Who else fell foul of English 'downgrading'? Feeling glum.

[rosajam]

My DS did really very well in his GCSE's despite being a July boy

He achieved mostly A*, a couple of A's, a couple of B's and one D - English.

School are querying and were 27%b down in English despite a good year generally. We're gutted. Just hope remark works.

How many universities expect a B?

Did your child suffer?

Kez that's a very important point. Never mind further ed and apprenticeships etc. - what about these DCs' self-confidence and self-esteem? No-one is asking for silly inflation, just for no arbitrary shifting of boundaries for purely extraneous reasons.

Yes, that is what I said earlier.

I don't know that it would have been so much of a problem if it wasn't a completely new type of assessment using CAs. But there were huge risk factors to UMSing in January 2012 - small cohort, early sitting cohort (June entrants would have another possible 4 months of study), completely new type of assessment (CAs) and the CAs were 60% of the final mark. And with all those risks they drew up UMSs for the CAs.

Noble is right in that it is their job and, I agree, but in my mind while they may be brilliant at English and marking English exams, they have failed to see the huge risk factors staring them in the face on UMSing in January 2012. Factors which are not so evident in future Januarys because you have the experience of what went before to also help aid your judgement.

It seems very strange because AQA were one board so very reluctant to give any information on what bands might mean in terms of grades at the start of the course. I thought that meant that they had identified the risk factors and were erring on the side of caution!

Sorry, my post above doesn;t follow on properly and looks rude! "Yes, that is what I said earlier" refers to...."An easy solution is to only submit CATs in June (which is standard for lots of subjects)"

kez its interesting that you say your DDs school seemed to be marked harshly in the production unit in drama. We seem to have had the same problem.
DD had solid As in the first two units and then got an E in the production unit. I don't know what examiners are looking for. DD gave a good performance, she spoke all her lines clearly and with conviction and acted her part well. Her teacher has taught the lesson for quite some years, so I trust his judgement that the plays they performed where acceptable for GCSE.

Again, it seems that even the really strong actors have also been marked harshly.

We haven't had my DDs individual unit scores yet - she has to go into school to collect them if she wants them.

www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/aug/26/gcse-english-results-fall-alternative

"Ofqual said that around 20,000 pupils from independent schools and selective schools had given up GCSE English for an alternative qualification, even though the overall number of pupils taking the qualification had risen."

Really? Do independent schools really sit GCSE English? I would have thought they would have sat the GCSE English Language and GCSE English Literature combination. Maybe lazy reporting?

AQA were insistent that teachers did not mark CA's with grade boundaries in mind - bands had to be used.

They said that coursework would be in danger of being scrapped for reasons I didn't quite grasp if teachers worked towards grades. This was taken to mean that they could adjust boundaries from year to year but no one thought such drastic grade deflation would happen. Heads of departments , I believe, did do guess work as to where the boundaries might be with loose guidance. Teachers were not to use grades but pupils were working towards them and asking teachers for estimated grades - quite frankly it has turned out to be inadequate way of helping pupils.

AQA are to blame but they may have been put under pressure

There appears to be a spark of hope for those who got a D grade in the Leeds area, the council will be contacting all colleges and apprenticeship providers regarding the grade boundaries so college places may not be lost. Also talking about taking legal action with other councils.
newsfeed.leedsvirtualnewsroom.co.uk/2012/08/statement-from-leeds-city-council.

The thing is, if there is going to be a reduction in % getting a C+ in Maths or English because C grade requirements are going to be a higher level, it is going to affect thousands because hundreds of thousands of students sit the core exams.

GCSE is (or at least supposedly is) criterion-referenced not norm-referenced which makes nonsense of the need for a large cohort to decide accurate grade boundaries. There are criteria for a piece of work to be a C grade and if they are met, then that piece of work is a C grade.

This is why it is worrying that apparently OCR have put a C grade boundary of 56% on a maths paper that only contains 50% of questions up to C grade. This would mean that to get a C grade, not only would candidates need to get 100% on the C grade stuff but they would also need to get some B grade or higher questions correct. Compare this to a student getting a C on a foundation paper where they don't have to get all the C grade stuff right to get a C and they don't even see any higher grade questions.

