OFQUAL have spoken.

[magentadreamer]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-19438536

Not suprised with their findings. Grade boundaries stand but a resit in November is offered. Unable to read full report as ofqual site has crashed.

It is clear that exam boards were not concerned with the exams in January it was just that pupils did so well in June. This in part is down to clear focused teaching and a huge amount of work plus pupils who are all concerned about the current economic climae. I have never known such a dedicated cohort, so many have parents who have recently lost jobs/hours/bonuses.
I am also furious that the exam boards will profit from this, every appeal/retake costs so more profit to them.

Did anyone think like me they were really saying:
Been a cock-up but we can't admit it because we are responsible for exams and can't be seen to make such a huge blunder!

I'm ashamed to have to ask this question (especially as one son did AQA English last year and another is doing it next year) but if the problem is that in January examiners were having to get their heads round a new system/course, what exactly has changed?

It has nothing to do with the examiners. They give a mark to a component but have no idea where the mark boundaries will lie. That is decided later.

But the fact remains that in June 2011 the pass mark was 44. In Jan 2012 it was 43. In June 2012 it was 53. How, then, is January the anomaly, and not June?

It says on the Ofqual link that one of the problems with January was that "because the exam was a new qualification examiners could not rely so much on direct comparisons with the past".

It's bollocks. Candidates sat the exam in 2011.

longing - The entire spec changed for students starting Year 10 in 2011.

Yes lurcher June was the 4th time the exam had been done.

NI Education Minister has ordered a different review of the issue. It will be interesting to see it comes to the same conclusion.

Apologies I meant starting in 2010.

I actually agree with Less on P1.
Oh, and my ds did take his GCSEs this year, so I am involved in some ways.
There is absolutely no point in having exams, if it doesn't clearly differentiate (for employers and FE), who, in that year, are the top 10%, the next 10%, etc. Even if all children are somehow magically cleverer year on year (stick with me), what we really want to know is which are the finest minds available at the time.
To me, it's a bit like athletes. If you are unlucky enough to be a very fast sprinter over the last 4 years or so, you know there is always one man faster than you. You know you are not the fastest, but that had you been born 5 years earlier, you might have stood a chance at Gold in the Olympics or World Championships or wherever. As it is, you happened to be born at the same time as Mr Bolt, so you will be competing for the Silver every time. I liken that to the way exams are graded. In many ways, it's not important how many As or Bs or Cs there are each year, but it is important that it is clear which are the most academically able, in the cohort applying at that time. It's irrelevant in a way if they are more or less able than those who took exams 20 years before or after them, surely ?

Back for Good That is one of the most ridiculous posts I have ever read on mumsnet (and that is saying something).

So if everyone in a year is weaker than the year above some average students will get A*?

You do realise that in life you are often not competing against people who are in the same year as you. Merely knowing how good someone was within their cohort is not useful for the majority of situations.

And I am sure you would not be happy if your child got an E because he happened to be in a very bright year. No employers would be interested in excuses that he happened to be from the 'notably excellent' class of 2012!

Back for good. Having been both an employer, involved with graduate recruitment, and now back at uni and involved (but thank god, not responsible for ) admissions then what you want is to be able to compare candidates, whatever year they sat the exams. In both roles I had/ have to consider applications from students who sat these exams at different times and be able to compare. It would be ridiculous to expect unis, let alone employers, to somehow weight results according to what year they were taken. Currently exam marking is criterian based, so in theory, you have an absolute objective judgement based on how that candidate performed against a mark scheme, rather than a relative one. I think my O levels did have a relative mark scheme but then it mattered diddly squat whether I got a 1, 3 or 5 and I got into a RG uni to read History based on my 5 O levels, 2 1s, a 4 in English, and 2 5s, with a retake in French and BBD at A level (more than happy to concede they were crap results but I did get to queae overnight to see Led Zeppelin, not to mention seeing Bowie as Ziggy Sardust and still met my BC offer!!!!) and I got a 2.1, which obviously would now be a 1st because of grade inflation (really? when none of us ever left the bar early, and you could still get away with getting your head down a month ahead of finals and suddenly realise how fascinating your subject was, I am finally indulging that interest now!!)Results then just didn't need to discriminate so much that these fine differences between cohorts and exams sat, actually mattered

The reality that anyone involved in the teaching profession at whatever level appreciates is that students work harder and teachers are getting much better at teaching them to pass exams and that has led to results inflating year on year. That is not to say that the current system is fit for purpose, clearly not if the students are emerging without the skills and abilties unis and employers want to see and unis are struggling to identify the brightest pupils. I certainly haven't enjoyed seeing my daughters "education" sacrificed once they reach Year 10 to them being trained like racehorses to pass the A* winning post ( and having to be the one that still inspires them to love and understand their chosen subjects in their widest sense ). However you don't address that by moving the goalposts in the existing system so noone knows whether a A one year is a B the next or worst of all that candidate who appears not to have a GCSE English would have had last year, or vice versa.

