GCSE Result queries

[DottyD]

Hi All

Can anyone answer this query PLEASE, my son has just had his results back, he has grades ranging from D - A.

I have tried to get a straight answer from the school regarding his AQA English, which was graded D, he is doing A levels in 3 subjects but also has to resit his English, the college needs to know if he failed course work or modular exams as this makes a difference as to whether he takes his exam in November or he has to complete a year and re-do his course work, simple question, however the school can't tell me as all the marks are added together to give an overall mark and then graded accordingly.

Either the school is giving me incorrect information or the college are, AD would much rather get it out of the way and resit early. I have tried to find out how far away from a C boundary he was, I have asked 3 times for this information but just can't get a straight answer and I don't know why. His overall score was 286, does this mean anything?? to anyone??

I would really appreciate some help with this.

Thank you

The school would surely have his paper back by now. When I phoned the school they gave me the marks of each part of the exam. They should have all the information that you need. Have you spoken to the Exams officer?

This link is for the AQA Grade boundaries for June and if you know which English exam he took you should be able to see how far away he was from a C

store.aqa.org.uk/over/stat_pdf/AQA-GCSE-GDE-BOUND-JUNE10.PDF

Well, yes I have already done both of these.

Long story short; e-mailed the exams officer asking for the information, she gave me individual scores, but not the boundary marks, checked the AQA website, a little confused I e-mailed her back - straight question, did he fail the exams or the course work, told that's not how it works (Uhh!) even more confused as this would have given him an overall C based on straight percentages, however what I think they neglected to tell me was that although he passed with a C and a B in the written exam he has to pass the course work which was a D, does this sound right? has he got to pass each section individually? Any one know?? Please

I have passed my e-mail string from his school to the college along with a covering letter and they are getting back to me.

Is any one else having these problems with the new AQA exam assessments. It really should be very simple, or so I thought.

And this IS the shortened version, believe it or not.

DottyD, any news yet?
Did not realise that you were talking about the new assessments, I have no experience of them.

Hi Bellabellabella (couldn't do that after a couple of glasses!!)

Not yet, the College are now on the case and they are getting in touch with the school, hopefully they will have more success than I did.

Here's to a re-sit

Forgot to say in my message, there's no requirement to pass all the component parts

HTH

Finally got to the bottom of how it works, this information will be useful for any one who's children are doing this course now.

The school were right, only they didn't explain it particuarly well, the marks come from the overall scores added together, however if the coursework marks are low they would need to do exeptionally well in the exams to bring the marks up enough to get a pass, unfortunately the last minute dash did not pay off in this instance. Partly me still being in the world of O-Levels!!

So the question is can "the Student" realistically get enough additional marks in an exam re-sit in November to bring his/her marks up high enough or will those have to come from the coursework, and is there enough time to get the level up enough between now and November - in this instance we need 6 extra marks, I would expect this decision to be made by his college.

MORAL OF THIS STORY - MAKE SURE YOUR S&D's (BOYS IN PARTICULAR)DON'T RELY ON THE EXAMS TO PASS IT MIGHT BE BORING - BUT THEY MUST PASS (IN TERMS OF MARKS) THE COURSEWORK!!!

More generally, in order to get a grade X in a course that has both coursework and an exam, you need to get a grade X in both the coursework and the exam.

Hopefully this will all be moot after next year, as the current style of coursework is being replaced with controlled assessments (exams, for practical purposes) for people currently in Y10.