GCSE English Lit and Language review of marking

That's not from AQA. As the candidate is the one that requests the review, they decide what meets the threshold as they're the ones paying. AQA doesn't look for marks, so setting a mark limit makes no sense. A lot of schools are happy to pay for the review if the student is 1-2 marks away but this is absurd. You need to ask for them to show you where it says this or make it very clear what you need as it sounds like everyone is confused. Maybe the school thinks you're expecting them to pay.

That's news to me! And I would know.

For a start, AQA would not be talking about remarks...

Thanks.

I’ve just had an email from the teacher. He says he is surprised at ds’s low marks, and has requested the papers. He also says ‘The most up to date guidance from AQA says that a candidate is only entitled to a remark if they are within 3 marks of a Grade 4’.

Judging from MN, I’m not sure this is being widely followed, but I hope that he is going to have a good look at the papers and decide whether there are any glaring marking errors, and advise us accordingly.

He needs to do it but most schools have a fairly simple form. Ours is in the exams section of the school website. Might be worth having a rummage to see if there's one there.

We spoke to them on the phone then dd had to send an email request.

Thanks, this is helpful. Does ds need to give written consent for this? Just wondering if we need to go in or if I can do it over the phone.

It sounds like everyone's confused. You're asking for access to scripts - which can only be downloaded by the exams office.

I’ve spoken to the exams office and they directed me back to the teacher. He has said he will look into it today, but if I have no joy I’ll go back to the exams office. They have made it into a song and dance so I am surprised to hear it’s only a 10 minute job!

She may have just spoken to a teacher. It doesn't seem to make sense the exams officer would describe a simple download as a difficult process.

It can only be done by the exams office.

Can you not go to a different person in school. Mine was downloaded and back in 10 minutes.

Yep! That's insanity. They might not want you to go to review but giving you access to the work is hardly difficult.

It’s AQA! They are really fobbing me off.

Unless you've done a really weird exam board, it's not "quite a process" to get access to scripts at all.

My ds received a 3 for English language, when he’d been predicted a 5. It’s definitely his weakest subject, but he had done masses of past papers by the time of the actual exams, and felt that both had gone really well.

I’m pushing for a review but school are not being at all encouraging, they are reluctant to even ask for the papers ‘as it’s quite a process’.

His 6th form enrolment appointment is tomorrow and his other grades are great so I’m really hoping he can continue with his level 3 plans (mixture of A levels and a BTEC) and retake the English alongside if needed.

My child was 1 mark below a 5 in lit (prediction was a 5). Her teacher said that although we could ask for the paper to be reviewed it was unlikely to make a difference. She said that it's unusual for marks to be changed, so my daughter decided a 4 was fine. She graded higher than expected in language, which was the important mark for her next steps.

This is what I'm wondering too. The line to see the exams officer at DDs school was mostly kids wanting a grade 8/ 9 and they were 1 or 2 marks off. From everything I've read about these reviews, that only really makes sense for STEM subjects, not for essay subjects where it's really about whether the correct level was applied, and if it wasn't, the jump in marks tends to be big.

@ByHangrySloth is it the parents paying or the school?

When you say you put in loads is it normally because people are very near a higher grade or where they were predicted a better grade than they got? Do teachers at the school look at them first to advise whether to bother with a review or not? I guess the biggest fear is the Russian roulette element - have you received any that went down?

That’s really interesting - DD also on a laptop, so wonder if it’s something similar.

The kids I know personally whose marks went up last year it was generally quite large numbers and there was something off. None of them were 1 mark off and looking for an extra to get to next grade. It was students who were on track for an 8 and got a low 6, or a 5. All went up at least 1 grade and some 2. Mainly AQA but some Edexcel.

Do you think I shouldn’t hold out too much hope then? 😢

DS is WJEC too.

is 1 mark off a 9 in language

Was predicted a 9 in literature . Got a 9 in paper one but low 7 in paper 2 which was his best paper. Got an 8 overall

we’re happy with his grades so don’t wanr to risk going down.

I'm an exams officer. A review of marking just looks as the original marking to check its "reasonable" - they don't remark papers looking for extra marks.
AQA English lang/lit papers rarely increase by 1 or 2 marks in my experience - we put in loads each year and the vast majority come back the same. Any marks that go up usually increase by at least 3 marks.

Yh I guess that's the thing, it's hard to know what to do in those situations. I have a feeling my DDs was marked incorrectly. She has the exact same number of marks for both papers, despite missing a whole section in one of the papers, so would've lost nearly 30 marks just by doing that. I can't see how she managed to get the exact same number of marks on both in that situation.

On the whole DD is extremely good at self-reporting on exams, and is also entirely unbothered by admitting when she's massively messed up.

She's never ever had below a high 4 on an English lang paper, so a low 3 on her favourite is weird.

I think I'm also factoring in that her dyslexia means the examiners are dealing with phonetic spelling, creative punctuation and odd syntax but content that should be around a 7 in level (she generally loses a LOT of SPaG marks). So lots of room for marking to go in different directions.

I think that is the thing though - whether you know the 3 is right and the high 6 an outlier, or the high 6 is right and the 3 is the outlier.

My son was 1 mark off a 7 in English Lit (but got an 8 in Language which is is weaker subject of the two!). We requested the scripts from school and it turns out that paper 1 was scanned in incorrectly (he uses a laptop so his answers aren't in the answer booklet so it's a sightly different process). It made it really hard to follow as the pages are completely in reverse, ie page 8 first, page 1 last.

I can only imagine how annoying it must have been for the examiner - I found it really hard to read and I wasn't marking hundreds of them! He got a much higher mark in paper 2, which was scanned correctly.

Currently awaiting his teacher's opinion on putting in for a review, but I can't help but feel it has put him at a disadvantage (even subconsciously), so I think we will be putting in for a review regardless. It's so frustrating as he's had to overcome so much already (hence the laptop) and this has just added to that when it was meant to level the playing field for him.