Challenging Teacher's Controlled Assessment Mark GCSE

[Dancingdreamer]

Advice please on creative writing piece- sorry not sure what exactly called. Expected higher grade based on course work and previous exams. However got new teacher this year where clearly personality clash. Assessment marked down with comments that seem to relate to style eg "overly metaphorical" when had been taught to include metaphor, similes etc to get more marks!

Asked school for explanation but fobbed off with loads of technical data and nothing specific about reasons for marks. Refused a meeting to discuss. How can this be approached please?

She's claiming to know better than the teacher what grade her child should have been awarded for an English piece - based on comparison with other child's work and checking the mark scheme. Your English needs to be really good to assume a grade from that!

Oh, and I didn't 'berate' I pointed it out and expanded when asked by the op.

The comparison with the childs work is fair. If my son was getting As and then dropped down to a C I would query it without expecting to be pulled up on my own lack of knowledge about either the subject or my written English! In other words - it isn't about the OP, but about her son.

My DS has redone 2 out of the 4 English Language controlled assessments and the Eng Lit one to improve his marks. It is worth doing so they go into the exams with the best possible start. Most English teachers are very helpful particularly if the pupil is keen. However if your DC is in year 11, then you have very little time left. Contact the school ASAP.

Yes, the rules are that once marked, you can't redo another assessment with the same title. But can do another v similar from a selection - e.g describe the scene at a busy market becomes describe an airport terminal.

Most eng depths will offer opps to write additional CAs in year 11 to improve grades. It's in the teacher's interests to get the best grades possible from her group so if she feels your son could have done better, she will almost certainly give him another go.

Calm down op

Yes, that was my understanding as well - it's been a while since I've taught but while they couldn't redo one as such they could answer a different question.

Good luck to MasterDancing

Thanks to those who pointed out that my lack of the word "the" was not a mistake but only me trying to keep the post brief! I was worried, when told had made errors that I could no longer see my mistakes!

For those who say I am in no position to judge the quality of work, I do actually have a degree in English from one of the UK's top universities so I think I can probably make some assessment. However, as I said, am not a teacher so can't claim to know marking scheme.

I understand that DC may not have performed on the day and would accept that if the feedback had been along the lines of "multiple spelling mistakes; lack of advanced vocab used or serious grammatical errors". None of these were mentioned. The feedback was purely stylistic and thus, to my opinion, very subjective. The school, however, will not let me see the work (this is their policy - not sure if that is common across all schools).

I am not confident that the work has been reviewed properly by another teacher. The school will be happy with the grade given as it is within one grade of target so I believe, if any review took place, it was only a cursory glance.

My DC is not a complainer and accepts feedback when needed. It is so unusual to get such a strong response and belief that this mark is unfair, hence why I want to support.

However, am now deeply frustrated that there seems to be no line of appeal and we just seem to be told to put up or shut up.

If anyone has advice or ideas on how I can progress this, would be so grateful.

Sorry for long last post and thanks for all the help and support!

Ask specifically for a second teacher to review the mark. Ask for a meeting with the HoY/HoD/Headteacher to discuss the outcome of this.

Ask for an explanation of how this CA mark might affect the overall grade and how your child can mitigate this mark to achieve the overall target grade (A/A* was it?). Do all this via email so there is a record. I suppose you could speak to the governors if you aren't happy with the response, then ultimately OFSTED if you're convinced that there is malpractice going on.

I'm not an English teacher but I doubt that the difference between a B and an A is down to mistakes and grammar. It seems likely that at the top end it is a question of style and flair rather than just the mechanics of language.

You'd do better to find out how he can resit the CA tbh, and accepting he had an off day than continuing to insist the teacher is wrong particularly as you haven't even seen the work

The mark scheme for Band 5 is subjective in many respects - 'delightful', 'flair', 'reasons for wanting to read the piece'. I'm a moderator for AQA and all schools are as generous as they can be - they want the marks to be as high as possible and being 'within one grade of target' wouldn't be enough at my school, we would be having to explain ourselves if an A grade student was getting a B.

I don't know how to say it without being patronising, but teachers are trained to use the mark scheme and even with an English degree, just looking at it yourself and applying it to a piece of work you haven't actually seen isn't going to be accurate. Feedback on creative writing will be stylistic - that's a major part of the criteria. If the piece was 'overly metaphorical' it might be that the student over-enthusiastically followed the instructions to use metaphor and simile and consequently wrote something that didn't make sense.

It would be highly unusual for a teacher to deliberately mark down a piece when scrutiny of targets and achievement is so intense and teachers are held so accountable for every grade. But it's entirely fair and reasonable for a parent to be concerned about their child's progress and as you are worried, you need to phone up and speak to the HoD and request that he/she looks at the piece and gives you their Feedback. External moderation isn't possible for an individual piece. The school can't send controlled assessment home, but if you went in for a meeting they could show it to you.

I am also a moderator for AQA and find it incredible you feel this could be a 'personal' mark. You also have to consider the importance of the centre getting the rank order correct, if there were a lot of stronger pieces that would highlight weaknesses in your DC's work. Whilst imagery is important it can very easily be overdone and that would lower scores. Such a piece would lack sophistication which would limit the band it could be placed in.