This would suggest that in order to satisfy the desire of Gove for passes to fall, that exam boards have decided that the pass rate falling is more important than what the candidate can actually do.

That Maths situation is appalling. I'm surprised they need 56% to get a C though - I thought the higher paper needed about 20 marks to get a C! (or is that what used to happen? or was that just media fiction?)

Yes, you cannot have criterion referenced AND a set number of students pass. Well, maybe you can once in a hundred years! Chances are so slim they would both meet.

My school does Edexcel not OCR so I'm not completely clear about how their papers work but for their modular higher GCSE
Module 1 40% was a C
Module 2 40% was a C
Module 3 56% was a C

In contrast, on the linear paper, 31% was a C. Now as in maths topics are graded (so Pythagoras is C grade, trigonometry is B grade etc) there should have been roughly the same distribution of grades of questions over both types of paper in total.

At least one teacher posted on TES that their top 2 sets took OCR modular and ended up with worse results than lower sets who took linear.

Oh, and for Edexcel linear, you needed 26% to get a C on the higher paper.

Ahh, my bad (as the in-kids say) I was thinking only of linear (that's what our school does). I had forgotton there were modular Maths routes as well.

Noblegiraffe is it only English and Maths that has been effected? The cynic in me fears it is due to Dave and Gove wanting to Academise as many schools as they possibly can.

DominoDonkey - I'm not a Teacher just a very concerned parent of a yr10 DD who is C/D borderline for GCSE English Language

I don't think the issue is CA myself, and the Jan thing is a red herring - the grade boundaries are changed by the largest amount for the exam, not the CA. The exam is out of 80. The marks students get out of 80 is called the 'raw mark'. This is then converted to a UMS Mark - students have to get 72 to get a 'C' grade. In January and the previous June, a raw mark of 43/44 would get you a 72 and a 'C' grade. This year, you would have to get 53 raw marks to get 72 UMS marks. The CA boundary has only altered by 3 marks.

It is a disgrace and if my DC's had been affected I would be furious. The exam is the same for English GCSE and English Language GCSE so all are affected, although the grade boundaries for the higher tier stayed the same at 44 - if a student took the higher paper and got the 53 needed for a 'C' grade on the Foundation paper they would get a 'B'.

magenta if you use this tool on the Telegraph website and look at different subjects (A*s on the left down to U on the right) you can see that the percentage of passes for English has dropped by more than for maths, but if you look at Science (who also had a new syllabus) the pass rate there has also gone down, by possibly as much as English although it needs a clearer scale. French passes are also down, I know MFL have been complaining about bizarre grade boundaries for a while now.

noblegiraffe maybe you can help me with my query.

DD was entered for the Edexcel maths higher papers. On the first two units she scraped C grades. Her teachers took the decision to put her in for Linear incase she got a poor grade in the third unit, which might pull her down to an overall D.

The understanding was, if DD only managed a D on the modular maths but a C on linear, she would be awarded the C grade.

However DD managed to get her overall C in modular maths and a B in Linear. She has been awarded points for both results but her Edexcel certificate only specifies Maths grade C.

So can she use the linear result or does she have to take the lower C grade.

balia I am blimmin furious and can't stop thinking about it. I just hope AQA do not get away with this. However, it is a big ask for them to admit culpability as people will not have faith in the exam system .

My son is one mark away so I'm hoping a remark will help him.

That's the graphic I meant noble, it's very interesting. But they don't differentiate Maths - not sure why not.

Another thing I don't quite get, having glanced at the 'softer' options: why do these seem not to have been hit by grade deflation whereas the rigorous subjects have?

voldemort, the usual rules when you sit a GCSE multiple times is that the best mark counts so I would have thought the B would count. However that would be for GCSEs sat at different sessions. I've also heard of students being entered for modular and linear with different exam boards, in which case both boards would issue a certificate. I've never heard of a student sitting the same subject twice with the same exam board in the same series, to be honest I thought it wasn't allowed. Perhaps they issued the certificate with the C because the final module was sat after the final linear paper so it was the latest result? I think you need to get in contact with the exam board to clarify, as this is an unusual situation. I hope she can use the B and it's just an admin error, in all other circumstances she would be able to.

What do you mean by differentiating maths, yellow?

Thanks NobleGiraffe I will speak to the school next week.