Flaw in Edexcel coursework moderation policy hits best pupils

[ParlotonesFan]

Has anyone else come across this problem?

Imagine a GCSE class consisting of some pupils who are, in the view of the teacher, 'just good enough' to get full marks for their course work; one or more others are of a standard way BEYOND what is required for full marks at GCSE. These pupils will all be awarded 100% by the teacher marking the work, even though there is a very wide difference in the standard of work. All other pupils will get various marks further down the scale.

The work will be sent to Edexcel for moderation and they will pick a sample of work from top, middle and bottom of the cohort.

If the moderator picks work of the less talented pupils then there is a chance the whole cohort will be moderated down, thus robbing the very skilled pupils of the grade they were entitled to.

There is no appeal against this since the ranking of the cohort will never change and the cohort's marks will always go up or down together. There is no way schools or parents can appeal for remark of the coursework of one pupil.

This must surely result in great injustice to the best pupils on a regular basis, and yet one cannot expect schools to give its good pupils a lower mark than 100% merely to protect the position of the most able of all.

I'd be very interested to hear whether anyone else has come across this problem.

I wouldn't have thought that students scoring 100% on controlled assessments was so common that this would be a problem at all, tbh.

Not sure how there's a problem - the moderator WON'T just pick the work of one of the less talented pupils, they'll also pick the work of one of the best. As long as the moderator agrees with the marks awarded that's OK isn't it?

It has come as a big surprise to me that 100% is a mark regularly achieved by good pupils these days but the marking schemes are so prescribed that at my children's Comprehensive School it is quite common for 1 or more of the top set to get 100%. I would imagine that at selective schools the clusters getting 100% would be even greater.

titchy: but how will the moderators know which of the pupils with 100% is the best? Or even if they moderate all the pupils with 100% what do they do if one is brilliant and the other 2 or 3 are not judged good enough for 100%? Do they let all of them pass just because one is fine? Do they downgrade all because 2 or 3 are not fine?

My point is that there is no option which allows the moderators to say one of the pupils at 100% is fine but the others are not. They have to put everyone up or everyone down.

I'm afraid I can believe 100% for a wide range of pupils.

DD got 99% on a science paper, she's good, but she's dyslexic. No way on old O'level style marking would she have got that.

I have no idea about how CAs work, but know a bit about moderating.... Why do they either put everyone up or move everyone down? Surely they have the option of leaving everyone where they are? Whether the 100% paper they pick is just about there, or a PhD standard shouldn't matter - it should still be moderated as 100%, an as long as the 60% paper and 35% papers were also moderated to the original mark everyone should stay the same surely?

For the moderation process, initially schools are asked to send samples as the OP states. If the marks given by the moderator differ by more than a certain number of marks from the values given by the school, the exam board usually requests that the whole sample from that school is sent for moderation.

How it used to work in the bad old days was the moderator would pick a few from the top, a few from the middle and a few from the bottom. If the markingwas consistently out they'd adjust accordingly, otherwise they'd call for more samples or eventually remark the whole batch.

Pupils given the same mark should be substantially the same in objective quality.

So far noone who has commented seems to see this as a problem but let me put my own case as an example.

For GCSE Music, if a pupil is around grade 5 ABRSM standard they are usually given full marks for their coursework (ie playing or singing). My daughter is grade 8 (A-level std) which is not unusual for a 16-year old.

She was graded 100% but so were 3 untrained singers (who do not play an instrument) - apparently they sang quite well but were not remotely of the same standard as a good player.

The whole class has been downgraded by 20 points and have all gone down from A to A overall. If my daughter could appeal individually she would undoubtedly get good enough marks for an A but she has to have the same mark as the other 3!

My point is that this cannot be an isolated case - why is noone protesting? I understand that AQA allow individual appeals.

I think you're wrong, OP - grade 5 player is not automatically given full marks. I understood, someone correct me, that you could not score more marks than for a grade 6 piece - so no point playing grade 7 or 8 pieces. ( but I might be confusing this with AS grades - same principal applies tho)

But within the piece you play there is still a great variation of marks. So if you're grade 8 standard, you should be aiming for full marks. But if you're just grade 6 standard, you might not get full marks - it depends how you perform on the day.

It sounds to me like your school is being over generous in general, and as a result is getting caught out in moderation and this is therefore harming the better pupils. So I don't think it's the systems fault, it sounds like the school is being unfair to your DD

Well in that case it sounds as though the school didn't mark correctly. Can your dd not ask for a remark?

In your case then the fault is not the moderation, the moderator or the process of moderation itself, the fault is clearly the teacher who awarded those singers 100% when they clearly shouldn't have been given that mark. It's nothing to do with the range of marks given, or the ability of that particular cohort. Bad luck on your dd though to have had some in her cohort marked badly.

Beckandcall Agree - no automatic full marks.
For GCSE, minimum standard of performance pieces is Grade 3. Extra marks are awarded for more difficult pieces, with a maximum of 4 extra marks for a grade 5 piece.
That's out of 30 marks, same for info dial and ensemble pieces.

DD1just did Edexcel, was grade 6/7 standard at time of
performance and played a grade 5 piece for solo. From what she says, the difficulty is that the examiners are looking for the piece to be played EXACTLY as written. You do not get the same leeway as for grade exams. She did get full marks, but wouldn't have without rhe extra marks awarded.

So it is safer for a more advanced player, aiming for fulll
marks, to go for a more difficult piece. I would have thought
it extremely difficult to get full marks from a grade 3 piece.

It seems to work similar for Edexcel AS too, with Grade 5 being the minimum and Grade 7 for the maximum extra marks. Although DD tells me that it is only one extra mark between a grade 6 and 7 piece.

At the higher end of the marking, it doesn't usually need full marks to get 100% UMS.

PariotonesFan
Not sure what you mean about losing 20 points, that sounds a lot, but I can't remember what UMS the performances were out of.

It doesn't sound fair what happened though. I thought with the moderation they usually looked at the highest and the lowest. But if there are several at the highest, not sure whether the school would have had the choice which goes in. Or whether when the Mark goes in, the initial score is shown with the breakdown of points awarded for a more difficult piece. That way if your DD got full marks without the need for (all of) the extra marks for difficulty, she could be ranked differently in the adjustment.
Would it be worth getting this from the school, and speaking to the exam board if that's the case?

The problem is with the school's marking and internal moderation procedures. Departments in all subjects generally take moderation very seriously and meet to ensure they agree on marks and ranking before sending marks away becauseof the possibility if the outcome you state.

My DS, who did his diploma at 15, got exactly the same mark for his v. hard concerto movement in GCSE music as a girl in his class who sang two pop songs. Presumably she sang them very nicely though. I have given up trying to understand the whole stupid, stupid system. And yes, 100% is very common.

It is only GCSE. They are not specialist exams, just exams to show an agreed level of competence. The highest level is attainable by a clever, steady working 16 year old. If you hit the target set you get full marks. If you look at the grade criteria online you can see what the girl who sang pop songs did to achieve the level she did.

Those with superior talents get to show that at A level when achieving top marks is harder. Or where music is concerned in performance or specialist activities perhaps? What you are aski g for is some kind of ranking exercise with the very best at the top, but that is not what GCSEs are designed for. They are a school leaving exam, that's all.

in science 100% is not common at all. Last we entered over 150 students for bio, chem and phys. Not a single student got 100% raw marks on any of them (110% UMS conversion is a different matter). Our students did very well and none of them got moderated down so i suggest that the issue is with over generous marking by the class teacher, and not with the exam board per se.

oops 100% UMS conversion