If you look online you should be able to see an A* exemplar, the standard is very high.

Op- could you say why you think a teacher would shoot herself in the foot by marking down a pupil because of a personality clash when her salary and professional advancement depends on getting as many kids to as high a standard as possible?

No teacher wants to deliberately mark low - the pressure to get those top grades is huge. I think you might have to accept this wasn't your child's strongest piece of work. Creative writing is quite a skill and it's easy to become too cliched to hit the top marks.
My classes all do more pieces than necessary. We only have to submit 2 writing tasks and they can use the highest. Hopefully this is the case for yours.
If you're still not convinced you could request that your child's folder is internally moderated before the final marks are sent off, but as others said - be careful of accusing the teacher of deliberately being mean. Calling their professionalism into question is serious and needs some actual evidence if that's the route you want to take.
My advice would be that an odd coursework mark here and there makes a small difference whereas every mark in the exam matters so spend your time and energy helping them prepare for this now.

Work in internal moderation doesn't just get a cursory glance, or I wouldn't have to spent hours doing it! It is examined and then re-marked, if your DC's work was called for external moderation then it could cause havoc for the whole year group if it was marked wrongly.
Your best tack now is to contact the teacher or HoD and explain that your DC is concerned about their mark and what is the best course of action for example is there any way of resitting it, would someone be able to explain to you where your DC lost marks so that you can help with exam. You could also ask for a meeting with the HoD to explain how it was marked. Controlled assessed work doesn't go home. Next course after that would be the head, and then governors after that.
I would be very surprised of the school were "happy" with one grade off your DC's target grade, with the emphasis on progress rather than A-C passes it means that meeting target grades are crucial.

I'm quite surprised you have been given a definite grade for one piece of CA - the conversion charts are not released until after submission. And whilst many teachers give a guideline based on last year's figures, these apply to a full CA folder - so out of 80 marks. One creative writing piece is worth 10 marks and is also assessed jointly with the 2nd piece for a mark out of 10 for accuracy. Has the same teacher marked the other pieces of CA? Are you happy with that marking?

Surely there must be an internal appeals procedure for Controlled Assessments? Ask the school for its policy.

Jelly - absolutely not being patronising. I am not a teacher so don't claim to be any expert in the marking scheme. I have however looked at the example answer as was suggested and hence my confusion as definitely felt that quality of work to date (they have done several practices ) was in line.

When the mark came in we were not told it was a specific grade but rather an indicative grade. My surprise and confusion is that the school seem to want to defend the teacher rather than examine why a child has got a lower mark. I knew we wouldn't be able to take the paper home but have been refused opportunity to even look at paper in school. As you can imagine this just concerns me even more!

DC does not want to resit as felt the last work was good enough and is claiming it was same standard as previously produced.

just so disappointed with the school's attitude.

I will follow up on some of the very useful suggestions. Thank you.

Balia - forgot to say that pre Xmas work marked by another teacher.

Feelinglikescrooge - you raised a good point about rank order. My DC is in 2nd set English where kids are targetted to get As and Bs rather then the As and A*s. I do wonder now if they have allocated all the higher grades to top class.

Is there a "percentage" guideline that school are expected to adhere to?

What is it that you are concerned is happening here? Are you convinced that the teacher has either deliberately or incompetently marked the work wrongly, and the school are trying to cover it up rather than rectify it?

You can't know what the work is actually like as you haven't seen it or assessed it against the mark scheme.

Is it really harder for you to believe that your child produced B grade work, instead of the teacher and the school both being incompetent or downright unprofessional?

To answer your question about allocating grades, there is no set number/percentage of A or A grades that are allocated. If all the students produced A work then they would be given an A*.

Dancing, I think you have misunderstood the comment about rank order. We place work in rank order so we can standardise it and make sure that we have allocated the right mark to each piece by comparing it with pieces of a similar level. It is absolutely NOT used as a tool to hold down grades. As for the set 2 theory should have lower grades, if you teach set 2 and your class outperforms set 1 then you are feeling very pleased with yourself - you are certainly not artificially holding your pupil's grades down to make the set 1 teacher look good!
Please listen to the teachers on here - there is a vanishingly small possibility that your DC's teacher is some sort of nutter who has marked them down because of a personality clash - that would be cutting off their nose to spite their face indeed. We don't do that, no matter how many pupils would like to believe otherwise. The school WILL internally moderate - we all do this - and I really don't see how you looking at the work will help - you just are not trained to mark against the mark scheme. It does happen to lots of DC that for whatever reasons there is one piece of course work, or one exam, that just doesn't work out as well as the others. Your DC needs to take their feedback on board and move on, rather than fixating on some imaginary grudge they believe the teacher holds against them.

It might help to know that the exam board tolerance (how far we can be out before they adjust the entire cohorts's CA marks) for the Eng Lang controlled assessment folder is THREE. For the entire folder, which includes:

2x creative writing
1x combined spag for the creatives
1x spoken lang study
1x extended reading

So we can't be one mark out on each piece (assuming likely to be all over generous or all over harsh) without the board adjusting the marks for the whole cohort.

The teacher will NOT be deliberately marking down your dc. Because to do so would risk the external moderator downgrading the entire cohort, including those with whom her personality doesn't "clash".