so as long as their spag is ok they'll be fine.

Lang paper 2. Non fiction is typically neglected at KS3 so it's more tricky. I think the modern non fiction is fine but the pre20th century one is usually odd. The q2 is a comparison of ideas, not language and some students start doing comparative analysis. Q3 asks them to analyse the older text. If jt asks how it's engaging or creates some kind if emotional effect then to your average 16 year old it's not actually that engaging so they struggle to see why anyone would find it. Skills are same as lang paper 1 q2. Q4 is comparative analysis (same as literature poetry comparison) but trying to suss the viewpoint out can be challenging for weaker candidates. Writing is usually to argue or persuade.

I enjoy teaching paper 2, but think that paper 2 is the deciding factor between high grades abd middle grades

Maisy - what do you think of English language paper 1 in comparison to paper2?

Lit 1 Is out of fewer marks Maisy ?

Haven't double checked but I thought grade boundaries were lower for Eng P1.

Our internal boundaries were reasonably accurate up to a 5 and then our internal ones were much higher.for grades 6-9.

The paper boundaries surprise me. I get why langauge paper 2 was lower because I think it's a stupidly difficult paper that a reasonabke % of people sitting the exam would stuggle with.

But Lit paper 1 being much lower than lit paper 2?! I think paper 1 is the easiest paper.

Just in case anyone wants it (this is AQA)

filestore.aqa.org.uk/over/stat_pdf/AQA-GCSE-RF-GDE-BDY-JUN-2017.PDF

Bear in mind, despite what TSR says there have never been grade boundaries for papers (there is on thread where someone says in their mock they got a 9 based on official grade boundaries, poor deluded child) and these are what they call 'notional'.

Just got the breakdown for DS's GCSE Eng and Eng Lit and it's so frustrating as he has ended up too far away from overall boundaries to bother with re-marks really (and would run the risk of dropping to a 4 in English) but his performance is so uneven (or the marking...). In Lang he got nearly a 3 in paper 1 based on notional boundaries and a clear 6 in P2 and in lit he got a low 5 in p1 and nearly an 8 in P2. It seems so unfair but I know it will apply to many candidates. Don't know quite how to build from that knowledge and get him to be more even in his performance.

Probably won't go for any remarks, as I seem to be more interested in these facts than him.

It didn't help that the email I got from his boastful HOD felt the need to tell me in amongst DS stats that 35% of the cohort got grades 9-7. Well done them. Well done you and your amazing leadership. Now do kindly fuck off.

I think MN has a disproportionately number of high achievers - rather like The Student Room. I find both are helpful, and post on MN, but don't feel the need to post actual results/grades unless it's in relation to giving or asking for advice, which MNetters have been unfailingly generous and helpful in providing.

Cafeconleche- well done to you son, sure he will do well in life.
The most important thing is resilience and that's what holds you well in life..
I would know this more than anyone as an immigrant born to parents who did not go university, my mum is a high school drop out and dad worked in a factory..I was pretty much left to my own devices at school..
Dd knows that there are kids in extremely challenging situation who has done well in their exams and how lucky she is...
I also tell her that if they end up in interview and score the same and if I am the interviewer I will give the university place or job to those kids - she knows this and is some one very principled( sometimes is really annoying -eg.. she would not shop in certain shops due to the way they treat their employees)for her age so won't have any issue with that...

piggywaspushed I agree with everything you say. DS did one GCSE in year 10 and got an A (it was his best subject, so no surprise). A couple of my FB friends posted congratulations on my page which I deleted because it was his result and not mine. This year DS has done 'okay' - passed everything he needed to pass with good enough grades to go onto 6th form college and study the A Levels he loves. If he does really well in those in 2 years time, he's going to take a gap year and apply to uni with real A Level grades, rather than predictions as he did not get a brace of A/As at GCSE. DS worked bloody hard throughout Year 11 under some very, very difficult family circumstances at home, most of which we kept quiet about to friends. I am so proud with how he's done, but he's definitely down at the moment as the all you hear about are the top grades. I've also smiled through the inevitable 'how did DS do?' conversations from friends who's DC's have achieved nothing but A*s, with 'great' and so happy about his 6th form choice etc. They seem to be the only ones who have asked . Anyway, onwards and upwards. It's been a learning curve for DS and at least now life is more settled at home and he will have a chance to shine. But MN is a funny old place. I find it immensely useful and stressful in equal measure.

I had no idea they would get their marks too. I just got grades back in the day. To stop the grade boundary thing causing so many issues with worrying about near misses etc wouldn't it be better to get a total numerical score? I think they do that in Australia. So students quote a number like 799 or whatever out of whatever the total is.Then the one mark off a certain grade wouldn't be so much of an issue. Has that ever been considered?

Can't help but notice how many of these amazing independent, driven, self motivated high achievers are girls....

Very true. however dd1 definitely gets her attitude from dh not me.

She's very different to me in exams. I worked for proper exams but didn't bother revising for little test things. I also hated any sort of going over papers etc. and wanted to talk as little as possible about them, whereas she went over her papers in detail with friends (or on TSR) and worked out what she expected to get per paper.
This did cause a bit of an issue half way through her mocks when she asked me if I cared how she was doing-which of course I did. Because I hated talking about exams afterwards, I didn't ask anything except, "did it go okay?" "Yes" "Oh good-change subject" because that's what I would have wanted to do.
She otoh wanted to run down each question with me in detail.
I'm glad she said something though.