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?

Dancing please just accept that your son has not achieved on this one piece. School have told you it has been moderated and the grade agreed. Whatever you or you DS think you are wrong. If school are concerned he will resit.
Overly metaphorical to me sounds like he has tried too hard and created a stilted piece that has the "bits" in it but not naturally. An A* narrative/descriptive piece asks for flair. Maybe you need to accept your son is better at other types of writing.
By the way I am an English teacher and I can assure you teachers do not Mark down because they clash with a pupil (even if they have pain in the arse parents who think their DCs are perfect)

I do wonder if your son is producing "formulaic" writing. My daughter does this - she knows what a teacher will be looking for, and thus makes sure she puts in plenty of the things they like. So she will make sure every piece has metaphors, embedded clauses, rhetorical questions, semi colons, etc. Which is great, and gets her good marks in unimportant things, but it does mean her work doesn't "flow". Her teacher thinks her writing is excellent. But to me it reads "unnaturally" (and I know my grammar there is poor - but you know what I mean!)

I thought the same oak from the op's response to the writing being judged as overly metaphoric - 'but he was told to use metaphor!'. To me, that's indicative of a B (or lower) grade writer, put all the techniques in and then be completely confused as to why they don't have full marks - because they did everything they were told to! It just doesn't work like that, sorry.

As an English teacher and moderator for AQA, I find it highly unlikely that your son's teacher would have marked his work down. It would not be in the teacher's interests at all. As a moderator, I find very few centres that haven't standardised rigorously, and when there are marking inconsistencies, work tends to be over marked.

I know from experience what his teacher's comment implies, and whilst I realise that you are supporting your son, I wouldn't waste any more energy on trying to extract an extra mark from one CA. It's very close to the deadline anyway.

I'm sorry you're disappointed, but your DS would be far better off concentrating on his exam prep. The writing sections of the exam carry a lot of marks, and if his writing is " overly metaphorical" or too flowery it won't hit the A* assessment objectives. Get him to read some high quality journalism to see how to write descriptively and emotively, without slipping into bathos.

Roll on linear...

Also, and I am trying hard to not be argumentative here, but if your son's writing has previously consistently marked as A/A, then why is he in the group with B/A as targets? That indicates to me that counting on an A/A is perhaps optimistic?

I love teacher questioning threads. OP you have no grounds to complain, they have responded to you, the piece of work will have been looked at because you flagged it and questions asked.

Children always think they have done better than they have, lots of bright and able children get As and A* grades and then drop when they get a bit over confident or don't put as much effort in as they always do well.

Stop being so precious about it and suck it up, make your DC do it again. Teachers are professionals and they all want the best for the students , your suggestion of "personality clash" shows that you are not objective about this. Teachers may not like students ( and yes we don't like them all) but we don't mark down based on that, we all want our students to do well which is why moderation takes place so that "teacher talking" which is being generous does not happen.

As others have said he ought to be concentrating on preparing for the exam now. Indeed it is so close to the submission of marks I doubt many schools would have the time to resit a CA. Certainly I am running revision sessions after school and all our folders have been moderated internally and filed. I couldn't afford the time for a single pupil to redo a CA now since the marks have to be with the exam board by 7th May.

'Children always think they have done better than they have' - and sometimes they are right! Why are so many GCSE exam grades appealed every year and the marking found to be at fault? Aren't the examiners and moderators recruited from the very same teachers who are supposed to be infallible at marking and moderating in their own schools?

Would the op's ds have known the title for the creative writing piece in advance? Had he written something very similar before and received an A/A* previously? My eldest is only YR 8 but from previous threads CAs seem to be about regurgitating something previously prepared. I don't agree with the personality clash but if the child's previous English teacher had been in the habit of marking his work too generously then the school would still be accountable and should offer a proper explanation - is there internal moderation of work throughout the GCSE course or just at examination time?

There must be an internal appeals procedure of some sort that also involves another member of staff unconnected to the English department - op should contact the Examinations Officer at the school perhaps if only to check that the correct procedures have been followed.

