Is grade 9 the new a*

I think you are nit picking a bit. Students can easily look up the grade boundaries from year to year and check themselves anyway
I'm not nit picking. I think as teachers we have a duty to be very clear and honest with students.

It's important that students have it clearly explained to them and there is a difference between:

1. Grade boundaries change year on year based on the performance of the national cohort. Grade boundaries are based on a particular cohort sitting particular papers. Let me illustrate the changes over several years so you can see the impact. If the national cohort scores highly, the boundaries are likely to be higher. If the national cohort performs lower, the boundaries are adjusted downwards. When we grade we use this information to the best of our ability but you need to be aware how your papers are marked and graded.

And

1. Grade boundaries change every year, so those of you who've got X% might only have a B in this exam, but in another year that would be an A.

The first is clear and factual. It explains to students how the grades are generated and explains the variability.

The second is the sort of thing I've heard said with good intentions, but it's misleading. It leaves students under the impression that in another year they'd have got an A if they sat an exam in a different year . It doesn't explain the reasons for the changes in grade boundaries and leaves pupils to draw their own conclusions, which could be against their best interests (e.g. "if I get lucky on the grade boundaries I might get an A")

It isn't coming from a place of nit picking. It's coming from a place of wanting my pupils to do well.

Oh yes that's much more achievable.

There was a poster upthread whose son felt he would be letting them down with 8s. School have done him no favours in realism there.

I'm not against saying "grade boundaries change year on year" and explaining to pupils that the grade boundaries change based on national performance. Most sensible teachers do that. I do think it's wrong to tell students that in another year their paper would have got an A as if grade boundaries change at random and it's luck of the draw

I think you are nit picking a bit. Students can easily look up the grade boundaries from year to year and check themselves anyway.

It's not confusing at all - quite the opposite. It shows very clearly how grade boundaries change. Dd understands it as do I.

I'm not against saying "grade boundaries change year on year" and explaining to pupils that the grade boundaries change based on national performance. Most sensible teachers do that.

I do think it's wrong to tell students that in another year their paper would have got an A as if grade boundaries change at random and it's luck of the draw.

Hypothetical example, there might be a student who is roughly a B grade attaining student. Obviously people have good days and bad days but roughly speaking that's probably where their attainment fits on the bell curve. I could say to them "but in 2016 you'd have got an A", but that's not actually true. If the grade boundaries were lower in 2016, it means the whole bell curve was probably attaining lower, so compared with the national cohort, the position in the bell curve wouldn't have changed. If they sat the 2016 paper with the 2016 cohort, the likelihood is it would have been a B. Me telling them that it would be an A in another year doesn't help them.

Does this help OP? It's referring to the NI examination board but the comparison table is useful, if you based the "old" CCEA grading to the 9-1 structure.

It's the main reason the stronger performing schools I've worked in have been very cautious with what we say about grades and tend to stick with "this is what the grade boundaries have looked like the last few years, but what really matters is you continue to read your feedback, act on it and aim to do the best you can"

I think I may have missed some nuance in your post because this is exactly what dds school has done? But you said you wished schools didn't say what the grade boundaries were in different years?

They have to come up with a grade as these are the beginnings of predicted grades for uni applications next September.

I wish schools wouldn't do that as they're not fair comparisons and it's no wonder parents and students get confused

It's not confusing at all - quite the opposite. It shows very clearly how grade boundaries change. Dd understands it as do I.

Foggie
I wish schools wouldn't do that as they're not fair comparisons and it's no wonder parents and students get confused.

The grade boundaries are issued based on the performance of the cohort in the year the paper was taken.

It's done for fairness. If nationally performance is down X% and the whole bell curve is slightly lower scoring then the grade boundaries will reflect that. If nationally the performance is higher then the grade boundaries will be higher.

When staff say "but in X year it would have been an A" they're not helping students in my opinion because that isn't the case.

An A in 2019 means that the candidate who sat 2019 papers in 2019, with the 2019 cohort was at X position in the bell curve so achieved an A.

A candidate sitting a 2021 paper or a school created mock paper might get the same raw mark as a student who got an A in 2019, but they're not comparable because this student is not in the 2019 cohort, sitting a 2019 paper.

It's the main reason the stronger performing schools I've worked in have been very cautious with what we say about grades and tend to stick with "this is what the grade boundaries have looked like the last few years, but what really matters is you continue to read your feedback, act on it and aim to do the best you can".

To be fair that is getting 7 or more 9s. A lot of pupils might be hoping for 1 or 2 9s in their best subject, which might be marginally more achievable.

