Is there a legal way to appeal on A-level art project grades?

[Leo12345]

Hello!
My daughter is in year 13 and she does art A-level.
She applied to UCL, Sheffield and Edinburgh universities for architecture, already got offer in the latter, waiting for UCL.
In the interviews they were very much impressed of her art portfolio.
But we have a 'silent' conflict with my daughter's art teacher.
I will not give here too many details, but just to mention: the teacher's daughter applied to UCL and Edinburgh last year and failed, and this can be the reason.
In any case the A-level mark is 40% final exam and 60% the mark of art projects during the year.
My daughter invests a lot in art, we have opinions of professionals that her art work is a very high lever, the head of art department in the school says that my daughter deserves A*, but the art teacher keeps marking her projects B and C.
Are there any legal means how we can influence the teacher?
Can we have my daughter's art projects marked independently?
This is really important, as the career of my daughter depends on the grade she gets for her final art project. If she gets B or C in art A-level, she will miss UCL, Edinburgh etc.

What's a silent conflict @Leo12345?

Go in all guns blazing OP.

And then report back here

"It only takes one bad egg out of 1000s to trigger a MN post. She wouldn't be the first child ever to have coursework wrongly marked, "

True; but with a neutral, well reasoned post the more likely conclusion would still be that the parent is wrong. When the OP makes such unreasonable statements I think that derision is the correct and helpful response. In the event of a real problem, the OP has been given clear guidance how to fix it as well.

it's not unreasonable to ask whether there's a process to trigger a moderation/remark.

yes, you politely ask the head of department for it to be moderated. that's literally all there is to it. No thread needed. Although its entertaining, and illustrates the craziness and irrationality teachers have to live with. One of the reasons there's so few teachers.

Who are the 'professionals' that think her work is at a high level, what do they do exactly?

The thing is regarding professionals opinions of her work is that's it's not all about the quality of a piece of art but fulfilling the exam board criteria.

Dh is a professional musician & vocal coach. He coaches professional performers. He tells me that if he coaches a ginger student then a song that he considers challenging in terms of vocal technique, breathing, vocal quality etc often does not get high marks for GCSE because it hasn't got a specific vocal range for example. It's very artificial in many ways.

Not quite sure why younger turned into ginger!

Some parents genuinely do believe that teachers dislike / pick on their children. Not that we dislike their behaviour or attitude, or that we return work to be done again because are trying to to get their DC the best grade possible. Nope, we went into teaching to pick on kids.

I had a parent complain about me last term, and it caused me enormous stress. One of the more batshit interesting allegations was that I was deliberately refusing to help her DC because I was jealous that the child was better at the subject than my own . That told me quite a lot about how petty the complainant was capable of being.

OP, don't miss the good practical advice on here. If your dd is going to study architecture, she needs to learn not only the artistic techniques but how to handle people and how to handle herself. You need to be a good model here. Tell her to speak to the teacher about what she needs to do for her coursework (assuming she still has some left to do). Tell her to speak to the head of Arts about moderation. Teach her how to do this without sounding confrontational. These are skills she will need to acquire.

Most likely she has turned in work of high quality that somehow did not quite meet the exam board criteria, as Alexander said. That is precisely the kind of thing she needs to learn if she is going to be an architect: making sure you understand the criteria and sticking to them.

OP, I don't think your assumptions are forcibly farfetched. There are crap, resentful and bitter teachers just like there are such people in other way of lives. It does happen unfortunately.

My DD was down marked at a controlled assessment just because she took a dislike in her. It was challenged, the Head agreed, apologised, but was left with a 'there's nothing we can do about it now, but will make sure that it doesn't happen again'. The Head had a talk with the teacher and indeed, things improved nicely and actually, they ended up getting along quite well at the end of the two years. DD end up with As at all her exams, but the C in the first controlled assessment remained.

So no, I don't think your concerns are totally unfunded whatever the reason. I do agree though that the best way forward would be for your DD -rather than you- to go and speak with he Head to express her concerns. It is likely to be taken more seriously coming from her than from mum, especially at this level.

I agree - teachers can show bias and mark unfairly- especially if they take a dislike to your child.

This did happen to my daughter with her PE practice assessments- I felt really anxious and worried how I would go about questioning the marking.

My daughter checked with her school Sports coach- as we had been told the PE teacher had discussed in detail with school sport coaches)- this was not true the coach said that she had no input on the score. This coach told my daughter she would talk to Head of PE.

I then emailed Head of PE and just very politely asked if he could have a look at her scores and chat to her school Sports coach. I did not say anything negative about teacher, but I was really cross, as she actually lied to me- saying scores came from coach! My daughter did get an extra 2 points ( this might not sound much, but it put her in the top band).

So teachers do make mistakes or possibly mark harder on students they don't like- it is human nature.

My advice- go in and chat to Head of Art Department.

But also you can be amazing at Art, but if you have not met the criteria at each development stage, you can't get top marks - even if your final outcome is amazing

Good luck

For an A she will need a good 3000 word essay, excellent research and analysis of a range of artists, have used a wide variety of media and experimented with flair, taken excellent photographs and drawn from observation well, and developed a fluent and clear final piece/s.

Has she done this?

Have you looked on you tube at example A* art sketchbooks, are they as good at that?

If the Hod says her work is A+ then surely the hod will be concerned at the grades and will act. Arrange an appointment

Teachers aren't saints and can take a dislike to certain pupils. Have several teacher friends and they admit as much. But as professionals would never dream of taking this out on the child.
It's in a teacher's interest to get the best outcome possible from a student, as others have said, as it impacts on pay/promotion etc. So there's an incentive to be fair.
If you have a strong suspicion of bias, it's no use making uncorroborated allegations. Keep a diary of events. Record meetings. Correspond in writing only. If concrete evidence is there escalate to HOD and write to governors, if particularly serious.
However, as long as internal marking exists, there will remain some suspicion from some parents, whether it's warranted or not. Time to move to PQA.

I questioned one of my DCs maths A level coursework. She was getting A's and A*'s in exams and tests and was working very hard. She ended up getting an E in her coursework. Even though it only represented 3% of her total Alevel mark she was still gutted. I just emailed her teacher and very politely asked her to double check there wasn't some sort of mistake as we were suprised by the low mark. She checked and there was no mistake as my DD had made mistakes and missed bits out. She was really nice about it and quite understood why we had asked. There was no outrage and no conflict.

OP, why don't you do the same and ask the teacher. There is nothing wrong with asking as long as you are polite.

I don't really understand how the Head of Dept thinks the work is worth an A star.

I then emailed Head of PE and just very politely asked if he could have a look at her scores and chat to her school Sports coach. I did not say anything negative about teacher, but I was really cross, as she actually lied to me- saying scores came from coach! My daughter did get an extra 2 points ( this might not sound much, but it put her in the top band).
Bit of a difference in an extra 2 points and going from a B/C to an A* though.

My friend asked me to look at her daughter's GCSE English and English Literature coursework two years ago. It had been graded D by the teacher who had been asked to look at it again by the Head of Department after my friend contacted him. It was graded a D again.
I looked at it - I was teaching the same exam- and it was clearly a B grade. She wrote to the HOD And the Head and asked for the HOD to grade the folders and then to meet with her and the Head as she was unhappy. They were re-graded at B.
It does happen that teachers get it wrong for reasons that differ across students. If the school has not moderated rigorously it can happen.
Ask what the moderation procedure is and for the HOD to grade the folder.