As a historian it is quite clear to me that Gove will be judged by posterity as one of those "conservatives" (v. small c) that tried to impose his own perception of an idealised past on others.

Sorry, I'd not realised CA add upto so many marks.

Utterly unfair to change the grades mid year.

I guess it will all end up in court.

GCSEs are supposed to be criterion-referenced. A piece of work is supposed to be a C grade no matter how many students produce work of the same quality.

Therefore it shouldn't matter that fewer people sat the exam in January, the exam board should be able to look at a piece of work and say 'that's a C grade'.

We've got the situation in maths where the C grade boundary on the Higher tier module 3 for OCR is 56%. Only 50% of the paper is C grade and below questions so to get a C on this module you needed to do better than C grade work. It's clear here too that OCR went 'bugger, pass rates are going to go up, Gove will be pissed off' and manipulated the final module grade boundary beyond what makes any sense in terms of criterion-referenced grading to make C-grade candidates fail in order to make pass rates fall.

So, I would like to see the evidence that work submitted in January to AQA that got a C grade was actually D grade work (as seems to be suggested) and that the boundaries didn't change simply to fiddle the pass rate.

I was made to change my marking this year....ie lower the marks I gave...every paper I sent as a sample was marked down...two papers were ,marked down by 10-15 marks! Nothing to do with me but the exam board...I have marked the same paper for years and was very annoyed to be questioned in this way.
As an aside my son`s headmaster told me that if my son, who is in Year 12, had had the same marks in his GCSE resits last year as he did this summer he would have had Cs not Ds...so it is not just English where the grade boundaries changed but foundation subjects too.
Sad and unfair! In my opinion! Sham on OFQUAL

So if everyone in a year is weaker than the year above some average students will get A?*

That's what used to happen. Well not A* they didn't exist. In the days of O Levels both O Levels and A Levels were measured agains the candidates so A was the top 10%, B was the next 20% and C the next 20%.

Some years you would need 52% in each exm to get a C, others it would be 45%.

And that is what universities want to go back to, they don't really care about the grade, they care about getting the top, or middle students.

My problem with this whole sorry saga is the fact the grade boundaries were moved for the controlled assessment element (60% of the total marks) The CA's taken are the same be they "cashed in " in Jan 2012,June 2012,Jan 2013 or June 2013 ( My DD's school won't be "cashing in" CA's till June 2013 and as she has already done all bar 3 tasks I'm assuming she won't have to repeat already completed CA to be able to "cash in" in june 2013) In my simplistic mind surely the grade boundary for CA should be set and stay the same for how ever long that CA is valid? I can understand grade boundaries being moved from one exam to the next as they contain different questions but when Little Jimmy at School A has sat the same CA as Little Jane in School B why should the grade given be different for a peice of work with the same marks because School A cashed in in Jan 2012?

The whole thing stinks.

Exactly magenta.

I don't doubt what you are saying sash but universities need to understand that results are not just for them.

sashh And that is what universities want to go back to, they don't really care about the grade, they care about getting the top, or middle students. Where do you get that from? I am involved in admissions at my uni and what we want is to be able to compare candidates whatever year they took the exam, we most certainly don't want to have to factor into the decision whether that was an easy or a difficult year . The main issue with the current exams is that too high a percentage get the top grade, and possibly that they do so because they are trained to perform to a mark scheme, so it makes it harder to identify who actually has the skills and ability to excel at your subject, and therefore deserves a place on your course at a time when you are getting record numbers of applications from very able candidates. Gove hasn't done anything to address the real issues. This is just political meddlingthat pleases noone but Gove.

Copthall I'd second that. It is bad enough now doing admissions (especially as a strong performance at A level does not necessarily mean they will do well at uni).

If we had to work out good years from bad it would be impossible

AQA English results are very unfair this year - if you reach an adequate standarsd you should be merited for it. I also think many teachers may have marked CA's a little hard this year as they were wary of new spec. This happened in my school we now think.

November exams for free - do you understand this? Do they always do exams in Nov or is it usually Jan and June?

How much variation is there between years? Isn't the middle 15% or the top 15% broadly similar every year. I get that there might be a few stand out students in a particular year, but across the country does is make that much difference year on year?

PS I always thought it was the difficulty of the paper that was prone to vary, rather than the standard of the students overall?

There are always gcse resits for English and Maths in November for people who miss the grade in June but want a chance at getting to college. All they're saying this time is that you won't need to pay if you want to resit in November.