How can a REALLY low percentage still be a "pass" at A level?

[Birmingbacon]

I was looking at the grade boundaries for A levels after noticing schools saying things like "97% of our A-levels were a pass" (which sounds great on paper)

But if an E is a pass then the percentage which gets you a pass is shockingly low.

Here are a few:

full list here if interested
https://qualifications.pearson.com/content/dam/pdf/Support/Grade-boundaries/A-level/grade-boundaries-june-2024-gce.pdf

Pass (E grade) in A level Maths - 18%
Pass (E grade) in A level English Lang - 25%
Pass (E grade) in A level Biology - 23%
Pass (E grade) in A level Business - 29%

etc etc, all similar.

Am I crazy or should you need at least 50% in order to 'pass' an exam? Even to get a C in maths you only need 43% it just seems a very low bar

It might be interesting to compare those grade boundaries with A levels of yesteryear. Not recent times, but perhaps 50 years ago.

On the face of it, it does seem a low bar for an E grade. Maybe it depends on what and where an E grade gets you.

I may be old school but I don't count an E as as a pass.

well me too, but it is 😬

Grade boundaries are moderated to how difficult the paper is.

Yes I get that... so the grade boundaries fluctuate by a few % each year but the ones this year reflect what they're like every year.

If you have children getting 95% on the paper then I would argue anyone getting 18% shouldn't also be counting as a pass.

In fact I think it's shocking that children getting 40 something % are coming away with a C. I don't think D and E grades should exist, and a C should be at least 50% or over when there are children getting marks in the 90s on the same paper.

But that's my opinion. I'm interested in other opinions hence starting the thread.

So in my world (when I'm the High Ruler) I'll have A, B, C, Fail. and C will be 50% minimum to achieve.

It would be easy enough to have 50% as the pass mark - just make the questions easier then those getting an E with 20% would get an E with 50%. Why would that be better tho?

Or do you want the exams to stay the same and just the pass mark to go up - so fewer people would pass, and lots more would just fail after two years? Again, I’m not clear what this would achieve.

Actuslly with grades like D and E there’s not very much open to you in terms of H ed but at least you didn’t outright fail.

And btw E has always been a pass. I took my A levels in 1982 and two grade E was the minimum needed for uni (and thus the equivalent of an unconditional offer from some unis - I got a couple).

Id be interested to know what percentage of YP actually get EEE tbh. Bet it’s not many.

I have a problem with 40% being the passmark for undergraduate university modules (post grad is 50%). It's less than half, how can it possibly be a pass mark.

The problem is that they make the exams too hard and then have to set low grade boundaries to compensate. It's all very well saying 'if I were High Ruler, this letter would equal this, and that letter would equal that', but unless you can actually compare that with the difficulty level of the exam paper, what do you actually know about the standard you're judging really?

The word 'pass' is fairly meaningless really. An E grade is still an E grade whether you call it a pass or not. Nobody's under any illusions that it's a good grade. I've been a teacher for 30 years and seen through many changes in syllabus, exam difficulty level etc. There's not much point in expecting grades to mean exactly what they did when you were at school (unless you are VERY young). There is no consistency and exams are too hard and content-heavy at the moment.

Pardon my ignorance but hey does it matter? If you get an E, you're not going to university. It doesn't count for anything and is for all intents and purposes marked as a fail.

Two things here:

1. A-Levels (and GCSEs for the matter) aren't designed on a pass-fail basis. With anything above a U, it doesn't really make sense to talk about absolute passing or failing, just gradation of success.
2. Exams in this country are "normalised" so that about the same percentage get a U each year. The system is structured to guarantee that some kids will always fail.

Schooling is designed so that some of our kids will always be losers. I think that's a worse fact than schools spinning their results announcements.

Your system doesn't work though. They'll just make the questions easier. And D and E have always been passes and you could get into university in the 1990s with them.

Do you think that all students should pass, even if they are barely able to answer a question in an exam?

