What GCSE grades did your dc achieved to get A* in 2 or more a-levels?

[em2322]

I'm assuming the majority of dc who achieve A* at a-level got mainly 9's at GCSE in all subjects but is it possible to achieve it with grades lower than 8/9?

Yes, true, allegedly. Although they say this, mind, DS's GCSE grades profile was mentioned in his Cambridge feedback...

The exams last year were much easier than before covid to make up for how lockdown measures may have affected students. Now that we are back to normal exams the grades are similar to those before Covid.

I agree with this up to a point, but I would also add that for sciences, if you have a really good memory and decent maths skills, I think it is possible to get a 9 at GCSE through rote memorisation. In theory, you have to apply your knowledge, and evaluate things, but especially for the evaluation questions, you can learn the evaluation points off by heart, and even for a lot of the application questions, you can pick up a fair number of marks just with pre-learnt facts, as long as you figure out what the question is asking you about.

There are exceptions, and you do have to manage not to be thrown because they've asked you about an egg rather than a potato, or an axolotl, not a fish- but it is possible to get a 9 basically just through memorisation.

For the A-level I teach, there is a lot more application in unfamiliar contexts, a lot more interpretation of data, a lot more evaluation including, again, unfamiliar contexts. The questions can also be harder to interpret, and the mark schemes narrower. You have to be able to draw links and comparisons as well. We actually really like students to have a good English language grade, as it helps with this!

A small proportion of students, who may still be working really hard, can't make that leap, or struggle with it at first and get disheartened. Therefore, it doesn't always follow a 9 at GCSE leads to a A* at A-level.

It depends on the course a bit. For some courses, like medicine/vet med/dentistry, they will either want a range of GCSEs at 7 or above, or GCSEs get scored as part of the decision as to whether to invite people to interview. A few low GCSEs in e.g. arts subjects can cause someone to lose out to a good alrounder.

@Postapocalypticcowgirl I do agree that it is subject dependent too. What I was trying to demonstrate is that it isn't just about GCSE grades but peer pressure too or distractions. Ds1 got mostly 9s and so did his mates, he is now at uni. Ds2 is the same and in year 12, so everyone is supportive when someone ducks out of an online game to revise for UCAT and you know he will also be sitting the BMAT I believe in November. They are all really supportive of each other. I think that counts for a lot.

Ds1 had a bit of an issue with physics A level but was resilient enough to tackle it rather than saying fuck it. He just looked stuff up independently online to understand things more clearly. It didn't help that his physics teacher couldn't do the maths part and kept getting corrected which doesn't exactly give you faith in their knowledge or ability. He was just on the border of an A star and an A and he wanted all A stars and was prepared to work for it.

Teenagers have a lot of free time, Ds1 tells Ds2 to make the most of it. How they choose to spend it is up to them but it depends if they prioritise school work or other fun activities although Ds1 will tell you that maths is fun and absolutely loves it.

Given CAGs and TAGs were awarded for GCSEs in 2020 and 2021 and what those getting A Levels in 2022 and 2023 had as their prior attainment, drawing comparisons is pretty tricky.

The kids most people are talking bout here had the inflated GCSE grades. Yes, of course some woukd have had the 8/9 anyway, but more did than usual. Those talking about their kids who did A Levels in 2022 also had inflated A Level grades too.

Perhaps the best candidates to consider are those who had A Level results in 2019 and compare their A Levels to their 2017 GCSE results. Everything 2019 has been muddled and confused. The first students to have both normal GCSEs and A Levels will be those who take A Levels in 2025…the current GCSE year group. Until then, everyone from 2020 to 2024 will have had at least one year with non-normal grade boundaries and distribution.

I would say that the full sweep of GCSEs isn’t so relevant, but the GCSE grades achieved in the subjects being studied at A Levels will usually be correlated…not surprisingly. It is especially so in Maths and Sciences, but does apply across all subjects. For example, someone with 7 in Geogrphy is statistically unlikely to get an A star at A Level. Some will but it will be pretty unusual.

