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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To be worried about grade boundaries gcse

16 replies

Ceci03 · 22/11/2023 08:46

So in the summer my dd did a lot worse than predicted in her A levels which the school
Put down to "grade boundaries". DD just did his gcse mocks and is telling me that even though he got 37% for example in physics that this is a 5/6 because of "grade boundaries". I'm really worried for him. Would these boundaries just be set by his school? I'm worried as dd consistently got over 85% for 2 years but ended up with grade Cs and D. Am new to this system of
Grade boundaries changing and like I say am worried for ds

OP posts:
Original poster
Ceci03 · 22/11/2023 08:47

Sorry mistake in post DS is doing gcse this year

OP posts:
savoycabbage · 22/11/2023 08:50

The grade boundaries change according to who is doing the exam. So in mocks it's just the people at your school. 37% in the exam could be top of the class or bottom of the class according to what everyone else has got.

Same for the actual GSCEs. One year 37% could be the worst any candidate got. The next year the exam could be really difficult and getting 37 would be an excellent achievement compared to every other person.

It depends on the exam on the day.

PersephonePomegranate23 · 22/11/2023 08:51

Is it the school mis-grading work? It might have been that your DD's work was inflated by a particular teacher?

I have no clue - just a thought! Back in the dark ages, there was one particular teacher who always marked student's papers too highly and their results and their predicted grades did not match!

FallingAutumnLeaf · 22/11/2023 09:00

For AQA, trilogy (so, combined science), 37% last summer would indeed have you to the grade 5/6 boundary on physics paper 1.

Different boards, different papers, different years will get a different boundary.

shepherdsangeldelight · 22/11/2023 09:05

No one has any idea what the grade boundaries will be until the exams have been sat. It's not worth worrying about them.

All your child can do is try to get as many marks as possible on their paper.
If they get more marks, they will get a higher grade.

School predictions are just guesses. Hopefully they might be educated guesses, but guesses is what they are. I suspect the school may have looked at their prediction model if they were way out last year.

Baconisdelicious · 22/11/2023 09:08

School predictions are just guesses

educated guesses, based on experience. And if you do a past paper (which is usual for mocks), you have the grade boundaries for that paper so that's an accurate a prediction as you can get.

Pooooochi · 22/11/2023 09:10

Schools are often too generous with grade predictions - teachers tend to go based on what a pupil could get if they perform reasonably well on the day, but the reality is a proportion of pupils won't and its very hard to build that uncertainty in. As pp have said, just encourage your DC to work their hardest. All you can ever do is your best.

Pooooochi · 22/11/2023 09:12

Ps your DDs results were likely impacted by teachers not taking account of the governments well publicised lowering of the numbers of pupils who would get top grades, to return to pre covid levels. Grades in 2021 & 22 were very inflated so if teachers were predicting grades based on similar distributions as those years they would have been too optimistic.

shepherdsangeldelight · 22/11/2023 09:13

Baconisdelicious · 22/11/2023 09:08

School predictions are just guesses

educated guesses, based on experience. And if you do a past paper (which is usual for mocks), you have the grade boundaries for that paper so that's an accurate a prediction as you can get.

Grade boundaries change every year.

Taking a past paper and looking at "the grade you would have got" is not an accurate prediction about what you would got if you sat the same paper this year. Particularly for papers sat in Covid years.

Original poster
Ceci03 · 22/11/2023 09:51

The thing is DS thinks he is "fine" and that he knows enough to get a 5/6 in most subjects. I'm worried though. I hate this system I feel totally in the dark tbh

OP posts:
shepherdsangeldelight · 22/11/2023 10:30

Ceci03 · 22/11/2023 09:51

The thing is DS thinks he is "fine" and that he knows enough to get a 5/6 in most subjects. I'm worried though. I hate this system I feel totally in the dark tbh

What does he want to do next? If (e.g.) it's something that requires him to get 5 Grade 4s, then he may well be "fine". If he's intending to take A Levels then 5s and 6s will get him onto A Level courses in some sixth forms, but he's likely to then be targeting lower A Level grades.

Even if predictions were rock solid (which they aren't, as already discussed) a prediction of a 5 may well mean on a bad day or the questions not falling nicely, you would get a 4 or even a 3.

mondaytosunday · 22/11/2023 10:30

Not sure that's correct @savoycabbage. Surely they don't just grade it within the schools individual cohort - that makes no sense! If they did then poorly achieving schools would have 8s for those top in their school. They must mark them according to the national grade boundary.
OP grade boundaries do change, and they will no longer make allowances for interruptions due to covid. But they don't change that much. Some years the exam is harder than others. So it's done on a curve to keep similar percentages getting 3, 4, 5s etc. All your child can do is their best, and certainly not think because they got a 5 or 6 (or whatever) on a mock that's it - my son did better in mocks than the actual exam because I think he believed he didn't need to keep revising!

Booforcurtains · 22/11/2023 10:45

I hear your frustrations, One of mine did A's this year and did significantly worse than expected, and apparently teachers were then grading according to 2019 boundaries. I have another doing GCSE's now and have no idea how teachers are grading past papers, there is absolutely no point in looking at 20/21/22 boundaries as we are now in a totally different place but my kid thinks it's fine as they have 5/6/7 in most subjects but really this may be 3/4/5. Which makes a totally different situation, but with no way of getting through to my kiddo that they should really pop a bit more effort in to cover themselves.

Mumof2teens79 · 22/11/2023 10:47

AFAIK Grade boundaries don't depend on who sits the exam. It's not that top 10% that get an A/9 anymore. Everyone could in theory get an A or fail.

But different papers will have questions that are easier or harder than other questions so one year the A grade might be 80% and another 75%

That's how I understand it.
But it's the questions that change, not the knowledge required.

Grade boundaries should really only take you up or down 1 Grade. So you just miss out on a B because you got 60%, rather than 63%
And you needed that extra mark from maybe 1 question that would have tipped you over.....but that's not the papers fault. You would have needed that extra mark in a previous year, but maybe this year there was an easy mark early on that Everyone got.

If the issue is Grade boundaries he needs to look at how to answer questions to get the maximum mark possible for that question.

Mumof2teens79 · 22/11/2023 10:52

The raw percentage in any test is pretty meaningless.

In a really hard exam 40% might get the top grade
In an easier exam you might need 100% to get the top grade.
If you take a test, with the rest of the class/school and did better than most, that's great but the percentage itself doesn't tell you an awful lot.
Look at the grades.
At gcse 7,8,9 is equivalent to old A-A*
4,5,6 is equivalent to B-C
Only 4 and above is considered a pass/good pass.

shepherdsangeldelight · 22/11/2023 11:37

This article might help to explain how grade boundaries are set:
https://www.tes.com/magazine/analysis/secondary/gcse-and-a-level-grade-boundaries

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