Current Year 9 levels & achievable GCSE grades

[starfish4]

DD has just chosen options and I'm starting to wonder what grades she could achieve in GCSE as she has started talking about A levels and even going onto university.

Her current levels have just been released which are National Curriculum levels. She's achieved 6.75 in English, Maths and Science. We think she is capable of higher in maths, her level hasn't increased this year and she is struggling due to teacher, who we know Head of Year is keeping on eye on due to a number of complaints.

Subjects she is currently doing and has chosen for GCSE - Ethics 7.5, French 6.5, Geography 6.75 and Music 6.25.

Hopefully these levels will increase in her summer report.

My DDs were not gives grades like this so I am not in a position to help. However, your school will have detailed tracking information on all their pupils and will have made the link between levels in year 9 and what GCSE grades are then attained in the subjects. Of course, this does not factor in variables in quality of teaching or individual issues that may crop up. I think a school should grade work A, B, C from year 10 onwards and these grades should bear some relationship to likely GCSE results. Old fashioned thinking though!

Theoretically, NC level 6 in Yr 9 should lead to at least a B at GCSE, NC level 7 should lead to an A, level 8 to an A*.

So it would seem she is going to be a high B if she continues as she is at present in Eng, Maths, Sci & Geog. She should get an A/A* in ethics, and possibly a B in French & Music. French might be better than that as presumably she only really started it in Yr 7?

If that were my child's grade in year 9, I would be very pleased and pushing for A's.

HTH

These are probably not national curriculum levels OP as these have now officially been abolished for KS3 so it's hard to tell if the school is using their own system. My dd is Y10 and levels were reported as 7a, 7b, 7c, 6a,6b,6c etc which was the NC system.
GCSE grades are usually predicted from externally assessed work though rather than teacher assessment so they use the KS2 data plus CATs tests or similar to predict a GCSE target.
Just to confuse the issue, your dd will be taking the new specs in Maths and English which have number grades 1 to 9 rather than A,B,C so this is going to make grade predictions even harder.

They look like some version of NC levels to me even if using a decimal rather than an a/b/c - most secondary schools still work on NC levels for KS3 and are still using GCSE A*/A/B/C as predictions as the new numerical grading system is still an unknown for many. I agree with Happy Camper on general predictions but subject specific teachers can give the best predictions. Did you not have a parents/options evening before you had to make options choices where you could discuss suitability and predictions for GCSEs? I though most secondary schools ran this system to help parents with the options process.

It's pretty obvious that 6.25 = 6c etc. DD's school is still using NCT levels, too.

What kind of complaints about maths at the school, starfish?

yeah yeah, typo, NCT should be NC...