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?

Kids at my school do do motor maintenance and hairdressing, not sure why Novack thinks they're all doing history. It's Gove that wants everyone to take academic subjects, schools are already personalising learning at the lower end. Of course students have to take maths (my subject) so we don't have a choice about those who achieve an F, but at the lower end we also put them through an ASDAN maths course so they have success at a more practical approach.

THat's a really old (and quite presonal, as it happens) insult, Novack. Just because I'm sarcastic to an adult who wan't take on board points experts make (not that you ahve to agree, just recognise the point and give your opinion) doesn;t mean I would be sarcastic in the classroom. I think your comment is very offensive, actually.

IHeart mine is green, but same thought!

Seriously, I have taught kids who couldn't tell if they had the correct change at age 14. They could at 16 because they continued learning the subject. Surely that's helpful for them?
As noble says, they all have to be entered in our subject so no choice there.

Well my DD got her results...

4 A's in science subjects, business and drama.
The drama was moderated from an A* to an A but this being disputed as the moderation was undertaken by a senior teacher in a nearby school and there are concerns about their approach to the moderation.

2 B's in Geography and Maths
Maths - was prevented from sitting higher paper as school didnt offer the higher paper even though she was more than able. They only had 6 pupils in the school at the level of the higher paper and therefore it was not viable to offer this.

3 C's in English Lit & language and Design
Not really understanding the C's in English - CW was of a higher standard tho exam day was a bit wobbly but even so given the higher grades in the other subjects which relied heavily on cw it's a bit confusing.

I am telling porkies here - not my DD but me 17years ago... same shit, different year... It's just sad that kids are still going through this nonsense

Just a note - not doing the maths higher paper preventing my from doing the Maths A'Level and I ended up in crappy subjects I hated so left college. I later did a midwifery diploma and currently doing a masters (A grade research module so English hardly an issue!). I wish I had re-sat my maths GCSE at 6th form (higher paper) as I would really love to be an epidemiologist but have a LOT of work to do math skills wise.

My DD2 just got her results - she sat the core subjects in foundation tier and Textiles as well. She's done other courses at school, vocational and a maths course to help her day-to-day skills. She got C (textiles), two E's (maths and science) and a F (English - apparently this one had large grade boundary changes? I'm not quite sure how it works. Although her teacher said she was one mark off a G grade so she probably would have got an F anyway). Anyway, these are super grades for her!! I couldn't be happier and all her grades are proof that she has worked hard (enough of the time) and has managed to achieve. She couldn't spell her 4 letter first name until she was 10. Now she has an F grade in English! It is success, it is a pass.

But I came on this thread mostly to say thanks to the amazing teachers who do not deserve to get it in the neck all the time, and who enable kids like DD to achieve this. It is appreciated so much (I can't really express it properly here) :)

Lilka

IHeart - so right. Such a shame it came from the keyboard of the teacher among us.

greythorne the CA was marked externally. Regardless of the mark scheme you would expect someone who Is French has French parents and lived in France until they were 22 to be able to gey an A* in their own language!!

catwoo you would expect someone who is French to be able to write accurate French, but if the mark scheme demands for an A that (making this up, I'm a maths teacher) at least four tenses are used, contrasting opinions are expressed and the piece is written as a friendly letter, then it doesn't matter how correct the French is, if they've written one opinion, two tenses and a straight paragraph of text, it won't get an A.

This makes no sense at all.

Yes, of course a reasonably educated French person or French teacher should of course be able to get an A* at Frencg GCSE.

But if the CA requires use of four tenses, certain vocabulary, use of specific constructions (etc.), then the student must have this info, otherwise how on earth can they answer the question properly?

And if the student has the info, then their French tutor will also have it.

I am baffled as to how anyone can argue that without the marking scheme, you can't get an A*. How do genuinely bright kids do it?

Puzzled.

The students would have access to this info. That doesn't mean it got passed to the next door neighbour who shouldn't have been writing controlled assessments does it?

It's all about the criteria these days - it is considered good, necessary practice to share the marking scheme criteria with the students. It's part of 'assessment for learning' and it has been a Big Deal for a few years now.

That's what makes it so baffling that they've moved the goalposts with no warning.

The students will know the mark scheme requirements. So every time my students do a risk assessment they will be told to put at least two hazards and at least two precautions for each. They will have a graph drawing checklist they use to self assess every time they draw a graph. When we talk about teaching to the test, that is what we mean.

The BBC is reporting that exam boards used at different mark scheme in June to that of Jan. But they didn't, simply harsher grade boundaries. No wonder people are confused.

Haven't seen any expert posts on here. The goal posts are roughly the same as they were a year or two ago so no major deal.

novak 2 years ago it was a different course. These goal posts have been altered right at the end of the course, with no warning for the students to up their game. Not cricket.

