@icanbewhatiwant
Good luck to your dc. Similar position. If they use the November mocks, then dd is screwed, because she was ill and missed most of them. If they use the February ones, then she'll be okay, but I still think relatively lower than what she would have got.
However the school (standard comp) was mutely pleased with their A-level results and said roughly on what they expected, so I am hopeful they won't be too bad.
I do just wonder looking at the results and from what I've known over the years:
Is it that this is normally what happens? I'd like to see statistics for it.
However normally it's the "wonderful twins getting 6A*s each" hitting the headlines. Those who have bombed tend to go away quietly and lick their wounds.
This year the news story is in "these terrible downgrades" and people who got good results are keeping mum for fear of being labelled smug, and people who got poor results are joining in to declare how unfair it is.
Hence it appearing that there are terrible injustices when actually it's normal, we just don't hear about them and it feels more unjust because it's someone's decision rather than a bad exam (and also that can give you warning)
It can't be too bad all round as pass rates (and top grades) have on average gone up.
A number of years ago a friend's daughter sat her A/S exams predicted 4As, bright girl, got A*s in all the subjects at GCSE, seemed to be coping easily with the work. No worries that she wouldn't get them. She got CDEE, the rest of the classes got similar. The school put an appeal in, and none went up enough to go up a grade. There was no obvious mistake made, like teaching the wrong syllabus.
So this sort of thing did happen before.