History GCSE passmarks

[bruffin]

DS did his mocks last week and got his grades today

His friend got 25/30 out of 30 and got an A
DS got 22/30 and got a C

Does this sound right?
Unfortunately they broke up today and cant query until they go back

If the mock was an old paper it is possibly to go onto the exam website and see where the grade boundaries were for that specific paper. It does rely on your DS knowing the paper date. Even if he doesn't it would be possible to work backwards through the dates.

Agree if you know exam board and paper taken the grade boundaries will be published on their website.

Doesn't sound impossible. Friend could have scraped an A and ds could have just missed a B. As it is only out of 30 there won't be many scores for each grade IYSWIM. E.g.
28+ could be A*.
25, 26 and 27 an A.
23 and 24 a B,
20 21 and 22 a C
...

Sounds highly possible. Am just marking English mock papers now and our grade boundaries are not dissimilar.

I will have to find out when he gets home. But it would seem there is only 10% marks between a C and A which doesn't seem much.

Not a history expert but could it be the actual questions he answered?

Eg in maths, with some boards you can get a C with only 25%, but it is because 25% of the paper is grade C questions, the others are D - F grade.

Say the paper is in 2 parts, 15 marks for multiple choice and 15 marks for an essay / longer answer. The longer answer questions may be A grade questions and the multiple choice the C grade.

Ask about the format of the mock.

The long question he got 7/10
And the mini essay he got 5/8
Have found out it was AQA on Germany

Hi there,
I am a History teacher, although teach the EDEXCEL syllabus, so there may be some differences in grade boundaries.
To me that seems odd. Roughly speaking 90% is needed for a*, 80% for A, 70% for B and so on until you get to E and below where the grade boundaries narrow again.
On the basis of that, i would expect only a grade or two between your son and his friend. Are you sure that they didn't sit more of a paper though? I would expect the exam to be out of 50, 60 or 75 depending on syllabus and unit. Perhaps the overall grade they have been given reflects more than this particular question?

Sorry, not sure if that will be very helpful!

One posibility is that your DS's friend got a very low A and your DS got a high C, meaning that essentially there was only one grade in it. But from what I've noticed from my DSs is that the less marks the test is out of, the closer the grade boundaries as each mark accounts for a higher percentage.

Often when you see a score that' seems close, it's not as close as you imagine.

Maths works the way we think - scored 10/20, just answer more right and you will get more marks. However, humanities now isn't so much recall (although that obviously does attract some marks) but interpretation, analysis etc. So for an extra mark greater skills we're in evidence and so the A grade answer was much better than the C grade one.

It's worth asking if he can be shown exemplar A grade work so he can see the difference illustrated.

I do realise that KEZ, The very frustrating thing is that DS has the analytical skills in abundance, he his top set and every humanity teacher he as ever had rave about his analytical skills every parents evening, but he does have some dyslexic type problems which affect his writing but got 10% extra time this time.
I think he is just disappointed escpecially as on the face of it 3 points separated a A to C. He will have to talk to his history teacher when he gets back. Thankfully they are only mocks and he can find out where he went wrong and build on that.

Just a quick update - There was a letter in the post the morning from school apologising that they had made a mistake on his Results Sheet and his History should have been an A

He is very happy!