But unless you want a lot more people marked as 'failed', you're just going to get a lot more people crowded into the top 50%. So it will be even harder to differentiate between pupils, and individual questions/ single marks will become more important. That's surely not proving useful information as a system?

Of course some kids have to fail! Good grief. There has to be a way to differentiate between the very academic and the not.

Like if you did a premier league football trial for every kid. Some would fail. (including me). That's life.

There are children who can barely string a sentence together. Who are utterly unsuited to university or academic jobs. It's OK to recognise that.

Plenty of children unsuited to the olympics as well. We can also recognise that.

There is nothing wrong with Ds and Es being passes. For some of us it's the best we can do at the time due to many reasons. I got 6 points back in the 80s and got into poly. I now have a degree, post grad qual and am a qualified accountant earning 4 times my other half. You can get off your high horse and leave us non high achievers alone!

I agree it's not really a pass/fail exercise.

Some unis will ask for A star AStar A

Some will ask for CCC

Not many (any?) will accept DDD/EEE.

So whether it's a pass or fail you can only go into the course if you get the grades needed.

Same with gcse.

Most level 3 courses ask for 5 GCSEs 4-9 or 5-9 and will specify grades for particular subjects. Some a levels require a minimum grade in that subject at gcse.

Level 1/2 courses may require 5 GCSEs that are a "pass" grade but you'll be required to resit English and math until you get a 4 grade.

Personally I prefer jus referring to a grade. For one pupil a DDD is an achievement. Telling them they've failed when they've worked hard achieves nothing and is unnecessary. They already know a D grade isn't the best but if it's good for them then good on them for trying.

No, obviously not. I think that if we're going to have graded marking then they should be absolute. i.e. if the same question were presented on an exam paper in 2015 and 2025 then they should have the same grade boundaries. That seems more fair to me, and gives a more honest picture of the actual competency of any given year's cohort.

But moreover, that schooling shouldn't set some kids up to fail, and so there should be more alternative pathways for non-academically gifted children.

You definitely can go to uni with an E.

Universities are money-making businesses. It's in their interest to take as many students who wish to attend. They pay £10,000 a year so universities are keen!

DDE is worth 64 points on the UCAS system. A quick search in clearing this year shows thousands of courses you can get on

not sure if this link will work https://digital.ucas.com/coursedisplay/results/courses?searchTerm=media&studyYear=2024&destination=Undergraduate&vacancy=eng&postcodeDistanceSystem=imperial&ucasTariffPointsMin=0&ucasTariffPointsMax=64&pageNumber=1&sort=MostRelevant&clearingPreference=CoursesInClearing

but Solent University - 48 points needed to do a degree in media. Just one example

Yikes - All media courses though. Funnily enough, had a conversation about these courses yesterday.

Doing media on E grades is a terrible idea, bad grades will catch up to you eventually. A media graduate with Es isn't employable 😐

You misunderstand my point. I don't mind kids failing a test, but I do mind the whole set of tests being structured that some people have to fail by design. The grade boundaries are cooked after the fact. Teachers have to keep a straight face when they encourage their kids to work for the test, but know that regardless of any instruction some percentage will always fail because the grades boundaries are shifted to ensure this.

In an ideal world "grade inflation" would be a good thing if it meant more children were being taught at a higher level and were passing the same bar that children in earlier generations failed to reach. But because the grades are relativised, we can have no sense of that bar.

Of course the system is structured so that some people will fail. There is no point in telling someone that they have succeeded when they have not.

well, that is totally meaningless, as every paper is a different level of difficulty. And some children work their socks off for a D. Why shouldn't they be able to demonstrate that they have achieved more than someone with an E?

And if we are talking about GCSE, then the grades available need to cover almost the entire ability range, don't they.

It sounds like you don’t understand grading. They set a tough exam so the grade boundaries are set appropriately low. If they set an easier exam, the grade boundaries would be higher.

The current aim of the system is to weed out kids not suitable for university, therefore.

Is this an appropriate use of all the millions spent on education?