GCSE Support - the results are in

We heard from a friend yesterday that a boy in his son's class )at our local outstanding boys school got a string of 8's and 9's but failed English and is not allowed to say on for 6th form as they don't offer any resits. I am sure he will be welcomed at DD's school (which is a couple of hundred metres away) with those grades and offered a resit). Bit worried about how strict they are as that is the school that younger DS is at although no GCSE's for him for 4 years).

I agree it is shocking, the school should be supported to put it on for the few that want to study French.

Gosh that's shocking!! I know it won't make any difference for your kid but I'd be writing to the LEA and your MP about that - it's not exactly an unusual subject! Your poor kid, that's incredibly unfair.

TBH from what I know at DC1's school the OCR computer science results were fairly typical. She hit her predicted grade (9) as did the couple of mates she knows about. Her school didn't provide raw marks or grade boundary information, but I know that she's said historically the grade boundaries in computer science have always been higher than maths and combined science.

Sorry just double checking, a review is just that, it doesn't change the result? Just downloading the paper work and top of every page is that it Grades can go DOWN

It looks like ds will prob resit maths in November, can someone pls explain how it works? Clearly there will be less students sitting and most will be Foundation resits.
Therefore the range of marks will be limited. How are the grade boundaries set? Will it be a different method as there will be all clustered around the 3 to 5 grades form the summer

Thank you. Have now seen the breakdown, 9 in one paper 4 in the other. I am going to ask for a review, at least if we see what went wrong it makes more sense. Thanks

Yesterday evening DS was casually wondering if he should have done some revision to get higher grades.

I think it's dawning on him how lucky he was to only fail one exam. But he's a bit gutted he only got 6 for his beloved geography. I hope he's learnt his lesson, my nerves can't take it again.

@Justonemoreepisode I know our comp sci teacher has requested a number of remarks as there are a high number a couple of marks off the grade boundary - much lower than expected.

As well as just missing out on Physics, we also found out that French A Level is now unlikely to run due to insufficient student numbers. I am really disappointed for DS. It's his favourite subject and he is very good at it. I've looked around locally and can't find anywhere offering it at A Level. Language provision seems woefully inadequate. So now two A levels that he can't take.

We had an unexpected Eng Lang grade here too. I watched a Mr Salles (English teacher) YouTube video from just after the exams where he predicted that some lower grades would go up and some higher grades would come down. He said that the pandemic affected this cohort's education differently. Some students still had access to full online (or in person if they are boarding) education. Some students also spent the lockdowns reading a lot more and maybe writing their own stories etc. At the other end, many students missed out on a significant amount of learning (+ skills and exam technique). The grades are essentially a competition. If the top 3% get a grade 9, then students who may be talented enough to a get a 9 most years may be pushed down to an 8 or a 7 by those who had access to a full education and take the top grades. At the other end, more students have missed out so will get lower grades. This means your grade 4 student could get bumped up to a 5 or 6 as there are already so many people being given grades 1-4 who scored lower than them. It's a normal distribution graph so there are always more people with the middle grades. The gist of what he was saying (if I recall correctly) is that there are more students at the upper and lower ends this year due to COVID and therefore students have been shunted towards the middle (up or down). In theory this means that the students aren't necessarily getting grades that reflect their ability or that are comparable with previous year groups. It does show their national ranking though. I don't know how to link to his video, sorry.

Thank you very much @Pintery this is great advice

Yes you are right to say there is a bit of a reality check needed on his academic potential maybe - he was expected much better and we did think he knuckled down well and would come through. I think he was gaming a bit more than he let on. All I can think is god help us for the next ones which are definitely not as bright hahaha!

But thank you - I will look a bit more in detail at some uni courses before he gets ahead of himself :)

At our school they can only resit English or maths. The maths they have two resit chances, one in January and one in June. That's it though. If they fail again in June they can't continue.
We were told they cannot do anything other than a level 2 in business, IT or Leisure and Tourism. This is supposedly a DofE requirement, not the school.

He has a few he likes but there has been a number of times where because he has SEN/disabilities, he is pigeonholed as not bright. As he says, his lungs don't work well, nothing wrong with his brain. It took them until he moaned in their year to test him and put him up 4 groups for one subject alone.
He has voiced that he has had enough and wants to move. He said he doesn't want to have to travel 20 minutes a day for a school he's not at all keen on. He can still keep in touch with his mates so that's not an issue.
He was planning a move for sixth anyway because current school doesn't offer two of the subjects he wants.

