Year 11 GCSE exam support thread 3 - the exam weeks

[HSMMaCM]

New thread for those of us starting the exams.

Keep calm everyone.

Woolly - hope your DD is okay.

Woollyback, sending you positive vibes and calm thoughts.

Wooley. Hope that it all turns out well for your dd. Look after yourself. xx

I had never heard of these grade boundaries things until my son told me this week. So if you have a year where no student worked or everyone was not at all clever then it becomes easier to get a higher mark even if that year group across the UK is 20% less bright than the year before? So if all students decided to slack off this year collectively they could all still get the same marks? It seems weird to me.

Hi GCSE thread - I'm invigilating the GCSEs this year and saw someone ask about sealed papers. As an invig I often don't get the papers into the room until 5 minutes before and yes sealed. If you have DC in smaller exam rooms of 1-10 students the papers can be split up in the exams office beforehand but this is very controlled and only for students who can't sit in big exam rooms for whatever reason.

The school I work for is great and would never risk showing the papers on the day! I imagine they were recent past papers. If there is any doubt report to the exams office :)

Every DC I've had in my exam room so far has been so lovely, calm and polite. I hope the best for them all.

Woolly, hoping youre all OK.

Thanks for the advice everyone. She's woken in a slightly more positive frame of mind and is having the morning off before starting some English.

LotusLight - yes, so the grades are completely incomparable from year to year. Nuts !

It's kind of fair if one paper is harder than the year before, but not fair if there's been a Facebook campaign to slack of in a subject.

Bloody hell woolly hope your DD is ok, so important to keep a check on eye health, my mum's optician discovered she'd had a mild stroke last time he looked behind her eye. Keep us posted and keep school informed, do you have contact details for any of the staff. ?

re Grade boundaries. This is my understanding, it might not be exactly right.

With 'O' levels, they were scored on a normal distribution, and something like 10% got As, next 20% got Bs or whatever. This meant that a proportion were always destined to 'fail' no matter what, I think. But an A meant you were top 10% that year.

Under GCSEs the standard is (was) meant to be absolute, so you could take the exam in any year and still get the same grade. However 'grade inflation' has meant that more pupils have got higher grades over time. Whether this is due to better teaching, or teaching to the test, or easier exams is a moot point.

If an exam is accidentally harder (or easier) then how the marks translate to the Universal Marking Scheme (UMS) is adjusted, in theory so that the same standard gets the same grade each year. However there is a school of thought that says that interference from government has sometimes meant that grade boundaries are adjusted to make things harder to pass. (e.g. English last year).

So if an exam board decides their Spanish exam was accidentally extra hard, they could lower the amount of raw marks needed for a particular grade. However if they just decide that this year's cohort just weren't as good, then they won't.

LotusLight & HSM, in case you'd like an answer on the grading question:

testprep.about.com/od/tipsfortesting/f/Grading_Curve.htm

Hope your DD is OK Woolly

Thank you for all your good wishes.

We are waiting to see another consultant but an MRI and lumbar puncture may be scheduled for next week. She is being incredibly brave.

I have her form tutor's email so I can get in touch if there is any impact on her attendance at school. She has an exam scheduled for every day next week. We'll know more after seeing the next consultant.

Woolly I hope you get seen quickly and get to the bottom of it without much more disruption. Your poor DD.
Sending get well vibes.

Oh gosh Woolley hope all is OK
Poor thing

Oh Woolley,your dd must be in such shock to be in hospital at this time.Just sending you both our best wishes,that this is solved speedily.

Oh Woolley, so sorry to hear this. What a difficult time for you all

DD is cooking soup. She wanted leek so dispatched her to garden to get some. She came in waving the thing in the picture, which is a tulip ! Apparently she pulled up the leeks first but they had roots on so stuck them back in and pulled the tulip instead as thought they were like carrots and underground. At this point she drcided she had better get help. We were all like this She is faffing over an onion with a manky bit now, you'd think she had never cooked before!

Lotus it's kind of the other way round with grade boundaries. In the old days where 10% got an A regardless, a cohort who were particularly daft would still have 10% getting As. Nowadays there would be far fewer getting As. Although given the very large number of kids sitting exams each year it would be highly improbable that an entire cohort of 16 year olds collective intelligence would be measurably lower than another cohort.

Hope your dd is ok Woolley.

That makes sense. I understand now. Also my suggestion the whole 16+ cohort could collective decide to slack off with no effect on grades probably would not work and as my son said not exactly practicable anyway.

Thanks T&T and gin.

Thinking of you all WoollybacksWife

Woolley - sending you best wishes that your DD is OK and is seen as quickly as possible. If I were you, I would let the school know the situation and that she has spent time in hospital today (which can't be exactly conducive to revision!) I'm thinking that the school may be able to apply for a concession for her, on the basis of upset/disruption possibly? If they don't know, they can't apply for her.

Anyhow I hope whatever it is, is resolved quickly for you.

Woolley, you poor thing, how stressful for both you and your daughter. I agree with switchitoff definitely let the school know about being at the hospital today and then you can update them as and when you know more. Especially if you're doing a lot of waiting around and have time to do it.

I know a couple of people who were ill during exams. (My DH had appendicitis during his and was given his grades based on the papers he'd taken before he went into hospital.) The school and / or exam boards might want you to provide a letter from the hospital as evidence so it might be as well to ask what might be needed now so that you can sort that out while you're there.

Woollyback - So sorry to hear about your DD. I hope whatever it is can be resolved OK. Thinking of you and your DD xx