Did you know GCSE A* grades are being slashed this year?

[roisin]

The Joint Council for Qualifications have required all GCSE subjects to grade A* differently in future. OFQUAL have required all the exam Boards to return to the level of awards as made in 2008, leading to a reduction in the pass rate at all grades.

I don't have information for all subjects, but apparently in some subjects the difference is massive. In 2011 in AQA Biology 23% of all entries were graded A. In the Jan 2012 Biology module, just 0.9% of papers were graded A!

I approve wholeheartedly of the revised exam board policy of reserving A* for truly exceptional - and statisticallly rare - performance.

When everything goes linear there will be a sudden need for more markers. Teachers have been marking and assessing all this controlled assessment stuff as part and parcel of their ordinary job.
It could be quite an expensive process to mark everything as a linear exam.

I seem to think in the olden days when I did mine, exams were marked then graded against a distribution graph so the top few % got As, then next whatever % got Bs so it was clear to unis, employers, etc how clever you were rather than as clever as the rest of the exceptional 23%!

Will there be a sudden need for markers though? With modular there are often more exams than the linear equivalent so science for example might be tested over 6 papers rather than 9 for the triple award IYSWIM? Likewise for maths with linear exams it will be 1/2 papers rather than 3. Sorry if I'm not making much sense, I blame the heat!

Exactly Kes100 iGCSE or similar could stop all of this grade inflation. They are not perfect by any means but perhaps more realsitic. My nephew worked pretty hard for his GCSEs a few years ago and bagged all A* and As but he did so many resits in addition to the coursework he did at home. I am glad for him but I am not sure that its a fair assessment of his ability - he did average in his A Levels - 2 B's and a C.

Isn't the OP not comparing like with like?

The first figure - 23% is for GCSE Biology as a qualification.

The second figure - 5% is for GCSE Biology module.

Most people who sit a GCSE Biology module are not sitting the qualification GCSE Biology; they are sitting some other GCSE Science qualification.

So to simplify, if approx 20% of the GCSE Biology candidates got an A and no other candidates got an A, and GCSE Biology candidates make up 25% of the pupils sitting a GCSE Biology module, then only 5% of people sitting the module get an A*.

100 students sit a Biology module.
25 students as part of GCSE Biology single award.
75 students as part of Dual award or single award science.
5 of the 25 students (20%) get an A*.
The same 5 out of the 100 sitting the module (5%) get an A*.

Sorry, my figures are taken from TiggyTape's post, not the OP's. But the principle still stands that 23% of people getting an A at GCSE does not mean that 23% of people who take a module get an A.

I also thinks it is entirely fair for 23% of students to get an A in a subject if only the most able students are taking the subject. If, for example, Computing was assessed at a very high level (I've no idea if computing is more or less difficult, just using it as an example), and so schools only put very able students in for the exam, it would be perfectly reasonable if almost everyone got an A or A.

Now I'm really confused. DD is doing the three sciences, Physics, Chemistry and Biology as separate subjects; surely the double award or single award do different exams - I always thought they mixed up the sciences and they covered more basic topics?

Generally - schools here offer Biology, Physics, Chemistry to those getting level 6 at year 9. Some are even more strict and offer it only to level 7's. They are, at that point, making the triple science suite of exams likely to have a very high A to C pass rate and quite low D grades or lower. So, you would also expect a very high % get A.

Double Science does, indeed, cover a bit of all Sciences. Most sitting this set of exams are those who are, in year 9, the level 5s plus the 6's 7+'s who, while good at Science, aren't interested in them enough to do 7.5 hours a week on it.

Then you have Btec Science for those who struggle at Science or struggle with Science exams. While they may be better doing something they are good at I think our Government make them do 5 hours of Science a week as a core subject.

So, you can see the cohorts of each route are very different in expected ability and some routes - especially the triple, are almost entirely made up of very able scientists. The very students you expect to be looking at high grades.

BeingFluffy The exams are exactly the same for everyone, it's just that the "separate science" candidates take an extra three modules. So, everyone takes Core Science (single award) which consists of three modules - B1,C1 and P1 - and gives you one GCSE. Those taking dual or triple award (Additional Science or the three separate GCSEs) then take another three modules - B2,C2 and P2 - ending up with a total of 6 modules, which gives them a second GCSE. Those doing triple science then take a further three modules and end up with 9, which are then regarded as three separate GCSEs. But the first 6 modules are the same for everyone. IME the sciences are taught separately to everyone anyway. A major difference is that those with a single or double award have their marks averaged out between the sciences (so you might get,e.g., an A for Physics, B for Chemistry and C for Biology but end up with a B as your overall grade), whereas those doing triple will get a separate grade for each science.

OK thanks, so do the results for Biology on the AQA website - the 23% receiving an A* that OP referred to - reflect all the candidates sitting the papers or just those who did three Biology papers and are awarded a GCSE in that.

store.aqa.org.uk/over/stat_pdf/AQA-GCSE-FC-STATS-JUNE11.PDF

The 23% A* refers only to Biology results for people who have done triple Science and have separate GCSEs in Biology, Chemistry and Physics.

Only 6.8% of people who got a qualification in additional Science got an A*.

You can't work out from that table how many people got an A* in each Biology module.

The 23% is for those doing the separate science Biology. The results for Additional Science ("double science") are listed further up on the table in your link, and show that 6.3% got an A*. There are no results for single award Core Science for some reason, but I imagine they might be lower still.