I've noticed a few uni courses that weve been lookimg at have dropped their published entry grades for 2024.

That's really good. Our school do that too.

Three years of inflated grades is going to be tough on this cohort when they see their own grades.

Her school is telling them this as well which I think is very sensible of them as they are using these exams to award predicted grades.

Her school never predict 9s at gcse (a good few got plenty last year but 8 is the highest they predict)

The grade boundaries have changed so much it's a bit ridiculous. Dd has just done end of year 12 exams and got what would have been a B in 2019 for one subject and same marks would have been almost an A star last year.

It was messed up by 2020 onwards.

In 2019 it was clear that a 9 was not the 'new A' as so few pupils got all 9s. It wasn't expected that they would as it was really the top % of those who had scored an 8, the 'old' A.

In the last 3 years that completely changed so they were given out much more generously

2019 - 837 pupils got seven or more grade 9s
2020 - 2645
2021 - 3606
2022 - 2193
(and a lot getting these seven gcses at grade 9 actually took 10 or more GCSEs)

I worry for students who seem to think getting all 9s is realistic. There are hundreds of thousands ofstudents taking gcses.

I find it odd that there are 3 levels of A, basically 1 b and 2 Cs
There isn't.

The top two old grades have been replaced with 3 grades so the distribution of pupils who 'would have' got A/A star are now spread out through the 7/8/9 grades.

The B/C grades have been replaced with grades 4/5/6 and the distribution of students who 'would have' attained in the B/C bracket are now spread through the 4/5/6 grades.

It's a totally different system. It would really be much easier if 10 years in we still weren't working in "there's 2 A grades, no wait an 8 is an A star, a 9 is an A double star, there's two different C grades etc"

This is it.

9 = A **
8 = A*
7 = A

Rubbish!

I hope the school are managing those expectations.

The first year that 9s were introduced, there were a few hundred out of hundreds of thousands who achieved that. It was under 800 students in total who got 7 or more at grade 9.

Since then, with the switch to teacher assessed grades, it became more realistically possible, but I think they are moving back to the intended way of grading a 9 as a % of those getting an 8. It will only be 0.001% or something like that who could get all 9s.

I find it odd that there are 3 levels of A, basically 1 b and 2 Cs.

But i dont think more and more will get 9s as they have been told to award a similar proportion to 2019.

I agree. How did it all come about anyway?

7 is still an A

I hate the 7,8,9 nonsense

I wish they'd go back to how it was.

It's still the same for A Levels

This. And 7 is an A , 6 a B, 5 a strong C and 4 a just squeaked in C.

@christmastreefarm I agree.
My oldest dc got pretty much all 9s last summer and a couple of 8s.

My younger dc is now doing his GCSESs and thinks that a 6 or even a 7 isn’t good.
Party because his brother did so well, but also definitely partly because there are now so many grades higher than what would have been a B, which is a good grade. He has even articulated this to me - “an A sounds so much better than a 7”.

If the 8 and 9 were called A and A* and the 7 and 6 called A and B, I am sure pupils wouldn’t appreciate how good 6s and 7s are.
As PP said, the and * looks like the extra achievement to the young people without seeming to bump the other grades down.

Absolutely not true.

Please don't say things like that that are false. It leads to totally unnecessary stress in our teens when people downgrade their achievements with falsehoods.
4 is old C
5 is high C low B
6 is mid-high B
7-9 cover A and A star.
The % getting 4+ and 7+ were pegged to the old C+ and A+ percentages

Anything a 4 or above is a (level 2) pass.

And for some kids getting a 1-3 is an achievement.
For other kids even sitting the exam is an achievement.

Completely. My daughter looks at a 6 and thinks it's so low because there are 3 grades above it. I don't think that happened the old way as the 'stars' were more like an extra not the main grade.
If it helps the way I explain it to my students is that moving from 4 grades (A star, A, B, C) to 6 grades (4 5 6 7 8 9) doesn't actually change their attainment or the value of their grades. It just offers a level of granularity.

In terms of distribution GCSEs have a bell curve. The grade boundaries are set based on the performance of the cohort in any given year. For C+/4+ instead of cutting the bell curve into 4 sections, they cut into 6. A child hasn't done any better or worse if they get a 6 vs a B because they're still at the same point in the bell curve compared to their cohort. It's why thinking of the new grades as old grades isn't too helpful now, although it was useful when the changes first came in almost 10 years ago.

All the grades are is a ranking system of a cohort.