To be angry at school predicted A level grade

[user29]

How can DD be predicted a lower grade than she has proved she is capable of achieving (by a margin) in her mock?

Is this for university?

Are you saying she won’t get on the course if predicted grade is too low, even if she gets the required grade?

Predicted grades are set a certain way and they are the minimum grades which would be achieved if the student progresses at the exact same rate as they have been.

But we know that many students often work harder coming up to their exams so can reach a higher potential or go the opposite way and don’t progress as well as they could do.

I would speak to the university themselves and give them her mock grades and ask if she’s allowed a provisional place which most unis offer, which means if she gets the correct grades then she can get on.

These are adults in a position of power who Students have been drilled for 13 years not to question.

What kind of school teaches students not to question adults? Very much the opposite of my school.

This isn’t helicopter parenting. School should have a system for how they are arriving at predicted grades and shouldn’t have a problem explaining it to parents.

If the lower grade was based on AS then it is likely to differ for the full A-Level. In any event you can't get A* at AS in any subject as they're only available for A-Level. Might be that the teacher took the AS mock grade rather than translated it up.

Just ask. Or rather: get your teen to ask.

We will cross that bridge when we come to it.
UCAS say predicted grades should be achievable and ASPIRATIONAL
The other subjects have all based PGs on the mocks, Surely tehre should be a schoolwide policy rather than leaving it up to individual departments to dream up their own method.

Of she's applying to Oxbridge then all the more reason she should be finding out herself.

Can you say what she is predicted and what she got on the mocks?

If she needs a 9 but is predicted a 2 then they’re not going to offer her a conditional place.

But if she’s predicted an 8 and she’s getting a 9 then I’d hope they would take her predicted grade with a pinch of salt and wait for her actual grade.

If thst is the case, how would anyone ever get predicted A*

I am an experienced secondary teacher and Head of Department.

Your DD needs to have a conversation with her teacher about how the grade was calculated. Predicted grades are supposed to be discussed with the pupil and it is not good practice for them to be handed out without a dialogue. I am surprised that your DD's school has just given them out without a contextual conversation.

Predicted grades aren't just calculated on what your child achieves in a mock exam. The teacher will also consider the quality of class and home work completed so far and the level of knowledge and understanding they show during lessons. A brilliant mock exam as a result of cramming is not necessarily reflective of their actual ability and a one off good performance cannot be relied upon to be repeated. So we have to look at the big picture.

I also consider how pupils cope with exams when I predict. If I know a pupil is likely to become very nervous in the exam room, go blank, write a load of nonsense, etc, then I will be more cautious with their predicted grade as I can't guarantee they will perform to their true ability on the day.

Also, if this is about being predicted an A star rather than an A, then you need to understand how difficult it is for teachers to predict A stars. The grade boundaries shift every year as the % required for one is based on the whole cohort's achievement in that exam session. Unless a pupil is consistently brilliant in EVERY element of the syllabus and I am confident their coursework is of A star standard, I would be very reluctant to give an A star as a prediction. Some Headteachers even actively discourage teachers predicting them unless a pupil really does need them for a Oxbridge application, as it sets up very high expectations that could be problematic later on.

In short - your DD needs to speak to her teacher. She's in sixth form. She needs to be taking charge of this herself, not having her parents email in before she's even attempted to find out why the teacher has made the decision they have.

I understand why it’s stressful but refusing to engage with the teacher isn’t going to help.

There is no A grade in AS levels, which is why you don’t have that grade boundary when looking at the mock marks. The A work (the most challenging content) tends to appear in the second year of the course. Therefore, given that we are only a week or so into the A2 year of the course, it’s quite possible the teacher simply hasn’t seen any A quality work from any pupil yet, so cannot justify an A prediction.

I wouldn’t advise going in with a stack of ‘evidence’ like you know better than the teacher… A better conversation (ideally between your DD and their teacher if I’m honest) would be to ask about the A prediction and whether there will be any opportunity between now and submitting her UCAS form (which I appreciate will be early) to demonstrate her ability to achieve an A* grade, given that the mock won’t have contained that content.

