Raw score and grades etc

Teachers enter students for exams in Feb of Y11, the decision for tiers generally gets made after mocks at Xmas which are timed to help make these sorts of decisions a bit easier.

However tiers are not fixed and changes can be made right up to and including exam day if there's evidence to justify it.

At DD's school for maths they had what they called 'crossover sets' where they were taught some grade 6/7 material, but a decision was left until y11 as to which paper each individual would be entered for. Hopefully your school won't be limiting 'grade 5' pupils to Foundation based on where they are end y9, but it is worth asking.

ps The tiers aren't that new, they have been there since GCSEs started (I think), though maths used to have an intermediate tier - it is a shame they got rid of that, though I don't know whether 3 tiers was easier or harder for the teachers. Prior to GCSEs there were two tiers - O levels and CSEs.

You do also need to clearly understand what current reports are telling you, as different schools word reports differently.

If for a subject such as maths or English lang you get he is at a 6, does that mean 'if he sat it now he would get a 6' or does it actually mean 'if he continues on we currently predict he will get a 6 at the end of y11'.

What might it mean for science / history if most of the syllabus hasn't been covered yet? On the syllabus so far covered he is doing exam answers to a grade 5 level? Or 'based on how he is now we predict that in 2 years he will likely get a 5'?

If your son is in year 9, has he started his GCSE courses? If so the in school assessments will probably be past exam papers where the results will be comparable to grade boundaries. If he hasn’t yet started the content I would not put any weight on the current number grades given, I would be vary wary of any teacher predicting that a student is currently working at GCSE grade 8/9 if they are not completing GCSE work and exam questions.

If your DC is only in Year 9 and currently working at a Level 5, then there really is no need to worry.

And 5 is a perfectly respectable grade anyway!
As Teen says the only issue with combined science is if you have a "patchy" child who is significantly better or worse at one science as you have to take higher or foundation for all sciences; you can't mix and match as you can for triple.
Physics has "clicked" later with both my DC. I think it's also a subject where being good at maths will help you pick up marks in the exam. DD has been really struggling in physics compared to the other sciences (I would have described her as like your DC) but actually got her highest science mark in Physics in her end of Year 10 exams (to be fair she got 40,41 and 42 so not a lot in it ...). DS was predicted a Level 3 in Physics (taking separate sciences) at the end of Year 9 and is now taking it for A Level :)

[quote MissKeithsNeice]@Taxiparent was i right that its done on fixed percentage per cohort or have I got that completely wrong?

I started to Google but I'm finding it hard to wade through the stuff about grading procedures this year[/quote]
It changes year by year depending on the ability level of the cohort entered. Grade 9 is very hard to predict as a target grade for a student as it is the top 2 % of grades each year.

With Combined science it has to either All Higher or All Foundation papers. You can't do Higher for Chemistry & Biology but Foundation for Physics.

Grading for Combined goes ....3-2, 3-3, 4-3, 4-4, 5-4, 5-5, 6-5, 6-6, 7-6 ...
You can't get higher than 5-5 for Foundation. However you aren't meant to be able to go below 4-3 for Higher though they had to reduce that to 3-3 the first year (and later I'm not sure?) as too many Higher kids were bombing out completely.

You can view it as Physics pulling down the others, or Chemistry & Biology pulling up Physics dependent on your point of view.

I'd get a Physics tutor too if that's his weakest subject.

Yy as the estimable Teen says, it's later than start of year 10 when decisions are made about F/H tiers.

What is the subject op? People may have some good sources of revision material if they know.

You haven't said which core subject, but I needed to look into this for DD2.

Maths: For a 4/5 student, then doing Foundation could be the 'safer' option as they won't get thrown straight into harder questions. However if prone to make silly mistakes this could be an issue. If they are a 5/6 student then the only way to get a chance of a 6 is to take Higher.

Science: The Foundation papers have more straightforward questions, slightly easier maths, and the harder content is dropped. It was interesting, the content we were instinctively dropping for tests if DD couldn't manage it all, was the content not there when she switched to Foundation.

OP, if your DS is only just going into y10, the focus at the moment should be gaining as many marks as he can. After all, somewhere along the line 1 mark means a grade boundary.
Some pupils will obviously be headed for Higher or Foundation. The ones in the middle they should wait until end y10 at least to decide.

DC's school doesn't make final decisions on tiers until the January of Year 11. So plenty of time yet if he's currently working at 4/5.
Incidentally you do need to understand if the 4/5 is a current working at level or a "based on current levels he is projected to get" level Big difference.

I should also say that for a borderline child sitting foundation and getting a solid 5 is a better choice than sitting higher and running the risk of no grade at all.

I wouldn't worry about translating percentages into grades - there's just no consistent way for you to obtain accurate info this way.

Each school will have a different approach to grade reporting and each department will have their own approaches within that framework.

To track your dc's progress and help support him, I would just go through his books with him regularly: You will see assessments, mini assessments and work done during feedback lessons after exams etc. All the info you need should be in his books.

Most subjects don't have tiered papers tho OP, hope you are clear on that.

Only maths, MFL and science. Not even English . No ideas why not but hey.

So I don't know about maths, but to take MFL - for the writing paper which is a quarter of the exam, for F you write four sentences about a picture - totally fine to use "there is xxx, there is yyy, he is xxx"; then you write a 40-word paragraph on a given theme, using four key words (eg hobbies and you write about Tv, sport, music and cinema); then translate 5 sentences into target language, the level of "I have a cat and a dog"; then a 90-word essay with a choice of tasks and four bullet points, including past and future tense.

For the higher paper, that 90-word essay is the starting point; you then have to do a 150-word essay with just two bullet points (so v little support) and then translate a paragraph from English with relatively complex language (using words like because, therefore, using past tense).

Do you see how the second paper is so much harder than the first - so to gain a 5 on the F paper would need about 66%, but the same candidate would need 48% for a 5 on the higher paper - much much harder. It will work the same way in maths

And yes, I agree, never mind what you did at school and how it worked, it is totally different today.

Think of foundation and higher papers as two parts of the same subject. Imagine everyone had to take the foundation paper. If you got 75% right that was a 5. Then those that were aiming for 6 and higher did a further paper which just asked harder questions. You had to get 25% of that extra paper for a 6, 50% for a 7 etc. Then imagine an exam board/ teacher etc going 'well what's the point of all my 6+ kids doing the first paper - we know they'll all get very high marks, so we'll just ask them to sit the second paper.' And that's what has happened.

You need fewer points to get a 5 on a higher paper than you do on a foundation paper. The higher papers are really aimed at people who are aiming for 6+, and the grade for a 5 is a sort of "backstop". There are no easy questions on the higher paper! DC who are expecting to get a 4/5 would normally take the foundation paper where you need to get far more marks as the paper is easier.

You can't compare anything that happens now to what you experienced at school.

It makes more sense to look at English, where a 5 is just over half marks.

Yes but that was the Higher paper...for a grade 5 candidate, the majority of it would be inaccessible as some of the questions are aimed at those seeking grades 8-9. I would never enter a student for higher if I genuinely thought 5 was their ceiling grade. So demoralising not to be able to do the majority of the paper. Think about looking at it and going no, no, no idea...

Much easier to gain a 5 on foundation (for MFL anyway).