Year 11 2023-24

@Panic71 DS thinks RS is the easiest and further maths is the hardest. My son's friend told me that PE GCSE is his hardest. I think because he took it thinking it would be an easy choice!

@JustHereWithMyPopcorn if the paper is a challenging one I'd assume the grade boundaries will be lower to allow for this. If it was summer 2023 he won't find it but if it was an earlier paper it should be available on the AQA website to look at, together with the mark scheme, if that would be helpful.

He says it looked like the front page of an actual exam paper. I guess they have just picked one that happens to be harder than recent years.

They could be writing their on papers (though that sounds like lot of unnecessary work to me). It should be obvious from the front page whether it is a 'real' exam or one they have constructed.

@TeenDivided its AQA higher paper. He said that the questions were more convoluted than those on the past papers. Could they be writing their own questions? Maybe it’s just exam pressure that made him think they were tougher.

My son who struggles academically seems to be doing the best in RE. Not sure if that's due to the teaching or the requirements, but he would say that's the 'easiest' I think. He's also on track for Level 2 passes in his 3 BTecs, which are supposed to be equivalent to Level 4 at GCSE but as he is doing so much better in them than his GCSEs I suspect they must actually be easier.

@Panic71 I think Art was the 'easiest' subject, BUT was equally the most time consuming. DC spent twice as long doing it as other subjects. We found Chemistry the hardest.

Papers do vary. If he is doing mock with the edexcel from 2023 the foundation paper was hard, don't know about the higher.

DS has had his first mock today (maths non calc). He says it much harder than the past paper questions he's been doing. How are they making them harder than actual GCSEs??

I know this is a really annoying question and much will depend on your own child’s interests, but which GCSEs are the easier in your opinions having watched your child experience them so far? For us, I would say Sports studies.
History much harder than expected!

The levels in the mark scheme do not correspond to grades. There are only ever 4 levels in Lang and even I don't know how many marks = what grade.

Grades don't exist until the papers are marked which is why boundaries shift each year.

If you have specific AQA questions, I'm happy to help.

Yes, the banding levels have confused me!
I've found the overall total marks needed but we'll need to go through Paper 2 as well and I really have no clue how many points he'd pick up for his creative writing. He hasn't done that bit yet for a start as I gave him some ideas and told him to do it the next day but it's still sitting, not done, on the table! Thanks for your help 😊

You will know if the paper is tiered as the front page will say Foundation or Higher on it.

For non tiered Eng Lang GCSE you need around half marks to get a grade 4.

e.g. see here:

Ah. Are you perhaps confusing 'levels' in the marking with overall final grades?
The banding levels are for marking purposes. But the total marks are then used for the GCSE grade which will be listed somewhere else on the exam board website.

I've just had a look and it does say levels 1-9 but the mark scheme only gives number of marks needed for certain questions up to Level 5 which is where I think I got confused and assumed it was a Foundation paper. So I'm not sure if I'm reading it wrong? The main question about the text was out of 15 marks and it says you needed 10-12 to get Level 4 and 13-15 to get Level 5. But that's only one question so I would have thought total marks would change the level awarded anyway? But I did think when we went through it that they were making it very hard to get a Level 4! The creative writing task's mark scheme only gives criteria up to level 5 too.

The old spec had tiers, but still had letter grades.
Not sure what happened right at the start of the new spec.

Oh, it was a past paper from 2017 I think, so maybe it's changed since then?

@AmyandPhilipfan Was this iGCSE or Wales? I only ask as English language GCSE isn't split to Foundation and Higher in England.

@Waspie my DD, to my surprise, said she will go to any 6th form interview if they make her an offer -- to get a feel for the interview and the school. She went to a taster day at Oxford in Nov and apparently they were told any interview practice is good. She's applied to 5 local schools: her own school (1st preference), one selective school, and rest are all local non-selective, distance-based - which she isn't keen on. They all have grade minimums for Maths and Science.

She will only consider 2 offers though: her own school and the selective (if offered). It's super selective though.. I guess it will depends on grades.

I went through a past English Language paper the other day with my son, modelling what I thought were the answers and how to include quotations etc. I thought it would be pretty easy to get a Level 4 on it but actually it was quite hard. For the long question about the text extract there were 15 marks available and we'd included 7 points they mentioned in the mark scheme but we also had a lot more points that weren't included which my son thought we wouldn't get points for but as the scheme said 'responses may include' I'm guessing other answers could also be given. Also I'm not sure if it was a mark per point or a couple of marks for each one. But anyway, it was harder than I thought to get to the 4 on a Foundation paper! Then there's the creative writing part. The mark scheme is very vague (to a non English teacher) so I wouldn't have a clue how to mark that!

Reading another thread in this topic I learned that interviews for state sixth forms aren't actually interviews. Apparently they can't be used to select students and are there only to assist the student and check that they've making sensible choices based on their abilities and their chosen career path (where known).

Thought I'd share this in case others where like me and hadn't realised this

The question of starting with four a levels and dropping one is interesting. How would smaller schools manage to work out if they have the numbers to run the course with this policy? I can see that it would be okay for large colleges.

DS has applied for 4 A levels at only one of his six applications. This is at a larger sixth form college and after talking at length to the tutor (he teaches both subjects) at the open evening. The two subjects are closely related - Ancient History and Classical Civilisations. DS also wants to do History and English Lit.

The other schools and colleges he's applied to don't do Ancient History at all. One does Classical Civilisations and at the others he's chosen Politics (where offered) or Biology as the third A level. He wants to do EPQ, but obviously not if he's doing four A Levels.

DP isn't keen on the idea of four A Levels (he did 5 and said it nearly killed him mentally and emotionally), and all of the schools and colleges we have visited have warned against doing four, unless there is a very good reason to do so, as University's only tend to offer on the results of three A Levels.

@Waspie if it's the 10th subject and predicted grade is low I would encourage dropping - unless related directly to career? It's a hard one.

No idea how blocks work are but our school has 5 of them :-) Maths and FM are not listed in a single block, so not sure how they can be taken together.

There is also a separate option for Accelerated Maths, I believe that's for studying the Maths A-levels in one year... not sure.

I'd look at the dress code for the college and match that or slightly smarter.
For our local colleges anything clean and tidy would have been fine, including hoodie and jeans.

Ah mine will be perfectly happy to drop one, I'm just worried she won't like economics but get stressed if she thinks she has to catch up on eg RE. I'll see what she/school thinks