English GCSE results are badly down this year - NATIONALLY

[Itchyandscratchy]

A picture has been emerging tonight of schools up and down the country reporting English Language results severely down on predicted forecasts.

Biggest area of contention is - predictably - C/D borders.

Most schools are reporting an average 10% dip.

Reports say that AQA - amongst other boards - have, without any warning at all, raised grade boundaries significantly, thus affecting grades. Most students seem to have dropped a grade at least from their mock/predicted grades.

This will impact enormously on students and their FE paths; schools who face going into special measures when their A-C results dip and Ofsted swoop. More schools will be effectively forced to become academies.

Students are being used as political pawns and it absolutely STINKS. I am dreading handing out envelopes to those students tomorrow who will get D grades, which a year ago, with exactly the same work would have got Cs.

I am gutted.

Were you looking at Foundation or Higher? It's apparently the Foundation paper that has gone from 43 for a C in Jan 2012 to 53 this time.

What is also being said on the TES website is that the controlled assessment C grade boundary has changed from 43 in Jan to 46 now. BUT students who sit their exam in June could have submitted their controlled assessment for moderation in Jan and so have been judged against a lower grade boundary than students who submitted for June moderation, even though both sets of students sat exactly the same exam in June. This seems outrageous if true.

Edith, do you have a link? I would be interested to see which schools send staff to these seminars. I doubt very much it is teachers from my DCs comp, as coconuts says they achieve their results on hard work by pupils and staff. Boring but true.

Rats, closed the window and am in poor reception now- but if you google "exam board teachers seminars", you get hits to all sorts of sites giving same info: the boards themselves, Guardian and TES for commentary on them, and DofE. AQA alone was running over 4,000 seminars pa.

Figures on numbers of secondary schools readily available from many Govt sites. Precisely which schools sent staff, and at what frequency doesn't seem to be published other than anecdotally, and I agree there is scope for huge variation.

Running the seminars themselves wasn't a problem, it was that some seminars were giving out too much information, which was a problem.

"The inquiry looking into the claims made by the newspaper found there were problems with some seminars, but these were not systemic and related to limited specific incidents."

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-17853507

It doesn't matter how many seminars you have found to be running, Edith, because the investigation found no problem with OCR seminars, or AQA seminars.

Exactly noble...the fact that seminars were running is not the issue.

These have always been invaluable tools to communicate between exam board and schools on such issues as coursework expectations (really, needed as a scientist and I can bore you with the details as to why if you wish)

The headlines only applied to some incidences.

Again, I say, kids, in general, did well because they worked hard...

Been in my school today and the head tells me that schools across the region have been affected badly. In most cases results are down by 5 - 10 per cent.

Agree with the OP about children being used a pawns. Yes, it stinks.

I think the results must be very variable. I've just seen my DCs school announce their best ever results at 80% A*-C inc maths and English. Don't know if individually some students have dropped grades, but looks as though the cohort has done amazingly well
disclaimer, none of my dc are in ths cohort

Same with our school...

I heard them discussing the difference between January results and June results in English within one County.

Whilst I understand the need to debate the concept of grade inflation/deflation... Messing around with students already in the process of preparing for exams, and changing the goal posts seems very unfair to me.

Change should be considered and planned for so no one gets screwed over.

DS's school's A*-C inc Maths and English have gone down quite a lot, with 17% not getting at least a C in English. That's at a non selective independent.

the school dd1 is starting in September has gone from 77% to 71% 5 or more A*-C including English and maths. I think that's a pretty significant drop.

Mr Gove wants to scrap GCSEs ...any connection

Just so that people are clear, exam boards have said that there have been a shift in exam entry patterns so that more lower ability students have taken the exam this summer than in the winter, which is how they explained the fall in results for English today.

What they haven't explained is why, when grade boundaries are decided after the exams are marked and results are collated that they decided that because more 'lower ability' students sat the exams, results had to fall and in order to make sure that more students failed, they had to raise the D/C grade boundary by 10 marks in order to force the required increase in failures.
Perhaps the 'lower ability' students were just better prepared for an exam that they had an extra six months over the January entrants to prepare for and so legitimately got higher marks and should have therefore passed?

I'm an MFL teacher and am down on the A*s I was expecting. I'm a bit gutted but my students assured me they were happy with their As.

According to colleagues, alot of subjects were down on their expected/predicted A*s too. It seems so unfair on the students who worked just as hard as last year's cohort.

I had a chat with a lad this morning who has completely turned himself around since year 9. He's FSM, EAL and his family circumstances are awful (a parent in prison) and he has had some tough choices to make. He came good this year and worked his socks off (stayed most nights after school to catch up) and appled to do A levels. He needed 5 A-Cs incl maths and English.

He got C for the others but a D in English. His mock and predicted grade were both C.
I'm gutted for him. All I could say to him was to ring the college and see what they say .

I can vouch for eleven of the fifty students I've taught this year coming out with Ds, whereas had their controlled assessments been scored as per January boundaries, they'd have Cs.

Another five, I think, have gone from B to C.

They've been nobbled, pure & simple, to further Gove's nasty little agenda.

Gove says it's nothing to do with him.

What a load of bollocks. He's been banging on about results needing to fall for ages.

What really pisses me off is that he makes a point of saying that the new English GCSE was introduced by Labour, trying to pass the blame onto them, and that he had no idea that OfQual and the exam boards were planning to fiddle the grade boundaries to make kids who would have passed in January fail in June. I don't believe a word of it.

Raven - our head thinks we need to question whether it's even legal for the board to change boundaries for controlled assessments from Jan to June. Same student, same work, same mark, different grade? That's just wrong.

DS got A for one Eng Lang paper and D for another, (and A and B for his controlled assessments) - so was awarded an overall grade B. He got overall A in Eng Lit and As in History and Geography. It doesn't make sense - he has never ever failed an English exam in his entire life before :( Should he re-sit or should we ask for a remark?

Re-mark

There's certainly a 'realignment' with the results this year which was heralded after the exam board debacle and scrambling to be the govt's exam board of choice.

We have a very steady cohort intake, teachers the same. Whilst our A for my subject has increased a bit, the number of As is significantly down, far more many Bs than we normally get. It's about what we expected, as to drop them any lower would lead to mass protest and remarking en masse from schools. And call me cynical, but not one of the B or A grades is near the cusp of an A or A where you might contemplate a remark.

We're skipping off to iGCSEs though.

It's all a conspiracy.

Lapsed, I be tempted to call for his paper and get his English teacher/HoD to look at him with him. You might have to pay for a resit though, before getting the paper - daft system.

Olympicandmix I noticed that too! Usually a fair few at borderlines and this year very few.

Does anyone here know how to discover the Cambridge IGCSE grade boundaries? I can't find them on their website.

lapsed at A2 one of my straight A* students was given a low d grade for one of her units for English. This bought her grade down to a B and almost cost him an Oxbridge place.

It is happening all over the place and causing chaos both at GCSE and A Level.