As suggested earlier, you would expect the results to be much higher as only the most able usually take the triple science option. I have heard that the same happens with other "hard" GCSEs e.g. that most people who take Ancient Greek get an A/A, simply because only a few are capable of doing it in the first place. Even looking at that table, you can see that for some harder GCSEs the A rate is even higher (e.g.Italian 42%) whereas for the "soft" Leisure and Tourism it is 0.5%. Does anyone think this is a more "rigourous" GCSE? It seems clear to me that these results reflect the profile of the pupils taking them. A large percentage of those taking triple will be very able and motivated, perhaps in selective schools (there are still school that don't offer it even for their top set), working very hard to get 90%+.

It is so demoralising for those going through the system at the moment to hear their efforts constantly diminished by this superficial view of results. I know my children work far harder than I ever did and deserve every A* they get.

Thanks for that I totally agree. I think the children do work hard and I know the teaching in my daughter's school is excellent. Changing the goal posts by suddenly slashing grades is not the right way forward.

They have made the science exams harder.

the reason is becuase "they weren't sufficiently rigorous"

The theory is that it won't matter because it will affect the same cohort equally.

it will matter because when you apply for jobs etc you are not just up against everyone in your same GCSE year...

There should be a re-branding. Grade the exams 1, 2, 3 etc which would make it clear that that candidates were sitting a different exam from someone else who had achieved A, B, C.

I agree a problem is that it is so much more difficult for an outstanding candidate to demonstrate that they are, indeed, outstanding if good, but not exceptional people can also achieve that grade. It's like the SATS exams. I know they're not a test of the pupils, but a test of the school, but still it seems daft when nearly every kid in ds's school achieved a Level 5 when you know that within that Level 5 the abilities vary hugely.

They say it matters for Uni but Uni's are in education, they know what is going on, and can easily adjust for the cohort year GCSEs are taken or provide entrance exams - like Medical students have to take. Unis are expected to adjust anyway, I thought, allowing some slack for the student who went to a in special measures dump comprehensive and 'only' got a row of A's over the public school child who managed A* across the board.

Employers don't have this knowledge: what they need is stability. It doesn't matter where the stability lies - just make it stable so they know themselves what a C, B, A etc means.

All that is happening here is more instability - just in the other direction!

Or, indeed, rebrand them back to a 'new level' with 1,2, 3 etc - even more gardes could be available that way if they wanted more definition of 'the top'.

Oh, and stop Government interference - that is what has led to grade inflation (Labour being soft) and what is leading to grade deflation (Gove being a control freak with rose tinted glasses)

yy gramercy

Gramercy is it really important to identify "outstanding* pupils at GCSE level? I can see the case for A levels, but I suppose I see GCSEs as a basic school-leaving qualification. As an employer I would think that good GCSE results show a person to be well-educated at a very general level and hardworking, but would not expect more than that as the content is pretty limited. This is not a criticism, the pupils are only 15/16, or even younger nowadays. If you want more than basic skills as an employer or university then you would be looking at a person's A levels and further qualifications.

Well, actually, I rather think it is important to differentiate. I was talking to someone about the A Level maths course at the local sixth form college. Apparently the GCSE B grade students can't keep up at all. I don't know what the mark is for a B, but clearly for maths that kind of grade does not a mathematician make.

In my day (the old refrain, I'm afraid) a B wasn't too bad. Now a B is clearly the third level down so imo not good enough to embark on an A Level course.

I thought that the double science and single (triple) science papers were different? My DD (year 10 - AQA triple science option) is taking 3 separate papers (1 for each science) that last an hour each for unit 1 (and then will take units 2 & 3 in year 11). The double science students take 1 combined paper that lasts 90 minutes (30mins per science) and then a second paper later on for their 1st GCSE. It is very confusing.

Both DD's school insist on A/A for the subjects they want to do at A' level and DD1's school insists on A for certain courses. They also refuse to let anyone without the triple sciences do A level in science subjects and insist on girls joining from other schools who are doing French in their Sixth Form to come to the school during the summer to do a catch up course. They say this is because the pace of the teaching is so fast. They expect girls to get high grades at A' level as well as GCSE.

I recall the jump between the old O' level and A' level being much bigger than between A' level and degree but in those days top grades were not as important; these days everyone is expected to get A/B at least.

gramercy, I believe in GCSE maths you need just over half marks for a B so it's not surprising that B grade students can't keep up.

IMO I think schools need to stop encouraging so many people who a C/B borderline students to go on to do A levels as they are just setting them up for a fall. Sadly I think with the changes to careers guidance schools will blindly encourage anyone who wants to do A levels to do them, in the process encouraging those who skills would be better used in another form of education or training.

Around here sixth forms seem to require an A for A level maths and a B for other subjects, and I agree you need to be able to identify those who will cope with an A level course. But I don't see the need to identify the top 0.5% (or whatever the tiny figure was the OP mentioned) at GCSE level. The percentage capable of good grades at A level is clearly much greater than this, and the chance of an A* grade can be so dependent on the school in many subjects.

bringback it is less than half marks for a B on some specifications. 90/200 would have gained a B grade on March 2012 linear edexcel maths. What this means is that children who have very little idea of algebra at all and may not even have been taught all the GCSE higher level concepts can get B grades - they will then struggle at A level.

But it is a difficult thing for schools because some children with B grades and sufficient motivation can go on to A level and achieve well.