The school may well have a policy about this kind of thing - it’s very difficult to predict an A* when that content hasn’t even been taught yet. I’m sure you can see how it can cause trouble later if there’s no evidence to back up what turns out to be an over-prediction.

(Just in case… I previously ran UCAS applications in a large school, currently an A level examiner)

Oxbridge don’t require an A* specially in Biology.

She doesn't need the A star in Biology though if she's predicted A stars in her other subjects

I would point out that the subject teacher still hasn't given the PGs to the students. Her application has to be submitted by 23rd september , so i emailed the teacher to ask.

It's the very definition of helicopter parenting. Young adult faces a challenge, young adult is not required to do anything about challenge (including a simple question) & parent takes it upon themselves to sort it out and get involved in some sort of "appeal" when in reality there are only two options 1) predicted grade is unfair, in which case young adult should have a sensible conversation with teacher or 2) predicted grade is fair, in which case over invested parent should stay out of it. The mental health rate at oxbridge is the reason I think that teaching your child to be resilient is more important than the name of the uni they go to.

It is worth asking the question.

DD's school tended to under-predict. Some of this was because they werent used to dealing with applications to RG universities or applications for science subjects. A prediction of a B was considered perfectly good if not a little adventurous.

DD challenged her predicted grades and had them increased. She achieved her revised predicted grades.

So actually if they've not yet gone out, you don't know if the predicted grade will be an A or an A* and all this has been a waste of everyone's time and advice?

Apologies - on my phone and made a mess of the stars / bold type! There’s no A star grade at AS level, the A star content is in the second year, so teachers will be reluctant to predict A stars. Hope this makes sense.

Predicting an A, as others have said, is extremely difficult, and I'd be even more reticent with GCSEs scored on TAGs, as they have no indication of how a student will perform in a proper exam season. I can only remember 2 occasions of predicting an A at A level for Chemistry and that was because the student constantly scored above 95% on every past paper that they were presented with, and on papers I had devised myself, plus work outside of exams was exceptional.

At this point your DD has not studied the hardest parts of the course, so an A* prediction is unreliable and could still (despite her being a great student) wrong.

I also can't star grades apparently either!

I don't understand. The teacher emailed me DD's grade in response to my query. She hasn't told DD or her classmates their grades yet.

At Year 13 level I would fully expect your daughter to be addressing this with her teacher, form tutor, Head of Year. I am a sixth form tutor and all conversations are with the student, including issues over predicted grades, and very rarely with the parents. I would tell her she needs to ask her teachers for time to discuss it and remind them of the earlier deadline - my subject references aren't due till 23rd so thats what I am working towards.

Then how can anyone be predicted an A* then?
She hs gone some 'real' exams at GCSE(FM) and also at AS (maths and FM)

Oh ok. I assumed it must be Oxbridge requiring it as I knew non oxbridge ones didn't. What is it your dd needs the A star to do op?

Have you or your daughter emailed the school or college, explained the Oxbridge application, and asked for clarification of why A not A. They may well be happy to change the grade so worth exploring (I am an A level teacher and will change the grade depending on circs/new knowledge). If your daughter is very able and a student who is exceptionally dedicated to the subject, I would expect an A with that ‘mock’ AS grade. However, AS examinations and A level papers are quite different and in some subject the standard is hugely different.

just send a diplomatic email asking if there is a possibility of a change in prediction - it wouldn’t offend me as a teacher at all.

I had students who having achieved C/D on every other previous assessments suddenly got 90 odd %. They wrote the answer to complex maths questions without showing any working. It was obvious they'd just got hold of the paper. They shouldn't have. It was still protected by the exam board. Someone admitted they had a tutor that had given it them with the markscheme. They'd just memorised the answers with no understanding, so it wasn't in any way a reflection of their actual ability. To do their predicted grade based on that would result in uni offers they'd not be able to achieve