Help with AQA English literature GCSE from teachers or examiners please

Definitely a risk sending both papers at the same time. Daughter was 1 mark off a 7 in Biology. Our school is also extremely unhelpful, so I stupidly relied on Copilot (which to be fair is often helpful) when deciding which paper to send off for review first. We sent off Paper 2 and it went down by 1 mark. Have now sent off Paper 1. If it comes back with 1 mark up I will be totally kicking myself 😭

Hi @honeyhelps have a look at the figures from Ofqual here. Reviews of marking and moderation for GCSE, AS and A level: summer 2025 exam series - GOV.UK The most likely outcome is that the grade will be unchanged. The second most likely is that it will increase by a grade. It is rare for grades to go down and especially in your DCs case where they routinely perform at a higher level it would be incredibly unlikely.

In 2025, 5.3% of English Lit grades were challenged but only 1.3% changed.
Reviews of marking and moderation for GCSE, AS and A level: summer 2025 exam series - GOV.UK

I remember feeling sick putting my DCs in for review, worrying that it might turn out even worse (even if that is incredibly unlikely). It's a horrible process, you have my sympathy. If it helps, a year later it is a non-issue here and can help high achieving DCs process that a blip isn't the end of the world

I have read in X/Twitter about huge disparity in marks that even seasoned examiners were shocked. I think it is worth it.
we use WJEC but I have followed these teachers on Twitter for years.

Yep. AI isn't thinking about what it's doing - it's just churning out likely answers based on patterns. It's why it is not reliable for this sort of thing.

Examiners are trained to think about the questions they're marking and to apply the mark scheme according to the standard for that paper.

It's rare that I recommend reviewing without someone who knows what they're doing looking at it first, but in this case I think you'll have to.

What exam board?

AI is notoriously unhelpful with English I'm
afraid.

Hey - I totally see your dilemma and we are in a similar boat - our school is being less than helpful and we've not even received our papers back yet! School have already said it is not their policy to look at the papers so we'll be on our own once we do get them in trying to figure out how to proceed. Also running out of time if we do want to submit one at a time.

I'm not sure if you've tried this already or how good it will be but have you tried putting the scripts into AI? If there isn't an obvious problem I might try that out of curiosity. I hope you find someone to help - it really isn't fair how much the level of support differs between schools. Best of luck and I hope your DC gets the results he wants - please let us know how you get on.

All enquiries after results are handled through exams offices normally.

Is the system different for different exam boards? DDs was edexcel and we are under the impression that we can send her papers for review or remark ourselves without involving school at all if we don’t want to. Have we got it wrong?

One at a time because if one goes up and one goes down, you can end up worse off.

When you say "waving between banding" what you're likely seeing is that the quality of the response is different in relation to different assessment objectives. That's not abnormal.

We’re in a similar position to OP. It’s stressful!

Can I ask @MrsHamlet why it’s better to only do one paper at a time? My DD didn’t perform as well as expected on the poetry paper so presumably we’d send that one first? But the examiner was wavering between bandings on both papers, so we were thinking of sending both for review - hopefully after school had commented but no response from them yet and I may give up on hearing from them.

I didn’t consult the teacher, I paid for both papers to be reviewed on results day and she got the review back last Thursday. She went up 4 marks and a grade. If you feel strongly just bite the bullet and pay for the review.

Very similar scenario for us last year. My DC was predicted an 8 and got a 6. I ended up paying for both papers marking to be reviewed. Nothing changed as the mark scheme had been' applied correctly' even if the senior examiners who reviewed it would have awarded marks differently.

GCSE English is notorious for this as it's more subjective when marking. If you can afford it then get the paper reviewed so at least you feel you have done everything you can.

Best of luck to your son. His results were great so he's in a good position for his next steps.

Reviewers don't have "working days". If you put it in tomorrow, you should be okay.

If the school won't look at it, and I understand why they might not - I'm drowning in requests from parents right now - and you have the wherewithal to pay, then do it. But do one at a time.

To clarify after other messages – I would be happy to have a look at an MFL paper using my knowledge of the subject and the exams. I would not want payment and I am not affiliated with any exam board. @LividRoasting is correct that that would not be OK if I were an examiner employed by a specific exam board.

ETA: having read @honeyhelps' update, I misread the OP and thought the DC's grades were three below PG in all subjects. So ignore my first post haha! Sunday morning and I wasn't awake clearly.

But yes I agree with PPs, just put both papers in for review if the mark is a real surprise. I presume you have checked to see if there is anythign obvious as @MrsHamlet says - like a question missed out, or marks not added up correctly?

It is not a regrade but a review of marking. As long as the original examiner has banded the answers fairly and the marks add up no change is made. It is not a detailed regrade of answers.

I would just do this.
English is a hard one for teachers to give advice on as it is subjective to some degree and they are biased in favour of your child. If you can afford to pay for someone to review it just use that money to get it remarked.

If you can afford the money up front and afford to lose it just put both papers in for review. If the overall grade goes up your money will be refunded.
4 years ago my son's English lit grade went from a 7 to a 9 on review - a question went from almost no marks to full marks. He'd been too clever for is own good and answered in a v non standard way!

If you have the scripts, you can look at them and see whether there's anything obvious wrong.

Did he answer all the questions he was meant to? If it's AQA, I've had capable students skip the unseen questions to prioritise the others - or miss them by mistake.