100% in A level humanities paper

It’s the raw marks

Ive had two students get 100% on a paper in twenty years of teaching. Both super smart.

Are you sure it is 100% of the raw marks. The numbers students see on their results slips are standardised, so ‘100’ on there might mean 100 standardised marks but that can equate to anything over a certain number of raw marks depending what the paper is marked out of, eg 50 out of 60 may be ‘100’ just as 59 out of 60 would

We all know an A from the 80's/early 90s was a lot harder to achieve than an A* or however many stars they're on now.

I also did not know kids got breakdowns now of their marks. That's actually super useful. But I don't think it's right you can even get 100%. Pretty sure it was impossible in my day! An A was 75% roughly and was bloody hard to obtain.

Hang on, there are A**s now? I'm only early 30s and A was the highest grade possible for me at A level.

Dd got full marks on an AS RS paper. She was delighted and still likes to remind us!

If it’s a tick box process, then presumably if you think of something merit worthy that was not anticipated by the mark scheme, then you get no credit for it. Does that make the exam more of a feat of memory and exam technique than originality and genuine insight?

If it's impossible to get 100% then the paper is badly constructed. It should be very challenging but entirely possible.

One of DD’s friends did.
I think I heard on the radio that 3k plus students got A** in all their subjects, so i guess that’s a fair size cohort of super bright kids!

https://filestore.aqa.org.uk/sample-papers-and-mark-schemes/2022/june/AQA-70421E-MS-JUN22.PDF

here is an example of a mark scheme. Makes it easy to understand.

Years ago when A levels were 6 units of exams I taught a student who got 100 on 5 of his unit exams and 96 on the other paper. He was in top 3 marks in the country that year.

I got 100% in an A-level economics paper in late 90s. It’s not that odd as the exams have a mark scheme and as long as you make the points the mark scheme covers you get the marks. It is actually not very subjective at all.

I imagine for humanities it’s possibly a reflection that a few candidates are just way above the required/ expected level of both knowledge and critical/ analytical thought - ie obvious wider reading, and writing that is more like undergrad than A level.

Dd got 4 marks short of full marks for RE GCSE last year - sat a year early while out of school for MH reasons. I sat in on a couple of sessions marking her mocks sat at home with RE teacher. I can easily see how it can happen by looking at the marking scheme. Also easy to see how a great answer could lose marks if SPAG marks are awarded.

She returned to school this year and school outsourced some marking. Again in humanities, Dd was getting full marks and I can entirely see how this can happen as they need to mark according to the marking scheme.

Who knows how it will end up next Thursday, but for DD the way she writes sometimes looks like she isn’t properly using capital letters - this would be an issue in subjects that award SPAG marks. I assume the same holds here for a levels.

My brother got 100% on a history A level paper. I took the same paper a few years later... safe to say I did not get the same score. I got 5%. We do joke that we both hold records at our school for history though

@SuperSue77 candidates now get their scores, and the score boundaries for each grade are published on the day of results, so they can work out easily how close they were to the boundary. Can be vital for some who just miss a grade and want to go for a review of marking.

I teach English Lit, and some of my pupils got 100% in one of their English papers this year. I'm also an examiner and I do give some papers full marks. I got full marks myself when I was doing my A Levels but that was a long time ago!

I got 97% on the law gcse I did a few years ago as a mature student.

The mark scheme is as probably x marks for saying xyz plus award marks for any reasonable answer.

(And 96% fir recent professional exam which awarded 1 mark for each relevant answer so you could get 100% by just writing a lot of on point short responses in the 3 hours (which wasn't hard as a professional with 25 years experience versus the usual student trainee)

I got 100% in one of my English

I got 100% for both Business & Finance and English Lit in the early 00's. B&F I understood, Eng Lit less so - I hadn't actually read all of the book the essay question was on, I'd watched the film and based it on that

And I meant to say thanks for answering! @PatriciaHolm

I never knew that! A friend mentioned that his daughter was only marginally off an A in one subject and I wondered how they knew this. Do they say what grade equates to an A, B etc or would they have worked that out based on the score of someone they knew who had got an A?

Candidates routinely get their scores now yes. For example, DD knows she scored 87% on an RS paper. Her results came with scores and if they don't, you can ask.

It's on the results sheet candidates get now, I was surprised too!