Help Please - GCSE Coursework Issue!

[Doodleoo]

Was looking for a bit of advice after GCSE results yesterday.

My dd got her results yesterday, she worked extremely hard and I am extremely proud of the results that she achieved.

However, she was predicted an A in Business Studies and she scraped a B (by a couple of marks). No big deal in the grand scheme of things, she'll still get into the sixth form of her choice. I was however surprised to see an "E" grade next to one of the three modules, with the other two marked A. I queried it with school as to whether it was worth a remark, thinking it was an exam. Teacher says don't worry about it, it's the overall grade people will look at but they will look into it for us - fair enough.

Today school have come back to me and I was surprised to learn that the E was not for an exam but her coursework, which had previously been graded an A*. The whole of the school's coursework had been moderated and they have all been substantially downgraded and an E is the top mark ANY of the students have been awarded.

School are very apologetic, it is not a reflection on the ability of the students, they are as angry as many of the parents they have had to speak to about it. From my understanding and the school's explanation, this means that effectively the students have not been taught the right things to put in the coursework and the teachers have misunderstood the marking scheme. The losers in this appear to be the students, who have worked hard in good faith and will have not met their targets as a result.

Is there anything that I can do about this or is it a case of we have to accept that unfortunately, due to this one off example of poor teaching within the school that our children have not got the grades they were capable of? Not looking to spread blame it just seems a little unfair.

Snap! My son ended up with downgraded coursework (Edexcel) too and it was his second attempt after not being taught any of the content before taking the module. I started a thread about it at the time. First attempt was a D, he produced another which school told us was better than the first (which was 1 UMS off a d), but on his print out its a D. He also had 5 teachers in Y11- the last doing lessons over Skype.

I cant actually find the grade boundaries online either so I have no idea how close he was.

He's ended up with a C (was predicted B prior to mass F up of Y11). We are just going to leave it as I've already complained and there's not an awful lot the school can do as BS teachers seem to be unreliable!

We're Edexcel too.
Frustrating! Apparently the head of department has now left and there is no one suitably qualified at school to interpret the moderator's report .

In the grand scheme of things it won't impact on my dd…just annoying!

It does happen, I'm afraid - I teach English & our Controlled Assessments got downgraded two years ago.

That's with an experienced department, including three examiners, & rigorous internal moderation before we send the marks off.

Mind you, we only lost three marks per portfolio - enough to affect a very few borderline candidates & a miserable experience, but A* to E is outrageous. I'd be furious in your shoes!

Unfortunately, emphasis on performance management, league tables etc means teachers are under endless pressure to 'err on the side of generosity'. It's also more likely to happen in small departments like Business Studies where there isn't a team moderating internally & spotting a colleague's over-marking.

Not much consolation for your dd, but it's one argument in favour of just assessing via terminal exams, which is coming in atm...

Yes, it's the massive drop for me that's so frustrating, a couple of marks and it's par for the course and one of those things but A* to E….that's just ridiculous.

I suppose we're just going to have to suck it up. School are getting back to us all again once they have assessed the moderator's report. There is no indication that they're going to request remoderation…which I believe has to be done wholesale (and indeed should be in this case) as I guess they already know the outcome! C'est la vie!

Doodle - I teach this course (and mark the extended writing paper). That does seem a huge drop and if the sample is that far out of national standards normally the whole cohort's work is called in.

if your DD was told her work was A*, then she would have been marked by her teacher at 37+/40. A grade E on that unit means a raw mark of 17-20/40. There are 4 areas in which they are marked, research upto 12 marks, presentation/data upto 8 marks, analysis upto 12 marks and finally evaluation upto 8 marks.

The CA is a choice of 5 tasks, in which the student picks one and it is always based on the learning for the unit 1 part of the spec (small business). Therefore if your DD scored high on that paper she had the knowledge to apply it.

With GCSE, you are correct that individual CA marks can't be challenged, the school need to request full re moderation which I would imagine they would given the massive drop (I would imagine they have lost a lot of C grades due to this.

I will add that a good friend of mine (works in a bigger department so they have the capacity to cross moderate more eadily than I can!) also had the CA moderated down, despite years of experience her department had a 6 raw mark drop across the board which also caused final grade drops - she is in school today with the exam officer to start the ball rolling.

Another subject in my school has suffered as well, despite experienced staff - again, my school is starting the process of re moderation.

cricketballs you make an interesting point that I hadn't considered. The exam grades appear to be where they need to be and what was expected. So short of a major misinterpretation by the department of what was required in the CAs, which does seem highly unlikely, the teaching really does not appear to be the issue.

My dd's teacher had marked her CA at 38 and her final mark was 20. School are coming back to us as soon as they are able and we will wait to see what they have found out. Given what you have said I think they will probably go for remoderation and have chosen to take it on the chin until they know exactly what has happened.

That should be the UMS is 20, which I think means the raw mark has been downgraded to a 20 from 38. (The UMS and raw mark are both 20 at E from what I can see….) .

We had that with Edexcel GCSE PE last year - A* in his coursework and an E in the exam which gave him a B overall. The lowest mark he'd had for any component was a single C in a piece of English coursework.

We queried it with the school as he was predicted A*/A in PE and they said only four children had a C or above in the exam out of 75 kids doing PE. We decided not to bother with a remark as it wouldn't affect his onward plans but he was gutted.