Short answer: YANBU

Long answer:
The 'goal posts' in English are not 'roughly the same' by any means. A new syllabus for English Language and Lit was introduced in 2010, meaning that although these aren't the first exams sat, this cohort is the first to get final grades under the 'new' system (which Gove has written off already!). Prior to 2010, the exam specs had changed very little for at least 5 years - so teachers have had to introduce, resource and teach a new spec. That's not necessarily a bad thing - change can be positive for everyone - but the implications of a move to a completely unknown spec with a different system of marking/grading must be obvious.

Without going into unnecessary detail, one of the big differences is this: marks used to be banded in 'notional grades', so the marks were divided into 8 sections, and when marking coursework or exams, you could see how the numerical mark translated into a grade. Now (certainly on 2 boards, I imagine it's the same for all) marks are in 5 bands, which do not correspond to grades. So you don't know what 'grade' you're giving when you mark. And you really don't. Schools have been told by boards to 'think in bands not grades'. Boards had consistently refused to give any information on where the notional grade boundaries might lie.

Most importantly, the band-grade correlation is NOT fixed. The boards are therefore at liberty to shift grade boundaries So (as seems to have happened here) the boundary for a C has been moved upwards by x marks, meaning that pupils who sat the exam (with the same markscheme) in January had to get fewer marks to get to the C grade.

So as the OP says, it's not harsher marking - the examiners themselves could have given exactly the same marks to an answer in Jan and June and it would have been a C in Jan and a D in Jun. It's the boundaries.

And I don't think it's fair at all - because it's allocating grades by percentage, not by the skills the individual candidate is displaying.

There you go Novak!

This is unfair to individuals caught up in it but the problem really is that the grades and achievements have inflated year on year to a point where they are becoming meaningless. Employers are complaining about young people with good grades and, no doubt, intelligent but without the skillset for work.

Part of this is due to the things mentioned on this thread: better teaching, teaching to the test, phrasing of questions, etc. When DD was doing her A levels she was struggling with a particular topic so I got my ancient textbook, from my A level, out. Where her book was in clear and simple wording, mine read like a scientific/medical paper although the contents were ultimately the same. It would be far easier to pass using the modern materials although intelligence is obviously still required to get a good grade.

I wonder if the solution is to go back to the old variable boundaries so the top x% get an A*, the next y% get an A, etc. Ultimately results are just to give a rough idea of somebody's performance relative to others so why not?

Because results are meant to give a rough idea of what somebody can do.

If a person is capable of solving quadratics by completing the square, using the sine and cosine rule, doing vector proofs and everything else on the syllabus, then that person deserves an A* at maths, regardless of how many other people have mastered those skills.

If a person is capable of solving quadratics by completing the square, using the sine and cosine rule, doing vector proofs and everything else on the syllabus, then that person deserves an A* at maths, regardless of how many other people have mastered those skills.

I agree. I teach (and mark assessments) for the Open University. The assignments are set centrally for all student groups in the same cohort across the world and tutors mark against a detailed marking scheme. If 100% of students meet the criteria, 100% of students will get the relevant marks.

IMHO, it is even more important for that to be the case at GCSE level. If I were going to employ a 16yo, I'd want to know from their exam results what they can actually DO. OTOH, I looked at a basic level English language skills test (now Skills keyskills4u.excellencegateway.org.uk/tests/2007/CdDemo.html) a few years ago and was interested to see that I could not score 100% on it. That was because the (multiple-choice) questions used "specialised vocabulary" of which I was unaware (to put it another way, I had not been taught to do the test, I just applied what I know about English).

I am a copy-editor for my day job and I felt I should have been able to pass. However, the use of punctuation in the test was prescriptive (it insisted that there is a fixed position for commas) and it involved distinguishing between text that was persuasive and text that was selling something. In ordinary language, those two things may simply be nuances (and who is ever asked to identify them anyway?). I'm unconvinced that this is a helpful way to assess basic skills, especially at the lower end.

Sorry, that link should be Key Skills: keyskills4u.excellencegateway.org.uk/tests/2007/CdDemo.html

YAB a bit U because from what teacher friends tell me, there's some pretty poor marking as well as the issue with grade boundaries, ie anomalies between the exam papers.Surely if its just boundaries being moved, you would expect the marking to still be consistent.

YANBU at all. It is very frustrating that so many people are missing the point. If the units had always had harsh boundaries then teachers would not be complaining to such an extent. The boundaries have been published 3 times and in each case varied by 1 or 2 marks at most.

I am head of KS 4 English at my school. Our results are roughly the same as last year so certainly not awful but there were a few children who missed out on the C grade.
Our marking was totally correct. The exam board has confirmed this in its responses to the pieces we sent in for moderation. As Noble and Fact are saying the grade boundaries changed significantly between January and June. On the English specification (on OCR you can do English or English Language) one unit worth 20% had the boundaries changed by 4 marks so 21 was enough for a C in January but you needed 25 in June. So exactly the same piece of work was worth more in Jan than June.
We chose to take the exam in Jan and then enter the controlled assessments in June (you have to leave 40% until the end on OCR). Our June resit results for the exam unit were terrible but most already had Cs from January.