How accurate are GCSE predicted grades compared with actual results?

[MisleadingGCSEPredictions]

My stepdaughter went into her GCSEs predicted two 8s, 3 7s, a 6 and a 5. She got an 8, five 5s and a 3.

She's disappointed and this changes her options for college and university. She knows deep down, I think, that she didn't work hard enough.

However, I'm puzzled as to how this happened. How has the school (and her) got it so wrong?

I'm wondering if they haven't been completely honest with parents, and also a bit of me wonders if she knew that the predictions she was given were wildly optimistic.

Or is this just normal and the predictions are just rough guesses?

My dd’s were pretty much spot on - 2 were different - maths was one grade up, English lang one grade down.

My 3 dc have all done gcses in last 6 years. All 3 got pretty close to predicted, there were a few where the grade was 1 or 2 grades up or down but the end result was pretty spot on. Eg dc1 got two grades higher in geography but one grade lower in English lit and language.

also ds 2 years ago - science was one grade up, history one grade down, the rest were the same.

Did she perhaps view predictions as in the bag and take her foot off the gas?

I have never understood the system with predicted grades but I wasn't educated in UK.
They were pretty spot on both children.

My sons were all predicted 5s and 6s he got 2 x 8s, 2 x 7s, 3 x 6s a 5 and a 4.

I think they can be pretty hard to predict especially if children aren't working to their full potential the rest of the time but then revise like mad or the other way round.

They can't accurately predict how hard children will work - she can't have been doing productive revision.

Yes, I agree with you there (and I did suggest that she should perhaps focus less on the bits she was already good at and enjoyed and more on the bits she didn't enjoy so much, but I'm just the old stepmum, what do I know!) but I would have thought the predictions would be made with some consideration of the child's usual approach to revision, exam technique etc.

Her Mum did choose to take her on holiday right before they started and then she planned quite a lot of fun activities with her friends over the revision period so I do think perhaps she was a bit complacent but that's not out of character for her.

Teachers tend to be optimistic (fortunately). They also know that there are able pupils who could get higher grades if only they put more effort in, and so they tell parents this in the hope they will encourage the DCs to work harder, but it doesn't always work.

I think it depends on the school. DS’s results were different from his predictions in 6 of his subjects, but he did at least one grade better than his predictions in all those 6 - so predicted 9,888,7777,66 and got 99999,888,7,6. Getting lower predictions clearly got him to work harder!

Ex teacher.

there’s two types.

the first type (usually called targets rather than predicted) are generated from ks2 sats results or if they don’t exist from a cat test. They’re accurate to a whole population level but not very accurate at an individual level.

then there are the internal to the school predictions. In most schools these are put together by teachers based on end of year 10 exams/year 11 mocks with some allowance by the teacher for whether the kid is the type to work hard or not.

some schools don’t like giving predictions below a 4 (it can demotivate teens and parents) so they do adjust upwards.

I think, unfortunately, her Mum's attitude was that she's clearly sailing through and doesn't need to anything and SD was more than happy to go along with that premise.

We're obviously not going to make matters worse by expressing our disappointment at this point but it is a bit of a shock to have gone from planning to take 4 very academic A levels to 1 A level, 2 BTECs and from considering Russell Group Universities to former Polys. Nothing wrong with any of those things, it just wasn't the path we were led to believe she was on.

At the moment she's still at the "the teachers didn't prepare me well enough, my exams must have been marked wrong, the paper was unfair because this that and the other" stage which is expected whilst she deals with the shock.

But I have gently reminded her that at A level it will be on her to ensure she knows the content and not depend on being spoon-fed in class. No-one on her Mum's side went further than GCSE so hopefully she might be more receptive to advice from her Dad and I at this next stage.

Wow, that's an incredible set of results! You must all be extremely proud.

Interestingly, I was discussing this with dc1 yesterday. Dc1 is a stem hod. We were talking about predicted grades because this year 11 were in year 6 during the first COVID lockdown so there is no sats data for them. Their school are very tight on assessment and for this cohort, the first set of mocks which were in spring of y10 came up with a set of predicted grades which was only 1% incorrect when compared to the actual GCSE results. DC also said that the results in mocks from autumn y11 didn't change the predicted grades. It will be interesting to see if the same holds true for the students about to go into y11.

And herein lies the problem! Predictions are based on the student consistently working at the level they were working on when the prediction was made, plus a pinch of optimism.
Going on holiday and having fun days out during the revision period is not that!

My DC's school were very conservative in their predicted grades and worked off KS2 based targets. So they were predicted a slew of 5s and 6s (or in DC1's case Bs because they were only doing some new style graded GCSEs).

They both exceeded every single target by at least 2 grades. So I would say it isn't an accurate science. They did however work very hard.

My kids' predictions have been wrong for some subjects by one or two grades, but the difference compared to your DSD is that they were too high for some and too low for others so they seemed more or less correct overall. Whereas your DSD's are all in the same direction so that is more disappointing for her (and you). Hope it all works out for her.

It might be the making of her. She's a bright kid and very talented in a lot of areas but she has a tendency to be a little arrogant and "know-it-all", which I know is not atypical for a 16 yo but may have been her downfall this time. I'm hoping that once she's picked herself up and dusted herself off she'll head into college knowing that it's not always enough to be able to shine in lessons and grasp new concepts easily- you still have to put in the work.

One thing that jumped out at me is that you say she took 7 GCSEs but was planning to take 4 very academic A-levels. Very few students take 4 A-levels so this would seem unusual. Whose idea was it? Was the plan to actually take 4 or was it because she wasn’t sure which 3 she wanted to do, with the aim of dropping one later? 4 A-levels would have been a massive stretch even if she had achieved her predicted grades. Is there perhaps a mismatch between expectations and reality?

It's a bit frustrating because we live a bit of a distance away and agreed with SD that we would forgo our usual time with her- including May half term- so she could stay at her Mum's, not travel and focus.

Instead, they went away for the whole of May half term, and then it ended badly with a family member in hospital meaning she only just got back in time for her first exam, and then every time we spoke to her in June she was at a theme park, on a picnic, or shopping in London with her friends.

Unfortunately, she is in a position where no-one is going to make her revise and her Mum, if anything, has a tendency to be more of a distracting friend than a disciplinarian, so she will need to be self-motivated and disciplined for her A levels.

They do some GCSEs in Y10 so she did 11 in total. She was planning to do Further Maths as a 4th A level but now she can't.

My DD hugely underperformed v what capable of but she fooled herself over work done. She didn’t do great but passed ten with lower grades. School weren’t brutal enough with her early on and she has adhd

DS’s were pretty much spot on. We are in Wales, predicted all As and a B got 2 Bs and the rest As. Worked hard and was hoping for a couple of A stars but missed out on them. I think the teachers had the measure of him - worked hard but didn’t practise exam technique enough I reckon.

It’s probably a good thing she dropped FM. Tough subject

I think teacher predictions can be “capable of” on a good day. Look at the teacher-assessed shit show in the results of Covid lock down period. Massive grade inflation.

She was predicted two 8s, 3 7s, a 6 and a 5 - I’d be surprised if she shines in lessons and picks things up easily as they were a middling set of predicted results anyway.