Not every student who had CAG GCSES had inflated grades. It always kicks off a row on MN, but plenty of evidence shows that students in the state sector , especially at the brightest end, had their top grades withheld as schools applied various algorithms. The evidence of hyper inflation pretty much points in the direction of a number of private schools. Not all of them, but enough to make a statistical dent.

My DS got 9s in 4 of his mocks in year 11 , including full marks for his business mock and 96% for Spanish. He was 'awarded' 8s in his CAG because school's prior grades suggested only one student could get a grade 9 in Spanish- schools were advised to rank order students and then apply prior data. This is how the CAGs were applied in nearly all non selective state schools. We will never definitively know, but I suspect his 2 A stars and an A at A level suggest his CAGs were on the miserly side.

waltz, I agree. A lot of students mess around at GCSE, they are young, hormones are surging etc. Some turn a corner in the sixth form and really get down to hard work. It is why I liked doing 4 AS levels in Lower Sixth as it can be useful for some, although they are no longer done (and nor were they done in my day)

My DD got a real mix of GCSE’s 4 to 8’s mostly 6 and 7. She was very disappointed & these were predicted grades as it was one of the years that exams were not sat. She did her A’levels in 2022 & green A, A & A

Dd got an A* in the subject where she got a 9 at GCSE and an A in the subject where she got an 8 (English Lit though she got a 9 in English Lang at GCSE)

Piggy,…no, of course many students did t have inflated grades. Lots would have got top grades anyway. The thing about the teacher grades and no proper exams is that no-one - students or parents or teachers - can know for sure who would have been the ones to get the top grades, as quite simply they didn’t sit the exams. On a macro level, schools often can predict with reasonable accuracy if they are looking at over 100 students, roughly what proportions will get in each ballpark of grade…but exactly which students those will be is never entirely accurate.

In the year of CAGs and TAGs, individuals felt hard done by. It’s inevitable when students are given grades and don’t get the chance to prove themselves and determine their outcomes themselves. People forget that the majority of A Level predictions have always been over generous (the gov website mentioned 80% ahead of A Level results this year as the norm, to help manage expectations) Every year many many students don’t get their predictions. On results day they are briefly disappointed and then find their way to the next stage and quickly forget about the A Levels. They don’t normally feel they were cheated of grades they deserved as they sat exams. However, when the grades were awarded by teachers during Covid, even when the grades overall were more generous, there is a much stronger sense of having been cheated out if deserved grades or having been treated more meanly than students in other schools when less than predicted as given….everyone is convivnced THEY would have got their predicted grades in the exam and forgets that 80% never achieve those grades.

The 2020 year particularly was an odd one. That was the year when schools were asked to give grades in line with their historic averages. And then the government algorithm was applied causing chaos and huge disappointment and a change of the results to what schools had given a few days later. That wasn’t the year of the most mad grade inflation. Although some schools will have been more generous than others, the historic averages thing really did mean the trends were broadly retained. But after the debacle and fact that schools eventually were given whatever they had put down, in 2021 all schools decided to push the bo7ndaries on what was possible….and why not really…what else could they do in that situation.

This year’s A Level cohort have the highest GCSES ever and not likely to be surpassed for many years if ever. However, they’re A Level results which they have sat for supersede them. It is probably true that you can recognise some students who had overly inflated GCSEsby their surprisingly low A Level performance, and some who had less generous GCSE grades given to them by their surprisingly good A Level grades……although of course, every year in normal times, lots don’t see their GCSE profile feed through to the expected A Level profile anyway. Funnily enough, more will look at these patterns and think their child was treated meanly at GCSE than will decide their child was overly generously rewarded at GCSE. But isn’t that human nature - to think others have been treated better and we have somehow been cheated a bit? In the end it’s impossible to know, because who can say for certain how anyone would have performed in exams they never actually sat.