A creative piece from an unseen title or a creative piece written, amended and learnt by heart? Genuine question.

Ok, CAs not quite as easy as I had been led to believe then. I still think the OP should contact the Examinations Officer asap just to talk things through as the English department have refused a meeting.

The English department have informed the parent the piece has been moderated. The examinations office will do nothing. as for examiners - you clearly know very little about exam marking. CAs are moderated in school and a sample selected by the board for moderation. Exams are completely different, marked by teachers, ex teachers etc and once all are marked the grad boundary is set - so you are marking to a number not a grade.

I don't know a great deal about exam marking but I think I was aware of everything you have just written. A student is awarded a GCSE grade not a number or percentage mark which is why I used the term 'grade'. If you accept that teachers/ex teachers (who I believe have to have recent teaching experience) make mistakes in their public exam marking then they are just as fallible in school as elsewhere. My own dc have had the occasional end of year exam papers not correctly marked (queried and amended in class when the teachers have gone through the papers). The Examinations Officer should at least be able to provide the parent with a copy of the school's internal appeals policy (so the parent can satisfy themselves that nothing more can be done) as the teachers on this thread don't appear to have any knowledge of such a document existing (and I'm certain that one does exist).

Clavinova the grade isn't known until everything has been marked. That's what pp meant by marking to a number. Some years 26 out of 30 will equal an A*. Other years that'll only get a B.

And there's no evidence that procedure hasn't been followed which is all an appeal could determine. The work was done in class. The original script is kept under lock and key. It has been internally moderated. It might be asked for by the exam board and I'm sure they'll supply it if so. That's it. End of. Everything has been done correctly. OP just doesn't like the result!

And yes of course plenty of exam scripts are remarked, but as a proportion of the total taken, mistakes are minimal, and usually administrative rather than marked incorrectly.

Clav nothing more can or will be done. Just because a parent thinks her precious deserves a higher grade does not mean he deserves one. According to OP the piece has been moderated - the school probably don't have an appeals policy for CAs as I have never known a parent react like this before - in 16 years. 99% of posters on here have told the OP the same thing

Mistakes in exam marking are far more likely to occur than in CA marking for a whole lot of reasons. I mark exams and CA. My own students' CA work gets much more of my time and effort (ten minutes average to mark and annotate a creative writing CA like the one this thread focuses on, as opposed to around 3 minutes for a similar length exam response). This is because there is a pretty generous tolerance margin for exam marking as opposed to the teeny tiny tolerance for CA folders - see my earlier post. Also, exam responses are impersonal, so I am emotionally detached and give less of a fuck if I'm a couple of marks out. I'm going to get paid regardless and know my marking is usually pretty good. My future pay grade isn't depending on the results of the papers in front of me. I am marking 460 papers in three weeks on top of a full time job and it's almost one o'clock in the morning and I have to get through 8 more papers before I can go to bed or I'll not meet my deadline. I won't be sat red faced in a moderation meeting next week having to explain any shoddy marking to my boss and colleagues if I am a bit out on some of my exam scripts. I've had beer. I've been marking for four straight hours and it's all blurring into one. Etc.

That was meant to say "I've had a beer". The lack of a quantity makes it sound like I chug a crate of fosters before starting marking tempting which definitely isn't the case, I promise!

The last post from Bosswitch confirms the fear I have always had about the marking of external exams. How can one possibly have confidence in a system like this!

No assessment system that relies on humans marking a subjective subject (like English) will ever be perfect. But you can have confidence in it because statistically, it works. The vast, vast majority of marks are correct. And there is a process of quality assurance - there are checks in place throughout the marking process. Then, once the results are out, schools can recall papers if they think the marking is off, they can check them, they can ask for remarks. They can also get papers near grade boundaries remarked just in case they have been marked too harshly and the three extra marks would push them from a B to an A.

It does work. Honest. And despite my flippancy, I trust it.

If it helps, the exam board I work for grades our performance as markers, primarily based on our accuracy. I always get As!

But do you get an A for your exam marking because everyone else gets a B, C or D? Yes, I do understand grade boundaries.