Understanding AQA grading system GCSE English Lit

[swingofthings]

Moving on from my other post about DD controlled assessment grade, I would actually find it interested to better understand how grading works.

I understand that GCSE Eng Lit consist of three grades, two exams, one controlled assessment. Would it be possible for someone to share what the top grade for each is? I have looked at the AQA document and it makes no sense. For instance, code 97152H, the document says maximum scaled mark is 54, but DD got 57, so clearly that doesn't make any sense!

Elsewhere, I have read that the total top mark is 200, but I am not sure how this is divided. Is it 80/80/40? And what is the weighting of each? I have also read that controlled assessment constitutes 25% of the final mark, is that correct.

It's my natural statistical mind that is at work now, just trying to get my head around it!

If you go on the aqa website and look at the specification for the subject it tells you exactly how it is examined. I can't link for you as I'm posting from my phone, they're big documents.

Then you can also Google the grade boundaries and see where each mark falls for each unit.

Use this link

www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/english/gcse/english-literature-9715

and go to p8 of the specification and you can see the make up of the overall mark. As far as I know there's no weighting as such, all marks are the same

Then you can use the table here

www.aqa.org.uk/exams-administration/about-results/grade-boundaries

to see the grade boundaries for each element.

The one thing I don't know how to find is the overall grade boundary, if anyone knows that I'd be grateful for a link

Thank you very much. For the over grade boundaries, I only found last year, with 180 being A* and 160 an A (out of 200).

Just looked at page 8 of the specification and it doesn't make sense :) It says that Unit 1 is out of 68 points (including 8 points for spelling and punctuation), unit 2, 54 points and unit 3, controlled assessment is out of 40. That indeed is in line with their published grade boundaries:
filestore.aqa.org.uk/over/stat_pdf/AQA-GCSE-GDE-BDY-JUNE-2015.PDF

However, the attached makes it out to be 80/60 and 50.
filestore.aqa.org.uk/over/stat_pdf/UMS-GRADE-BOUNDARIES.PDF

So am confused, shows how much I understand the world of education!!

It's possibly something to do with the conversion of marks to UMS scores, there's a converter here

www.aqa.org.uk/exams-administration/about-results/uniform-mark-scale/convert-marks-to-ums

It's not easy by any means, I needed pen and paper to follow each one through but it did work for my child's subject

it all makes sense now! Well no it doesn't, but understand it is due to that conversion business!

I don't know why they do the conversion, at a guess it might be to make things comparable across years or subjects, I could google I suppose

Having educated myself on GCSE marking of course I now need to start again with A and AS level.

The marks on the GCSE results paper will be UMS marks.
You can convert their UMS to find out how many actual marks they got using the converter.

DD got 138UMS which is 2 UMS off a B. Pondering about asking for a remark to see if those extra 2 marks can be found somewhere, but irrationally worried about losing 19UMS instead and ending up with a D. As it's not important, and the grade dropping would be awful, I'll probably let sleeping dogs lie.