Help! GCSE Paper Re-Mark advice

[honeydue3]

Hi, Has anyone had any luck going up a grade in their GCSE after a re-mark/check? My son is missing 3 marks off a higher grade in Maths and 4 marks in English.

My DS is feeling down as now he has to change 2 of his A Level choices. he did well in his other subjects - 6 and 7s but he needs the 6 for Maths and English.
We are also applying for retakes in November but not sure how successful that will be as he will be studying his other subjects.....any advice very welcome.
One very stressed Mummy!!

It is frustrating when they achieve better mock results as I thought the general trend is that they do better or at least the same

This year has been a particularly difficult year to predict results as grade boundaries are not as stable as they usually are. Schools have had to make some estimations regarding grade boundaries this year. There have been some surprises!

I think it depends on how flexible the school is, some are strict with their policy and accept higher grades than other.

He doesn’t want to take maths A level but he needs the maths GCSE to take Economics.

(Sorry for the repeat messages)

LIZS · 28/08/2022 15:10

If his school thought him capable despite bring a 5 would they not have offered him the A level anyway? Tbh taking A level Maths even from a 6 would be a challenge.

Was trying to reply to LIZS message above

@surreygirl1987

Gone up 11 marks?? how did that happend?
I am now worried it could also go down a bunch of marks

@Nellle From reliable teachers on the MN Secondary Education boards. I believe it changed with the move to 9-1 GCSEs, though may be wrong on that.

I'm a Head of English too and send back hundreds of remarks every year. I haven't noticed any change from "remarking" to "reviewing", but thank you for the info, very interesting! My exams officer and board obviously didn't think I needed to know! Unless the change happened before I became Head of Dept about 3 years ago? I suspect it's a change of wording rather than a change in practice.

Anyway, I always prep/advise any student who was close to a boundary to remark/review, but ultimately it's up to them. Did about 150 this year. Makes a huge difference to both the students and our headline figures every year. The poster who says "to find 4 marks would be super rare" is miles off the mark, in the case of my exam board anyway. It's depressing but that's the nature of English marking.

@Nellle The impression I have is that with English marks can move more wildly because you 'band' answers and then give marks within a band? So if a marker incorrectly bands then that would come out as unreasonable in a review and so marks could jump up (or down) a band? What they apparently shouldn't do is just tweak a mark up or down within a band (I think). This could be rubbish, I'm only a lay person.

Anyway I live in hope. I have asked DD's college to cast their eyes over DD's Eng Lang just to put my mind at rest the markers haven't wrongly banded her Q5s badly enough to mean a formal review would be worth it.

@TeenDivided That makes sense - so if the reviewer disagrees on the band they'll change it, but won't change it if it's one or two marks within a band. We do still get returns that have gone up by 1, others up 10+, one year a student went down 17, that was awful.

I do get the impression they now use the word "review" rather than "remark" as a deterrent and to maintain their credibility!

others up 10+ That's what I like to hear

Gone up 11 marks?? how did that happend? I am now worried it could also go down a bunch of marks

It happened because English marking is so subjective and examiners race through them, sometimes only skimming them!

Yes, in theory it could go down a bunch of marks. However, I've seen this happen far far less. That's why it is risky asking for a review if you're not closer to the upper grade boundary than the lower one. It's a bit of a gamble.

An interesting piece of research came out a few years ago, I believe in 2019, about reliability of grades. English and History were thr least reliable (when compared to chief examiner judgements). The article argued that only 1 in 4 grades were 'correct' 🥴

@TeenDivided Yes, it does happen, so good luck to your DD!

Hopefully by the time you speak to the school, the board's online results analysis service will have sorted itself out so you can make a decision. The websites have been dire so far and it's impossible to see how students marks break down question by question.

I suspect it's a change of wording rather than a change in practice.

No, it's a change in both wording and practice. My exams officer won't let us use the word 'remark' when speaking about results to parents and pupils, as he says that's inaccurate as the paper isn't actually remarked any more.

tbh I suspect a 3 is a fair result, but I can imagine markers getting fed up with her handwriting and kind of giving up. However I very much doubt there's a load of extra marks hiding somewhere, and if college can't see them then that's fine.

@surrsurreygirl1987 Fair enough. We've not done anything different or seen any different outcomes over the last 10 years though.

It's definitely a review (was the mark scheme applied accurately) rather than a remark now, and that's not new this year. It's on all the post-results documentation on the websites.

English marking is very subjective, and we do have to race through them to meet deadlines, but you get very consistent very quickly when you're marking hundreds. In the olden days, we used to mark complete scripts, but now we just get questions on screen, so one paper can be marked by several people.

I now teach in a very small centre and we have two Literature candidates who have 6s with 0 marks for questions. One has already been moved up to a 9. the other is still being investigated, so I think a rise of 11 marks is more likely because sections of the paper were not attributed to the student.

If the reasons would have qualified for special consideration you can still apply now in certain circumstances, but you would need to act now as the deadline is 5th September. We are currently going through this process for my son who missed his English by 2 marks, however the day of the exam something serious happened and really he shouldn’t have sat the exam and school should have applied for special circumstances. Unfortunately the facts of what happened weren’t known until the end of exams so it wasn’t possible to apply at the time.

The rules were changed by OFQUAL in 2016 (I think)
A remark meant that the second marker (a senior examiner, always) would overrule the first one. So if someone was given 8/12 but the second examiner thinks that it was actually 9/12 or 7/12 then the second mark stood.
That actually penalised those students whose papers were not remarked.
Now, a review considers whether the first mark was reasonable. So in the case of 8/12, if the second person (still always a senior examiner) thinks it's actually 9/12 or 6/12 the first mark is reasonable and won't move.

@Nellle this was on the back of my dd's results.
I have no idea of the differences between each service but there are definitely different approaches than a straight remark.

Thanks for the info 😊 Like I say, the change hasn't affected our outcomes or how we practice, but reviewing rather than just remarking is a better system.

I'm not sure tj

I'll try that again!
I'm not sure that sheet is accurate, nicetwin - AQA's access to scripts is free.

@NiceTwin Access to scripts on AQA is free now. Not sure about the others. Different costs are just for priority/time.

I thought I had read somewhere that one exam board (and could be AQA) that it was free to access the script for teaching and learning purposes but you couldn’t then apply for marking review for the same paper.

@toomuchlaundry I've heard this too, but different people are getting different info. Not sure AQA know themselves.

@Nellle we were given that last week, so either your information is out if date if my dd's school are sending out duff info.

Makes no odds to me, no remarks/reviews needed here thankfully.