GCSE English Lit and Language review of marking

That’s good that they let him start—my DC had to go to an alternative school for a week, before the 6 was confirmed. 😒

Thaats good news
Some Colleges want a 5 or 6. DS was 1 mark off the 6 but they let him enroll while the remark was being done but warned him there was a small chance he couldn't start without the 6, in fact a friend who works there who is HOD for one of his subjects said that wasn't going to happen
He got the news that he had his 6 on the day he started!

Thanks. College have confirmed he doesn't need to resit now.

I’d double check with the college as I believe it’s the language only that they need the 4 in. My DD has a 3 in lit (even after the review which got no extra marks as she was only 1 mark off. 4) and doesn’t need test as she got a 6 in language.

Hi, so our son was 1 mark off a pass in English Lit and Lang. He got no more marks in Lang but 11 were given in Literature so he has now got a grade 4.

Does anyone know if this now means he doesn't have to resit language?

i am waiting for the college to get back to me x

It wasn't me that asked the teacher, it was my DS. They want the teacher's thoughts and views. They are neuro divergent and have struggled to accept what they think is an unfair mark. They value and respect the teacher and so are likely to listen to them. My nervousness is not my DS's. If the teacher suggests pursuing a review my DS will absolutely want to pursue it.

Absolutely this.

Nothing more frustrating for a teacher than to have their time wasted.

I had this once. I gave my feedback after spending a fair amount of time looking through all their papers at their request, and then after I emailed them my thoughts, the parent replied to say that they had never intended to risk a review, but they were just interested in my opinion anyway. Ffs.

That is like our English Lang. A 3 in paper 1 and 6 in paper 2.

Not heard back from school or teachers...

We’ve just put an English Lit paper 1 in for review. DD got a low grade 3 in Paper 1 and a high 6 in paper 2. Her teacher said Paper 1 was marked very harshly. She needs 10 marks to move up a grade, so quite unlikely, but not impossible given the situation.

DS went up 8 which I thought was crazy but 13 is worse!!!!
Ds was only 1 off the grade above, if he had needed 8 we probbaly wouldn't have remarked

Using AI to do what? It doesn't have access to the mark scheme so it's not going to help you with this.

If you don't trust the teacher, then there's no point in wasting their time.

Ds's teacher has agreed to look at papers (took ages to get the script) but I would be very nervous of doing a review even if teacher recommends it. You may have seen my previous posts where I tell the story of my eldest losing 27 marks in a review for A levels a few years ago. He kept the original grade but was one mark off the lower grade.

What additional checks would you do on top of teacher's view to reassure someone as nervous as me. I was thinking of using AI?

I don't think teacher will suggest seeking a review but that's just a gut feeling. If they do I will get nervous.

That is quite shocking - could you tell from looking at the original paper? Did they just miss off one question for example?

My daughter’s language review has gone up 13 marks so she now has a 9. How can they miss by 13 marks!?

@TheyNotLikeUs no idea, I'm afraid Reviewers don't know the final outcome.

If there is a grade change does it take longer for that to be communicated than if there isn't a grade change i.e. is there another hoop to jump through @MrsHamlet ?

We're waiting on the only one paper we sent for review. We decided not to do any others @Examinetheexams .

Someone posted something helpful about it being a lesson in accepting imperfection.

There is no quota

My daughter got her review of AQA Eng lang paper 1 back last week and the one paper went up by 8 marks (just one question on the paper had 8 marks added). Went up from a 6 to a fairly high 7, school had advised they didn't think it would change. I think it's odd this can be that far out on one question! Makes me tempted to put all the papers in (although cost prohibitive) if they can be that wrong.

Oh that is annoying to be one mark off. I have two kids sitting 2 aqa exams each. Kid 1 was 6 marks off eng lit and 2 marks off eng lang. gained 12 marks and 3 marks on first stab at papers. Both grades went up to a 8 and 7. Kid 2 was 1 mark off eng lang and 2 marks of eng lit. No joy from first run of papers awaiting second run of papers. Really hope this one is successful too!

We've just heard back from the review of DC's AQA English Lit paper 2. It was one mark off the next grade and was reviewed because some of the annotations didn't match the given mark. Outcome was that there is no change to the mark.

Congrats, DS had a similar uplift with AQA

I posted earlier about an increase in 12 marks in eng lit and we have also had a 3 mark increase in eng lang. both up a grade each. Aqa.

What have you decided @TheyNotLikeUs?

Part of me (irrationally) feels like they will have awarded their quota of changed marks already so it will be even tougher at review. I know this shouldn’t in reality be the case.

EO form says tomorrow is last day to request reviews for us. Would have liked more time to decide really.

I think we should all feel aggrieved on behalf of the DC who had their thunder stolen on results day! It's also really difficult as a parent to know how to navigate it as you don't want to disparage their grades (particularly as in many cases they are the correct grades awarded) nor do you want to jeopardise their results with the chance they get lowered further. It's a horrible spot to find yourself in with your DC. However, navigating disappointment is a really important life lesson and building resilience is one of the things great leaders identify as having helped them through life. It's not that they never failed, it's the ability to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and renavigate that gives them strength. As parents of children with 'perfect grades' have said they worry that the wheels may come off if they don't continue in that same trajectory.

We have finally submitted English Lit and Lang for review. I think it may be an awful lot of money down the drain but I do want to offer my DC the opportunity to have their work evaluated again. There was one essay question they had scored a 2 on and I almost celebrated as its definitely grounds for a marker to re-evaluate it.

I think in my DCs case there were a number of reasons we were surprised and perhaps a bit dismayed by being awarded 6's. Their mocks and previous exams had all come out 7/8/9 and predicted grades were 7,8. They were invited to additional revision sessions for pupils expecting 8 or 9s and had won a school award for English. They did get 8 and 9 in humanities GCSEs so they can evaluate sources and write a good essay. Having seen the scripts I think a couple of things struck me:

1. DCs writing looked childish and unkempt and they had gone back to printing rather than using cursive. It made me wonder if, as when we judge people on first appearance, there is an element of this in the presentation of written work and they have to 'work' harder to impress the examiner
2. their writing wasn't actually as strong as I expected it to be given their predicted grades from school! I wish I had seen examples of their written work before as we may have been more realistic and would have given them a few comments stylistically. Anyway the review will give an opportunity for an examiner who is sick to the back teeth knows the mark scheme inside out to take another look at DCs work. It was an itch that had to be scratched, just couldn't shake off the but what-if? So we will probably be the last result out in October and apologies examiners for giving you more work!

Sorry also for the essay, the whole review process has been something swirling in my head for a month and I can see from this thread that I am not alone. Good luck to all still waiting, may the review gods shine down on us!