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?

It is unfair if that is the case.But you could apply the same argument to someone who did their GCSEs several years ago when grades were lower.

catwoo. The issue with this year is that some will have achieved C because they took part of it in Jan. Others who got D will have had the same mark but unable to achieve the C for the same work.

This will in turn have a knock on effect with applying to a 6th form place, or a college or even a job. Have you 5 Gcse's including maths and English. The Jan lot will be able to say yes, the June, no. Therefore the June lot could be losing out because the Jan lot will have a completely unfair advantage.

The consequences are huge. Same goes for those on the A/B border.
Am not wishing the Jan lot to be downgraded, just the June lot to be treated fairly considering they are all the same cohort, with the same marks.

The people who sat GCSEs years ago will on the whole have a whole CV, references etc that provide more current evidence that employers and unis will use to judge their application, plus they have the benefit of the perception built up by the media and Gove that the longer ago you sat exams at 16 the harder they were.

mindgone - we've been told 30 days for a re-mark, with 14/9 being deadline to get form in.

dd has been affected, she isn't academic but hoped and was on target to gain C's across the board. She has got C's in everything apart from English, she has missed out by 1 mark and got a D. Her school have applied for a remark.

The outcome of the D is that she hasn't got a place on the NVQ 3 that she hoped for and is having to start on NVQ 2.

The students this June have been incredibly unfairly treated - it annoys me that Ofqual etc keep going on about January - the grade boundaries for the exam (where the biggest hike was made) were the same in January and the June before, and even on the old syllabus, in terms of the percentage of marks a student had to get for a 'C' grade.

However, in this case -

girls who had achieved maximum marks on CA marked down to a B.

I'm not sure this can be entirely put down to grade boundary changes - the CA boundaries only changed by 3 marks, AFAIK - certainly a student with full marks for CA would have to do catastrophically in the exam (as in achieving perhaps an 'E') to only get a 'B' grade, as the CA is worth 60% of the mark. The grade boundaries haven't changed that much.

Balia As I wrote this was actually English Literature IGSE and an example of the really anamolous results some of the private schools are reporting with those results rather than the wider scandal with English GCSEs. I have no idea why it has happened, the school has applied for complete moderation of CA but as with Wycombe Abbey this is a top performing school and girls they were expecting to get A* are down to A s and even Bs. 40% of the year at two top schools cannot have crashed and burned. It just underlines that the whole process has been a debacle.

I don't understand really what the significance of grade for a CA is.I thought the overall qualification grade was made by the aggregate mark not by the grades each element was awarded.

catwoo The marks for each component are converted to UMS (Universal Marks Scheme (see here for an explanation).

The CA was worth 60% of the overall grade so was the most significant component.

Today's conversation as my 14 year old son comes in from first day back (year 10)

DS 'Prepare for a civil uprising'
Me 'Whats happened?'
DS 'Seriously, our Government is screwed' 'I've been given a target grade based on you and Dad, where we live, that sort of thing - completely ignoring the fact I am severely dyslexic'
Me 'Forget school targets. Make one of your own'
DS 'Ha! Apparantly my controlled assessment can't be graded because no one knows what grades they will be. Seriously, if the Government can't say if a bit of my writing is a C D or F or whatever, how can they run a whole country - who are they, Mum, democrats? Republicans?'
Me ' That's American politicians, ours are mainly Conservative with a few Liberal democrats helping them out because they didn't completely win'
DS ' Well I shall never ever vote Conservative, ever.' 'Am I really supposed to be taking this seriously?'

.......that's when I became stuck for an answer!

121prob,
wait for the remark, they may move her into course she wants. So sad!. We won the re-mark. Have hope!