AQA GCSE English reviews

My advice would be to contact the school via the exams officer / class teacher and ask for her exam scripts to be returned. Depending on the school, the request for exam scripts may need to come directly from the student.

Where I work, the process would be for the class teacher - or someone else if the class teacher was no longer available (eg. moved schools / retirement / mat leave) - to review the scripts (the written exams) and essentially remark them / moderate the marks given. The teacher would then advise if they felt the exam board had marked wrongly and would suggest submitting the paper for a re-mark if they didn't agree. This comes at a cost to the parent/carer if the mark doesn't change and there is also a risk the mark could go down.

As a teacher, we honestly want the best for the students. I have two GCSE students who were one mark off a higher grade yesterday and have emailed them and suggested they request the papers so that I can review them if they'd like me to.

With no disrespect to parents (I know how much you want the best outcomes for your DC), please just be aware that a 'review' means your child's teacher looks over and re-marks the script unpaid, before suggesting that you ask the exam board for an official remark. I've seen a remark at A-Level this week come back several marks lower, but still keeping the original grade. Unless it's one or two marks off the upper grade or a few marks off and affects your child's future choices, I would honestly advise that if the class teachers don't disagree with the board's marking, it isn't worth pursuing a remark.

Sorry to hear so many students have been disappointed this summer.....

I just had an email back saying that no one would even look at emails until the 9th. Maybe I need to dig a little deeper on their website.

Anybody finding the same with OCR English Lang and Lit? My dd working consistently at a 7 and felt the exams went really well, worked really hard but came out for a 6 and 5. Not bad marks at all but it has completely thrown her as she wanted to do A level and this is now in doubt. She has also noted that some of her friends got surprise high grades when predicted 5's.

My DC was predicted a 9 in English Language and got a 5! One mark off a 6. So it is interesting to hear that others have had similar experiences. I can't think of a good reason to request the paper though (not a criticism of those who are, I just don't think it is going to make a difference to my particular DC whether he has a 5 or a higher mark).

@Franticbutterfly how is the exam officer not in school for dealing with reviews etc? I’m genuinely shocked if that’s the case!

My DD was 2 marks short of a 5 for English Language (Edexcel) as a result the college have refused her to do A levels. How do we go about requesting a remark? I have emailed the school but they don't open until 9th Sept. I wasn't going to do it, but having read these threads it might be worth it.

We've asked for both Literature and Language to be reviewed (AQA) and have had some communication from the school that they have also raised a ' whole school concern' with AQA but I'm not really sure what that entails.

DC was predicted an 8 for Language and just scraped a 7 and was predicted an 8 for literature and got a 5. Thankfully their next steps haven't been affected by the grades but we would like some clarity - if it turns out that they deserved the grades award then so be it!

The computer does the adding up, no jiggery pokery at all!

what I have found is either missed questions, missed pages or a senior examiner agreeing that the markscheme has been incorrectly applied (this is the ‘remark’ bit) and the level changes, resulting in mark changes

I’ve had many not shift at all, I’ve had some shift a grade and several in the last few years shift by up to three grades
if your English dept is willing to reread the paper that can be helpful - I put a two week limit on it as I was overwhelmed and basically at one point I was remarking half the year to recommend reviews or not.

We're Edexcel here, but have asked for reviews of both papers. DS predicted 4 for Lit, but came away with one mark short of a 9, astonishingly enough. However he just scraped into a 5 for lang (thankfully at least - he needed that to carry on at his school's 6th Form), which is what he was predicted. We were just wondering if it is likely for there to be such a big discrepancy between the 2 papers? However he has historically struggled massively with English his whole school career, so perhaps language is much harder than lit for someone like him? FWIW he qualified for extra time and typed his papers, so we are not sure if it is a paper marking issue, or just that he was able to perform well in one aspect but not in another

We're exactly the same. Reassuring the see this thread! Good luck all.

I've had an aqa paper back already which has clearly missed a page. Makes the difference between the 6 (given) and the 8 (expected)

If you can get your teachers to request papers, DO

We reviewed EngLit last year as dd predicted 8 and got a 5. Thankfully she was allowed to take EngLit at sixth form based on prediction.

Review came back late September and she was awarded an 8! Exam board think she was given someone else’s grade. School said that’s quite rare though.

Am I right that if you get a copy of the exam script, you see the marks awarded on each question, so can add them up yourself to see if any mistakes were made? Or does some jiggery-pokery happen to transform raw scores into the scores provided with the grades? I'm trying to work out whether anyone whose DC had a lower grade than expected (or who is one or two marks below a grade boundary) should order the script in the first instance? I assume there's no downside (other than the fee)?

@DoThePropeller we had exactly the same! Predicted an 8. Came out the exams feeling really good. Ended up with a 6 and Distinction in spoken element.

Tending towards not going for a review as 11 marks off a grade 7 and that seems like an unlikely jump. Especially weighed against the risk of losing a few marks and dropping down to a 5.

Predicted a 7/8 and got a 6, with a distinction for the speaking element (although apparently this doesn’t impact grade). We’ve not got the raw mark though.

Also getting a Lang review. DS worked really hard on his English, about the only subject he put masses of effort into. Such was his confidence after the exams he was considering it as a back up a level. He got a 5 in both. He was expecting 7's.

School have requested ds’s exam papers for a few subjects, including English language. We will see whether his teachers recommend a review with the exam boards once they have looked at them.

Just coming to place mark . Dd didn’t do as well in English language. AQA here , we don’t have a mark , except for a p on the paper which I’m told is a pass for the oral section. Two grades down from what she was predicted.
have emailed school to see if the know the mark , no response yet.

luckily college have got her into resit very quickly and she’s been accepted onto her course so hopefully she can sort it quickly herself.

she thought it went well the test , she must have been having a bad day 🤷‍♀️

or a really hard paper, strange that there’s so many that struggled

Thanks for starting the thread @@WhereAreWeNow . I didn't want to bang on about it on the other thread but the comments about the school over predicting or the DCs finding the exam hard etc. are just not the case for us. This is not a new syllabus, these are experienced teachers in a grammar school that gets excellent results and they know what they are talking about. Our mocks are harshly marked too (DS got a 6 in Biology mock, predicted an 8 and got a 9 in the real thing). It is quite possible that certain markers are are just being incredibly harsh while others are not to explain the significant disparities rather than teachers not knowing how to teach Macbeth.

We have requested a review.

Agree with this.

I would also add, predicted grades are terribly unreliable, so I would not base your decisions on whether to go for a review on that. Depending on the research, accuracy of predictions has been found to be as low as 16%..

Good luck to those that decide to get a review.

It was the same last year - lots of strange results in English Language in particular.