Gcse remark : 2 marks off a 9 does anyone have experience?

[RemakeRemarke]

Apparently markers at the time don't know the grade boundaries... If you send two papers off it's likely one may get marked down and one up if at all.

English marking boundaries are tight, dd is 2 below a 9. Her teacher suggested a remark.

It's confusing, has been re marked and gone up??

We asked for a couple of re-marks (1 mark and 3 marks off next grade) but there was no change.

There's a lot of chat about this over on the secondary education board. You might get good advice there. My DD is getting English reviewed.

Grade boundaries are never relevant to papers being marked.

There's no such thing as a remark. It's a review of marking which is simply checking that the original marks were reasonable. They are not looking for extra marks.

Does the teacher believe the paper was marked incorrectly?

My son had a remark come back today and he has gone up a grade.

My DD took GCSES last year. Her school suggested 1 or 2 marks off the grade were well worth asking for a remark. 3 was unlikely to result in a change.

I would ask for the remark. It is unlikely that she will go down, but there is a possibility that she might go up.

My son was 1 mark off a 7 for history. We chose one paper to be remarked (they charge per paper not per subject) but nothing changed.

Last year DD was a couple of marks off a 9 for media studies. It's not a subject she's now pursuing and decided to suck up the 8 which us still a great mark. She plans to go into a vocational qualification at university. If it was for one of the core subjects, we might have challenged it, but otherwise, no bother.

Take advice from the school on which paper to get remarked. I believe they can request (or you pay a fee for) copies of the papers before putting in a remark request.

The teacher may then advise to start with one particular paper being remarked rather than both. Otherwise if you pay to remark two papers at once, it's possible to gain a mark on one paper and lose it on the other. Then the mark stays the same and you lose both remark fees.

Whereas if you pick the most likely paper and an extra mark takes the candidate over the grade boundary, you get the fee back.

My DD school contacted me and said they wanted me to pay for a remark for English as they saw she was 1 mark off an A. My DD wasn’t bothered as it cost about £50 and we were cash strapped but I thought yep so didn’t tell her and paid. It was down graded to a C, the teacher rang and was near to tears but I thought it was my choice. I didnt tell DD for 6 years!
She has gone on to get a degree and teaching job. I would only do it again if they got a mark off a 3 as it makes no difference going forward.

Ds was two marks off the next grade so we had both papers remarked. He went up 1 mark so no change. Most people we know have had no change or even gone down

They don’t look for extra marks, they review the paper to see if the marking is fair and accurate. So the mark will only change if an error was made.

We did and went up. It was history with two papers, one she aced the other was very low, it was odd. So we made for it to be reviewed and it also went up to a nine.

@Whoyoutakingto how could it have swung so much??

@MrsHamlet it's the school and I assume the teacher who sent us the suggestion

If the teacher can see clear evidence that it's been unreasonably marked, then go for it. But although marks can and do change in both directions, the vast majority don't move at all

In 2017 my DS was reviewed English Language and went from a B to A*, but that was one of those years where there was an exam board glitch and lots had to be remarked/reviewed. According my eldest DD ( a teacher) the way they mark is different now and it would be virtually impossible for a marker to be so far off the standard any more as they are randomly checked.

Good grief, the 1 mark off an A, downgraded to a C, is shocking. 😮

Only know about y6 SAT checks. As has been said, marking has tightened up in recent years and at that level at least, it's more or less impossible to find extra marks. I used to often find errors a few years ago and once got a child put up a level as their answer was better than those suggested in the mark scheme. Now the questions are less ambiguous (thinking of the reading paper in particular) and acceptable answers made much clearer in the mark scheme.

Harder for GCSE I guess but really it should be correct in the first place!

It might go up, but it might also go down. We had a whole class re-mark for my A Level English as the original results were unexpectedly low across the board, all came back from the re-mark a grade higher!

However, I don’t know if I would risk it for a single mark off a 9 if it might go down.

As a couple of other posts have pointed out, the rules are that, if you're unhappy with a grade, you can request a "review of marking", which is NOT, repeat NOT, what you actually want, which is of course a re-mark. A "review of marking" sounds like a re-mark, but it isn't, as explained in this blog... The effect of the "marking error" test (which was introduced in England in 2016) is to block, every year, the discovery and correction of about 1.5 million grade errors. I think this is most unjust.

@fairgrader that's extremely interesting, thank you

An interesting article - and quite alarming too.

DS was 1 mark off an 8 in one subject. He'd scored a particularly low mark in one paper so we had that re-marked and he got a 9 - up by 2 grades. So in that paper he'd have had to get at least another 12 out of 60, which is considerable.

School and he are also surprised that he got an 8 rather than a 9 in his favourite subject but he was in the middle of the grade so absolutely not worth the risk of going down rather than up in a subject he's think if doing at university.

I'm an English GCSE marker! It's true that we don't know the grade boundaries. It's also true that your daughter's papers will have been marked by a number of people - if it's her English language GCSE, she will have had ten different examiners. One per question!
In my view the marking of English is highly subjective/inconsistent and it's definitely worth a remark.
As a department, last year we put in circa 100 papers in to be remarked across language and literature. Over 30 came back a grade higher. One did come back lower though.

@misseckleburg thanks.

Do you think we shld get the teacher to see which paper to look at or shall we submit both. She's 2 marks off a 9 so I hope I am correct that she wouldn't risk loosing enough marks to reduce it to 7.