GCSE Results Day 2017

[justmumof1]

Hard to belive that I was here 5 years ago sweating it out for the results of his secondary school offer!

Only a few days now bwfore the GCSE results come out. DS is starting to get nervous....as am I!

Can someone explain something to me- I'm feeing incredibly thick.

I've found the AQA grade boundaries for Summer 2017 published yesterday. And on ds's results sheet there's a category called Mark Equivalent. Should the marks in that category correlate with the marks on the grade boundary document? 0r is there another process involved somewhere?

Dunlurkin - thank you very much for the hot choclate. Delicious. Can I offer you a or a ? I'm feeling a bit about posting his results now after a thread complaining.

After ecstatic emotions this morning at 7A*, 3 8s and 1A, DD later felt that perhaps her 8 in Eng Lang might need remarking, We spoke to school and they felt the same as she got 9 in her mock and felt the exam went very well. A friend who struggled got a 9! I'm supporting her but can't help feel a bit as 8 is fab-u-lous. Her teachers were supportive and said they'd send for mark breakdown as AQA haven't published them , only grades. Any teachers out there think it's likely that grades will be changed?

Thanks Goingtobe Mine's a - once I've driven dd to a friend''s for a party. Definitely we should celebrate. I'm always pleased to hear of MNers dcs' successes - no matter the grades. My dd's were just as wonderful to me as someone else's straight A*s. We cried with relief.

BertrandRussell- I've just looked at DS's print out, and he has a mark equivalent for the unreformed, non IGCSE subjects, and it seems to be his total UMS for all components. So it should relate to that part of the grade boundaries.

Can somebody help me as I am obviously not reading this right. I kept seeing remarking questions so I thought I'd check how far DS is from the next grade but something is definitely not right (well I am not reading it right).

So for let's say Biology unit 1 Tier Hier AQA says max marks 60 - 50 to get A*. My DS piece of paper has a column called "marks equivalent" and under this exam it says 63. Checked the code and all. What am I reading wrong?

Help!

I can see Bertrand is as confused as me...

I think the marks equivalent is the UMS.

The grade boundaries here filestore.aqa.org.uk/over/stat_pdf/AQA-GCSE-RF-GDE-BDY-JUN-2017.PDF are raw marks. The school told us what the raw marks were from the UMS on the results slip but we had to ask. I may be completely wrong though.

50 was the raw mark (out of 60) required to get an A*. This equates to a UMS of 90 (UMS 80 is an A, 70 a B, 60 a C) so your dc's 63 is the UMS which is a C grade (looking at the grade boundaries for that particular paper raw marks of 24 to 31 were Cs, so I'd guess your child got around 27 out of 60.

Yes, the paper is out of 60, but 100 UMS. So I think 26/60 is 63 UMS.

Thanks, got it started to read about it now

Me too, I have the same issues. I don't understand. Help please

Nope. Still don't understand. Oh well. Good thing it's not me doing the GCSEs!

MsHarry, the mark breakdown for each student is on AQA. You Exam Officer and HoD will be able to access this now.

UMS explained here with links to online raw score to UMS converter.

store.aqa.org.uk/over/stat_pdf/UMS-GRADE-BOUNDARIES.PDF

This shows you the equivalent of the marks on the sheet of papers. So you can compare apples for apples.

So just to make sure I understand, biology (as this was DS's biggest disappointment) am I right to think that the total Higher AQA UMS for B is 280 so if DS got 278 I should really get it remarked?

The trouble is that AQA have put out boundary documents with raw scores but not UMS. The mark in that column is UMS. You can use the online converter to get the UMS, and there will be a UMS grade boundary table on that page.

It is 3 papers, so worth looking at where the marks have been lost.

The UMS boundaries are in the link i posted above. Oh god we have the same with physics, 280 for a B - DS got 279.

Can somebody (who knows how to read this) confirm that I am reading it correctly at total level?

Do they remark each paper or the entire subject?

I don't know whether I've understood correctly but a remark now is literally just totting up the marks to see if it adds up to what it should do not reading the answer booklet like it is being marked for the first time?

Sorry haven't had a chance to read the whole thread as have been trying to get my head round today and hug DD for a brilliant set of results in the 30 minutes I saw her before she went off to the post results sleepover!

She had a brilliant set of results but one sticks out - she got a 7 in AQA English Lit when she was predicted a 9 (and got a 9 in language). It is even odder as she got 100% in paper 1 and then a 6 in paper 2 - and she felt paper 2 went better than 1. School are supportive of a remark but we are concerned there are risks as she could go down a grade. It almost looks like they didn't mark a question?

All a bit chaotic as I've discovered this after that had she done a paper with Edexcel or OCR we could get the script and then decide on a remark. AQA don't offer this which seems to penalise their candidates who have to go into remarks (I know they aren't truly a remark but you know what I mean blind).

Did anyone else's DC have odd AQA Eng Lit results?

Can we go for the clerical check first - service 1 (will be back in10 calendar days) which still gives us time to opt for the fuller check (service 2) if we still want to or is it one or the other. Very confused.

I feel really guilty asking this but I do want DD to get what she should if there has been an error.

Advice much appreciated.

Any of course we probably need to get our skates on and ask for the clerical check tomorrow if we want time to consider the fuller service.

Fleurdelise
They arent doing remarks anymore as an option.

They got fed up of schools sending loads of scripts for remarks in the last few years (which we were doing because the makring was so shocking kids were going up whole grades in places).
So now they do a 'review of marking' where they take a sample of questions on the paper and as long as the mark scheme has been applied properly, there's no 2nd opinion.

A remark will only happen if there is a technical error or the mark scheme hasnt been applied properly.

Did anyone else's DC have odd AQA Eng Lit results?

Nope. My class came out really well in lit, only surprises were positive ones. Our entire centre had a really strong set of results.

If the issue is paper 2, I'd put money on it being section C unseen poetry. It's worth 32 marks (around 1/3 paper) and yet students seem to always write less than they should. Another common mistake is writing loads on the unseen poetry comparison (only worth 8 marks), having not done enough on the 24 mark single poem.

s4rah there is a clerical mark for totalling the mark and a Mark review where they look at the paper again. Just how do you decide which paper out of 3 to remark?!