A level predicted grades

[APredictor]

Name changed to protect identity.

I know this has been touched upon in the yr13 thread on this board and the RG Uni thread in Higher Education, but thought it warranted it's own thread.

There seems to be much confusion around how A level predictions are, or should be, made. Not to mention some very unhappy DC right now.

So, teachers - what's the magic formula?
Should it always be AS grade unless close to boundary?
Should it ever be below the AS grade?
What does a DC have to do to convince they can improve from AS?
Is it more rigid for some subjects than others?
Do resits sway the decision either way?

Parents - have your DC missed out on Uni offers through being over or under predicted?
How have you or your DC persuaded teachers to up predictions to give a better chance of offers?

Admissions - What do you think when you see an application with predictions out of line with AS grades?

Please share.

Thanks mumslife

It is the predicted grades for A2 that count as Hesse are what get sent with the uni application. DD's are based on AS grades - with a bit of justified tweaking in 1 subject.

Hesse? ....'they'

in all 4 subjects, she got an A at Gcse, so I would have expected the targets to be the same.

An A in GCSE does not equate to an A at A level! If you get a B at Maths GCSE for example, you would be predicted a U at A Level. Or do you mean that you think her targets should have been the same grade across the board? It depends on how students cope with the jump from GCSE to A Level - if they've done as much as they can with a subject at GCSE and the A was one they really had to work hard for, they could drop a fair way at A Level. I had a student who just scraped a D at AS despite an A at GCSE - the level of understanding required at AS was just that step too far for him.

When I am predicting grades for my sets, their GCSE grades don't even come into it. I look at the work they have done for me so far in relation to the AS grade descriptors and calculate how far they have to go between now and the exams, how responsive they are to teaching, how hard working they are and how quickly they are picking up the new skills.

Target grades may well be determined by what are called ALIS tests: these are tests which our students take in the first couple of days. Those results are used to calculate target grades. Our number crunchers also use all the previous data on that student as well as exam data accumulated year on year to set targets (so previous students with X GCSE grades are statistically most likely to achieve Y A Level grades). But it is subject teachers who predict and they, I hate to say it, will often go on experience and gut instinct. And that is right much more often than you'd think!

LeBearPolar - thanks for your post. No, I didn't mean I expected DD to have targets of 4 As! I thought they would all be either 4 Bs or 4 Cs. Saying that, one of her subjects was physics and she did find that far harder than the other subjects. 2 of her subjects were As at Gcse and As at AS though!

For DD, her ALPS (is that he same as ALIS?) score was just below 7. I think that was due to 2A and 3B GCSEs, with the rest at A. So target came out at ABB, with B targets being given for all 4 subjects. Although the four taken were 2A and 2A at GCSE.
She dipped very badly in one subject, should have changed/dropped it in the first couple of weeks but never. Despite that, teachers consistently predicted her D at AS for that subject. She ended up with a U which was no real surprise to her - that was from a very high A at GCSE.

Her AS 'predictions' for the other subjects were DBE. She was devastated - mainly with the D in her main subject - but thankful she had not been told these until after the exams. She actually got B (high), B (mid) and D (couple marks off C). We thought this would mean at least ABC predictions, but are still waiting on the first two. However, the teacher in the D subject has said that she never goes above the AS grade, even if just one mark off.
As DD is retaking a module in that subject (30% of AS, was a U, so plenty marks to be had) is she being unreasonable in asking for a B prediction?

She is not intending to study that subject (or anything directly related) at University. But has had difficulty finding courses in her niche, and the lowest realistically has typical ABB predictions.

We have the opposite problem to most! In DS's school, they seem to be predicting a grade higher than achieved at AS! I am a bit concerned that DS will either become complacent or too stressed!

Maybe it depends on the subject?

Doesn't it depend how close you are to the next grade boundary? A teacher might predict an A for someone with a high B at AS (taking into account other factors of course) but a B for someone who has just scraped a B at AS yet both could be expected to improve by the same amount.

My DD1's school do use a formula which they claim to be based on results at GCSE, AS and internal tests and linked to data of exam results of girls from previous years. In my opinion this it's to manage parental expectations as much as anything as many parents are ambitious for their daughters to go to Oxbridge or med school, but they simply dint have the ability.

One if the reasons given was that they did not want to damage the school's reputation with universities by over predicting. Not sure how true this is? At one uni we went to the admissions guy said they make offers to a lot more people than they have places for because a lot of students don't make the predicted grades.