Remark even after getting an offer from first choice uni? Extremely confused: please advise

[Tiredbeyondbelief]

DD got A*AC ( which we are all v happy with) and was considering a remark in the C, which is 4 marks off a B. But her first choice university has taken her anyway. She is taking a gap year as well.

Confused now: should she go for a remark ? I am worried that if her grades go down in a remark, will her university reject her? Is it better to leave well alone?

My only reason for going for a remark is in case it goes up to a B, we could apply for a higher ranked university next year ( long shot) or it may look better to employers looking at A levels.

Speak to her teacher about how risky the remark would be. They will know how big the grade boundaries are and therefore whether she is likely to lose her C in any mark adjustments.

I'm a teacher and yesterday I arranged remarks for any of my students who were within 5 marks of the next grade up - this is practically risk free because the boundaries themselves were around 40 marks apart.

Also, I'm afraid I disagree with those saying your A Levels don't matter once you've got a degree. If a job is competitive and lots of people have the 2:1 required, employers/grad schemes have to make comparisons between candidates elsewhere. My own DP was culled from an interview process despite having the required degree because his A Levels "weren't good enough".

If your DD was my student (or my own DD) I'd explain this all to her but then wholeheartedly go with whatever she wants.

Congrats to your DD! Amazing results.

Last year my DD's mark went up around 13 marks on a remark, despite stricter criteria.

As someone said above lots of the better law firms have AAB as their boundary and people look at A level grades even years later sometimes as a better gold standard of achievement than a first from a place handing them out like smarties. I would do the remark but not be too worried about it. My son got AAB last year (which did meet his offer) but he was the best in the school at the B subject, had won the przie in it, it's his university subject and no one in the class got even an A never mind an A* and he was obviously only just off an A (few marks). Remark led to no change at all so perhaps they all just did badly on the day or the teaching wasn't right or it was just a fluke or he wasn't bright enough so we just lived with it but I still think something went wrong somewhere.

Congratulations to your dd. She's done brilliantly. I would absolutely leave it.

You have a week to think about it.
Bear in mind waiting for the new result is pretty stressful.
Marks can go up as well as down ( in our case down a lot!)

Oh, and it doesn't matter if she drops a few marks. If her grade stays the same the uni won't know. If her grade goes down the uni will be notified but A*AD has the same UCAS points as the entry requirements ABB, so I think they'd have to honour the offer.

I agree with those who said exam marking has become a shambles. Within the profession we all know it but it doesn't capture the media/public imagination enough to come out as the scandal it really is.

Let me tell you why:

1. You need no qualifications or previous experience to be an examiner - none.

2. In my subject (English) you don't need to prove you've read the books the students are writing about and I know for a fact some examiners feel they can mark the questions without having read the books.

3. It's now poorly paid. It's paid per paper, and as you can imagine, papers in English, History, Politics and other written subjects take 5x as long as it take to mark say, a maths paper. For this reason, it's the people who are marking the trickiest, most subjective papers that are rushing their way through so they can get their £2.50 per paper.

4. There's a huge shortage of examiners. Last year, I was an examiner myself, but withdrew early on because I was so appalled with the process. I continued to get emails right up to results day. I kid you not, about 2 weeks before results day I got an update to say 40,000 scripts remained unmarked and instructing us to use "minimum annotation" to make marking faster. Hardly going to ensure accurate marking at that rate.

5)** Just to prove my point, once results came in (GCSE in this case), I spent 2 days sorting dozens of remarks. The results were astonishing - dozens went up, not by marks, by whole grades. One student went up 15 marks on a paper out of 80. Our results as a school were transformed. A few went down - one by 17 marks, again out of 80. How are we supposed to have faith in this system if some go up by 15 and some go down by 17?

6. Lastly, it's an organisational joke. If you have a child with SEN, you might know that some students are entitled to a scribe in exams - an adult they dictate to who writes down every word they say. For this arrangement, the student forfeits any spelling, punctuation and grammar marks for the paper. Except last year, two of our students who had scribes received 10 marks (out of 16) for SPAG and they didn't even write it.

I'm sorry for the massive post, but as a teacher I feel helpless to effect any change in this shambolic system. I put all the above in an email to my exam board and didn't even receive an acknowledgement. The only way this can be improved is if parents truly understand what's happening and get behind it.

It's a scandal.

I was also going to post like hugoagogo that marks can go down, there is some bad advice above saying that they can't, you do need to be aware of that.

I was in a similar position, my DC was a couple of marks off an A, I would have paid for the remark but it wasn't necessary for the offer so I didn't do it, I still think now it would have been good to have the A but not my DC isn't bothered.

If her grade goes down the uni will be notified but AAD has the same UCAS points as the entry requirements ABB, so I think they'd have to honour the offer.*

No, they really don't have to honour the offer. Some high tariff universities will simply not take anything below a B, even it is UCAS points equivalent i.e. they would reject 2 x A star, C. Others put their cut off at C.

As pp say, talk to the school about the risk of going down - and check with the university whether going down a grade would be an issue for them.

I don't think I could be so cavalier as Amy ds going from a couple of marks below a B to a couple above a D was a lesson to me and ds to be grateful for what you get!

I wouldn't describe my behaviour as cavalier @hugoagogo

These are my students, not my own DCs. Emotion doesn't come into it. Every year I take these calculated risks based on knowing my students and understanding exam specs. It's part of my job.

I stand corrected @user2222018 👍

Probably by the end of Fresher's Week, the "What A Levels did you get?" question will be dead & buried.

No-one cares, really - she's got into the course she wants. I'm not sure about what employers look for to be honest - I'd have thought the A* is a significant achievement to be highlighted. But I think they're more likely to be interested in her degree results, and work experience and placements during her degree studies.

She should celebrate her success, and enjoy herself!

(And just a heads up, she needs to stop thinking about what the Americans call "grade grubbing." If she tries that "I'm only 4 marks off a First" at university, it will not wash.)

As its only 4 marks, I would get it remarked. You've got nothing to loose.

My understanding is that they will never mark down on a remark.

Well, you need to re-think that if you’re dishing out advice!

I spent yesterday in contact with students about whether or not to request marking reviews (after the whole process was overhauled to try to stem the flow of speculative “oh, I’m three marks off an A; I’ll request a remark” bids, it’s now been rebranded as “reviewing”). And in every email, I included the disclaimer that marks can go down as well as up.

DS got his Physics paper remarked a couple of years ago. He was genuinely puzzled by his mark as he was sure he had done better, and while he got the grade he needed it was a matter of pride.
It went up by 20 marks to an A*. Almost as though a whole page had been missed.

Thank you all so much for your replies. I am going to discuss all these with DD and let her decide. Right now she's too busy celebrating and eating a lot of cake, as she should be!

You may want to read the below which shows that most recent guidance is that her paper will not be remarked

www.jcq.org.uk/Download/exams-office/post-results-services/post-results-services-june-2018-and-november-2018

I would ask the school to get the paper back and ask her teacher to review it. If the teacher thinks it wasn't marked correctly, then your DD should consider a remark.
Some graduate schemes (I think mostly accountancy and law) do look at A level marks. Also if your DD drops out of her course and wishes to apply for another (it is quite common), then having a B would be better than a C.
But she still got fantastic results! Well done to her.

Remarks are usually more of a clerical exercise - that all questions were marked, totalled correctly, mark scheme applied - rather than a reexamination of the content of the answers.