To want to shout 'it's not the marking, it's the boundaries'...

[GetDownNesbitt]

At the TV/ radio/ newspapers/Internet every five minutes?

There is no evidence that GCSE English marking has been inaccurate. Markers don't give grades. Exam boards take the marks, set boundaries and allocate grades using those boundaries.

I need to take a deep breath, don't I?

I have no idea why I thought this was going to be about a neighbour/property dispute

me too I was expecting a fence to be 2 millimetres too far over or something ,

Was this year 11 hanging?

What happened with the Physics? Coursework scaled down after moderation?

whathasthecatdonenow: "Our grade boundaries do change, but only in a downwards direction. The expectation is that 45/50 in a particular unit will equal an A*, but some years if hardly any papers hit that mark it might be lowered to 43. It will not be raised to 47."

That's also interesting. So you use criterion referencing most of the time, but if the average mark falls, you use norm-referencing. But if the average mark rises, you don't use norm-referencing. That makes it fairly easy to see why results have continued to improve for the past 24 years!

Well, this qualification has only been in place for 2 years, so certainly not responsible for the last 24 years! Before that they did move up and down, but it was generally 50-55 % for a C, now it is 60 %.

novack as a teacher myself i think it is inherently wrong to dismiss any pupil who does not achieve a c grade or above as a failure. To some pupils a d-g grade is a massive achievement. I teach History which os traditionally one of the harder exams and requires a high level of literacy skills. A lot of school, because of the pressure of exam results, won't allow pupils below a certain level of literacy to take the subject. We have an open to all policy and for some of my pupils who gained e's, f's and g's it was a stupendous achievement. I would hate to see them branded a failure, that would be wrong.

In my experience, grade boundaries have moved both up and down over the (increasingly short) lifespan of a qualification. Some exams are harder than others, certainly. Such a big shift would suggest a much easier paper, but in fact, it was the same paper, according to the previous comment.

Hi Fallen Madonna.
Yes I think Yr11.
Physics coursework was I think completed at end of Yr 1o, start Yr 11. However, my daughter does not think it was moderated, since she was not informed of this, neither did she have to sign anything. Yet by looking at the breakdown of her scores etc, she seems pretty certain that it was cw that pulled her down. Her teacher had informed her that she was on an A for this cw going in to final exam.She had already gained a good a in yr 10.
Hence we are rather puzzled, and are wondering whether this cw was marked properly in the first place. I am wondering if it would be reasonable to ask to see it?

Also, as an exam marker myself, we mark to the same criteria every year and have no say in what grade a pupil gets. I don't even mark whole papers, just questions. We have to pass questions at the start of every day and also hidden pre-marked questions. If we don't pass those we are stopped from marking until we have spoken to our team leader.

What has happened with the English is wrong as pupils with identical abilities and similar answers have got completely different grades dependent upon when they were entered. That is not fair. We had pupils who were entered in January, didn't quite get the grade required and re-entered for June and got vastly lower grades. One pupil in particular who got a*'s in everything else and a d in her english.

X-posts with fallenmadonna. In my subject too the grade boundaries fluctuate every year by a couple of marks. This year controlled assessment went up and of the 2 exams, one went up, another went down.

hangingoninthere It does seem a big drop from an A to a B. However if you thought it was an A, then maybe the teacher was marking too generously overall and when the sample was called for this was picked up and all pieces marked down? Depending on how many marks it was out of, there isn't a massive difference mark wise between a low A and a high B , would only be 5 marks in my subject. Sounds like she has overmarked and been caught out.

OK. Unlike English, we only have one opportunity to enter coursework, which is the June exam series. So my classes did their coursework at the start of year 11, and I submitted the marks in May. The students are not involved in moderation. I gave a sample of my scripts to another teacher who checked my marking. We then have a sample requested by the exam board (named scripts, we don't choose), and those were sent off at the end of May. We don't get to see the results of that external moderation until the results come out, so yesterday. I would never give a grade for coursework, because of the boundaries changing, and the potential for being scaled down in external moderation. You could ask if that had happened. I'm not sure why you would want her actual script? Was it traditional coursework, or an ISA? Which board did she do?

I think it was traditional coursework. I think that your scenario re over marking may well be correct. Actually i don't think it was a grade given for her CW but a mark. It was high only a mark or two dropped. I think the board may have been OCR. Thanks for your help.

I had a set 3 English class this year, so most of the students were on the C/D borderline. The vast majority got Ds and although I don't know what they wrote on their exam papers I know in my heart that those grades are too low for those kids. I am gutted. They are gutted. They worked so hard and any other year it would have paid off.

They are the first year going through a new syllabus. They have had less teaching time than previous year groups due to having to use lessons for CAs. And the boundaries are moved that far DOWN????

I know that the endlessly increasing pass rate was ridiculous. The whole thing was ridiculous, and it had to change. But I was faced with teenagers in tears yesterday. We did not know this was happening - they have been failed so badly.

Our year 11s did OCR. Don't forget that what you see is UMS, not necessarily actual mark. I have to remind the students of that too!

It might be that the teacher overmarked, although it's the legacy spec so they ought to know it by now. In which case, she will have the correct mark for her actual piece of work. Just disappointing that it wasn't as good as she'd hoped.

Yep - our English department did better than ever before, and have worked incredibly hard, but are 10% down on where they legitimately thought themselves to be. And that is a lot of students who are very upset.

We are lucky in that the vast majority of students got their English last November, some re-sat in Jan and only a few actually re-sat this June. This means our 5 A*-C inc Eng and Maths has jumped 10 % this year and left us best comprehensive in the authority. Luckily SLT ignored Gove and still went for early entry.

Are we all agreed though - it is definitely the boundaries, not the marking?

Think your SLT were tipped off?

No such connections - just a definite desire to screw every last bit of value added out! I have nightmares of the sea of faces on our 'C/D' borderline posters. Actually, our English department has done exceptionally well, 80 % A*-C, well up on Maths for once.

Excellent results

Awesome - that's genuine achievement - I'd bang that drum as loud as I could if that was me!

We've gone from 81% to 73%. Ouch.

Unfortunately I'm not English - I can bask in the reflected glory, but us mere mortals in History could only manage 70 % A*-C, which I now have to justify because obviously their literacy can't be that bad if they can pass English!
There is no consideration given for the fact that my staff lost days of lessons due to special Maths and English revision days, Controlled Assessment improvement days etc.

However, 1/3 of History entries achieved an A* or A so that's my headline!

Bang that drum too

Cricky! This is complicated

DD1 sits her GCSES in two years. I just pray that we will have gone back to nice simple linear exams and binned course work by then.

Probably a vain hope.

Modern exams and modern grades confuse me totally. I happen to have all As at O'level (small boast, I just happen to be good at exams, bloody awful at course work, but only Geography had any.)

Anyhow I was the only person who did in
my comprehensive year of 130+

Now it seems quite common.

Yes, I lost a whole bunch of lessons for Maths and English too. And I teach Science.

Our results went up by 30% in Core Science. I am shameless self congratulatory and need to get a new job before next year's results come in!!