He has also seen this year's timetable and several of the teachers he can't stand and says they talk to him like he's slow.

I had a read through the 2022 GCSE results day thread and it seems it was a bit of an issue last year too. This year seems worse.

A poster a few pages back suggested it's been a problem since they changed the Literature exams and the marking scheme and it's impacting A Level take up.

I wish I'd read last years thread at the time. I think I would have been less blasé about Eng Lit being a comfortable high grade for DS and looked into what was expected myself.

Any year 10/11 mums who are reading this thread take heed!

I think that the advice is to ask to see the script for the exam and get the schools opinion as to whether a review is likely to find an extra mark. Anecdotally - 3 marks max seems to be the boundary. Don't go against school advice.
DD is 3 marks off a 9 in one subject but it's not one she's pursuing so we're not asking for a remark.
Regarding English she seems to be in the proportion that got the marks expected.

So DS has 3 results that are borderline, Biology 1 mark off a 5, History 1mark off a 5 and Geography 4 marks off a 6. He let himself down with lack of revision and focus, he knows this!
He wants to do Geography at A level, we're waiting to see if 6th form college will accept him as they ideally want a grade 6.

So is it worth getting any of these subjects reviewed (a grade 4 to a 5 and a 5 to a 6) considering most don't change and apart from geography he doesn't intend to take them further. I guess I don't want to do him a disservice by not pursuing it if it will look better on his CV etc further down the line? Thanks.

I seem to remember exactly the same discussions about English in 2019. There were lots of students getting a couple of grades lower than they expected and lots getting higher as well.
It didn't affect our school too badly but it was still the subject with the most discrepancies between predictions and achieved grades (is a selective school so in our case it was mostly lower grades than expected).
There was some suggestion at the time that examiners mark grammatical errors more strictly than a lot of teachers (the sort of errors one sees all the time on here that people just think are normal eg "I seen" or "I went to lay down"). Obviously I assume English teachers know those are wrong but there was a suggestion that they did not often correct frequent errors like those. I don't know if it's true but that was the suggestion given at the time for why some students were surprised at the results.

@ReformedWaywardTeen He sounds SO unpleasant! And the whole GCSE journey for your DD sounds to have been way below what it should have been 😞 I think I would consider a change of school for her for this next stage. So difficult for your DS though - does he get on well with his teachers currently? Year 11 is an awful time to change schools.

When are resits? Is this something that is done at school or college? I didn’t know it was possible to resit as the school have never said anything about this.

SL maths on IB is less full on than alevel maths I think but you need to choose the maths option to suit the skillset of your young person. Still a jump from GCSE but not as steep is what we have been told.

Yes. Their grade was higher on their certificate. Certificates aren’t done until all of the reviews are complete.

Thank you.

He was a nightmare to the extent her friend reported his behaviour to the head of year. At one point the other teacher said she and two friends could use the art studio at lunch to catch up. He came in, and states shouting at DD-not the others- that she should not be in there and to leave or face detention!

He never apologised for it, the head of year did.

I think it's probably the school were not prepared.

I actually pulled one on it- school had meetings arranged for next steps in advance- and I said I felt the school had failed them all, had been complacent and knew at the very least by January 2021 that school life was very much null and void. They could have, at that stage, restarted in year 10. I've never known a school before that to pick options in year 8. Options evening was March 2020- cancelled as it was due for the first week of lockdown. So they had to pick via a brochure.
They were very slow to get online learning started and often teachers didn't show up.

The guy I said it to didn't argue. I had a feeling he had already heard it from other parents.

I'm considering looking at alternative schooling. We have just moved and have a rated excellent, high grade school literally a 2 minute walk away. DS even said he wants to ask if he can transfer as he's year 11 from September and said he is genuinely concerned.

What also annoyed me is the history teacher was nowhere to be seen, and wasn't answering email. Of the parents/students we know if, all have failed despite being predicted 5s and 6s. All are very angry. The kids from the other class sailed through and did as expected. Clearly she needs sacking.

My dd is another one who got 6 for Eng Lit, when predicted 8. She was 2 marks off a 7. Interesting reading on here that it's been an issue nationally.