Media coursework moderated from A* to a D

[FancyBird]

DD got an A* grade by her teacher and after receiving results, this dropped to a D. Her teacher has left, and I am wondering how this grade could drop by so much. The school does not want to get it remarked as they say they would have to remark the entire class' work. Is this a thing? What can I do?

No!

You might be confused. Your DD could have appealed her teacher awarded mark back in April/ May. Not that she would have, obviously.

Overall. THEY can ask for remoderation but it has to be the whole cohort.

Ah yes... that might be it.

Students can appeal their NEA mark process. In that case, we chat with friendly teachers in other local schools delivering the same course with the same exam board and ask them to take a look.

Schools can and do get whole cohorts remarked but it isn't cheap. As an example, I lead a subject which is entirely marked in school. We input the marks, then the moderation sample is generated. As lead, I moderated every candidate's submission other than my own group and was concerned that I had been too harsh/generous. Today, one student was gutted as she had been awarded a B when her grade suggested A star. She has filled in the form for a clerical check and I am confident that the correct mark was input, so hopefully this will be refunded, but it was £11. Not a huge amount, but with 92 entrants, it is a sizeable amount if they all need review.

When I give the marks to students, I put the grade boundaries for previous years on the board. My line is usually; "had you submitted last year, this is what you would have achieved, but grade boundaries can and do change". They have remained similar for a while and despite rumours this year, did not change.

She would not have appealed the teacher awarded mark. She was happy with it. The school said the whole class was moderated.

The exam board is AQA, would it be around £300 or over £900. Also, is moving from an A* to a D after coursework moderation something that could be normal? I am trying to figure out if it is a mistake? And if so, have you ever seen a mark change after the remark or check? I have not heard of a clerical check, the school did not mention that.

This is not a clerical check situation.

Moderators look at a sample, which grows if they find an issue with the marking - as a past GCSE and A level moderator, if I was
moving marks, I would have looked at a significant number of the cohort AND run the change past someone senior.

I've never known a remoderation change marks back. It doesn't mean it doesn't happen though.

AQA remoderation is £300ish. But unless the school fundamentally disagree with the feedback (which you aren't entitled to see), they're unlikely to go for that.

I haven’t heard about any feedback being given, would this refer to the moderator’s report?

last year at GCSE I had a students grade drop to significantly lower than expected. We were allowed to look at her exam paper for free and i obviously had a copy of her NEA (coursework) because I had marked it. I got a friend to mark the NEA to compare marks with me so that we could potentially appeal it and then I checked through the exam paper. It was really annoying because she had been harshly marked on the bigger questions but was within tolerance so her grade didn’t change. For example on a 12 mark question a student deserving 8 marks being given 6 would count as within tolerance, this happened a few times over her paper. This is AQA so I’m surprised it wouldn’t be the same at a-level.

I understand the comment about using the algorithm to change the full sample if all were marked out but only hers changed out of my full cohort which is why I got someone else to double check it before going back to the exam board. She was one of 15 that were in my sample.

I don't teach Media Studies so cannot be specific. However, I have been teaching for >30 years so I do understand the process.

I don't know the exact costs but if you look on AQA's website, you should find that information. If the grades are clustered, it is theoretically possible for a grade to go from A star to D by changing a few marks. In my subject, you need 90% for A star and D is something like 42%, so there is a big variance. In Media they may be closer together.

Because my subject is 100% coursework, the clerical check is where to start. We have had issues in other subjects where the given grade is different to adding up the component parts. So for example, if a kid achieved 50 + 50 in their 2 units, but was awarded B rather than A, it's quite cheap and quick to get that sorted. That is a clerical error.

I’ve never ever known that! If one changed they all changed UNLESS it was one rogue one. But we were told as moderators there was always a rogue one.

I did AQA though. So it may be different.

This. I was a moderator for AQA.

Yes.

We never got this until mid September.

Our moderator's reports were available today but we're OCR

They're on secure websites on results day. It's standard.

How did everything get so complicated - oh yes, tech.

@FancyBird I'd want to check for admin error first.

I will ask about an admin error. I assumed it was part of the clerical check. I did not know there was so much to know about these exams.

Speak to the exams officer or potentially the HT to query whether the departmental results were all dropped. It is entirely possible that if the marking was ‘off’, all candidates will have been moderated down. However, if it is only your daughter’s, the moderators report will reference the procedure for identifying and adjusting for a ‘rogue’ in the sample. As a previous poster mentioned this will have required a more senior moderator to ratify the decision. I have externally moderated for years and have only actually come across a few rogues where the rank order of candidates by final mark appears to not be consistent with the coursework. It is sadly much more common to see whole cohorts marked very badly by a single member of staff and not internally moderated in any way. I’m so sorry that your daughter didn’t get the result she expected today.

I thought so but a PP has said clerical error unlikely

i just think after seeing the mess that tech makes with everything (from work to the doctors' exams) it's something that needs to be looked at

now we sadly live in crazy world, I'm not sure what you'd even ask for - admin or clerical.

hope your DD is okay.

It has made me think of the exams as being really unfair, over her entire paper I think she lost about 11 marks which was a full grade. The odds are someone else in the country will have answered similarly and will have been overmarked so could end up two grades above her.

My friend who checked the NEA marked it in between my grade and the moderators too so as a whole she should have got a higher grade than she did. It’s unfair when these grades determine their futures through college and uni places

Yeah it’s awful.

My ds had his moderated down from A* to B a few years ago .

It happened to me when l was teaching. Even though we cross marked and everything. Then the senior moderator came in and upheld the dropped marks, but they all stick together.

Sometimes you can have a harsh moderator but they receive pretty good training. And also there is usually a senior moderator who will cross marked stuff from them too.

A clerical check is to see if things have been added up correctly and all pages marked. That's not applicable here.

The centre have said the marks have been moderated down. They will know why. They are unlikely to tell you what the report says.

Not all marks have been moderated down. Why would they not share what the report says?