Odd AQA GCSE Geography result. Anyone had similar ?

[chococupcakes]

Hi guys,

My ds was predicted an A-A for his GCSE Geography. His course work was an A, he routinely achieves A-A in tests. The grade boundaries were low too. He felt the exams were no problems at all. Both of the papers, however, achieved a c! This resulted in an incredibly low B as a final result. Despite achieving 5 A's which includes all the sciences, Maths and English and 4 A's, this has left him incredibly distressed.

We have gone over the possibilities with the head of year such as possibly missing a question and not realising, but the likelihood of this happening on both papers are pretty slim.

At one point the head of year, who agreed this was an incredibly odd outcome considering my ds also is a strong student and the result is more in line with weaker students, was all for getting the scripts back and a remark. t would also give od the opportunity to see wat the hell went wrong. The scripts only service without remark is not a possiblity as it would come after the deadline date to submit a remark.

Suddenly, however, the head of year changed his tune. He anf me back to say the exam officer told him it's only 9 UMS away from the C and so doesn't think we should risk it. I thought the pivot was odd too as he was well aware of the risk during our initial conversation but said it could hardly get much worse. It's a risk we are prepared to take, however. He doesn't need it for A level.

I was just wondering if anyone else is in a similar position? Happy to take any further advice too.

Thank you so much.

Excuse massive typo's!

I would leave it as all as and a stars are great results and one possible extra a star will have no bearing on anything.

If you're ds isn't doing Geography A level then personally I wouldn't have it remarked. What's the point? And as it's both papers where he scored lower than predicted then it's unlikely it was a marking error. It might be worth getting the scripts back to see where he went wrong if he can learn from that.

In 2 weeks 2 years time nobody is going to care that he got a B in Geography GCSE. It's sad that this is making him incredibly distressed but given that it won't affect his future in any way perhaps he needs to develop some resilience? There will be times ahead where he fails to perform to the best of his ability, because at times we all do, it's about how we deal with it.

Well done to him on his results, they sound pretty brilliant to me.

He might not care about going down a grade but the school will because that B grade counts towards the Ebacc bucket for the Progress 8 calculation. If it drops, it will affect the school.

Not if he got A* in all 3 Sciences.

For me it depends on your reasons for wanting a remark - or in fact, your DSon's reasons. If it's because the idea of all A's and A*'s is appealing, then I'd say no - but if he feels after thinking very hard about the amount of revision and work he put in that he genuinely deserves a better mark, go for it. I personally would!

Good point, Fallen, missed that!

Meh. It's annoying but ultimately doesn't matter. A similar thing happened to me with long course RE at GCSE: coursework was an A and I was predicted A.... got a B. Never got to the bottom of why. And I was doing it at A Level. It knocked my confidence a bit, but it's one of those things. I went on to get an A at A Level and 15 years on it's not blighted my life that I got lower than my predicted grade in GCSE RE. If he's a consistently always been an A/A* performer then he will be disappointed, but it might teach him that sometimes, despite our best efforts, you get a dud in life.

Oh, and my husband was an AQA Geography marker and consistently throughout marking them he's said that the papers were hard and not the questions that he would have predicted this year.

Thank you SO much for the feeback guys.

Give or take a couple of factors, things generally add up don't they? He also got a B in French with 3 points away from the A. Yes he would have absolutely adored an A here too, however, in keeping it real, how much work he put into the listening aspect, the area he scored poorly in, his ability, etc, he can't argue it. Even prior to result day yesterday, in asking myself as a parent if I felt there was anything else I could have done to support him to achieve an A I'd have to hold my hands up and say, French. I know there are big shockers too...but are there??? The A* in Biology, for example, I thought he would scrape an A. But then it wasn't a shocker really because he told me yesterday, in the end, he just absolutely threw himself into it and worked his absolute socks off revision wise. Conversely, when he was going through his adolescence, he became disengaged and wouldn't study,. His results reflected that as did my blood pressure. Surely he should have 'felt' or remember something being at odds for such a massive gap between expectation and result.

Let's say it was a high B, then one could say once again, hard work didn't pay off. I don't think AQA has necessarily done anything wrong as such and wondered if it was a clerical error.

He just feels as @Fallen has highlighted, with all the work, hours, effort, blood, sweat, tears and study, something has gone fundamentally wrong.

@15MinutesWithYou Also, if the questions were tougher should the exam have not had 'felt' tougher also? he routinely scores A. Remember, without his A* coursework, it would have been a C. I'm okay with letting things go if they make sense, honestly.

If he's only 9 UMS points above the C grade, there would need to have been a pretty disastrous marking error for a review to gain enough UMS points to go up to an A.

I wouldn't take the risk.

Did he follow the instructions on the front of the paper OP? GCSE Geography is unusual in that pupils have a choice of questions. They have 2 sections A and B and they need to one question from A, one from B and the other one from either A or B. I invigilated this exam and suspect that some pupils did not follow this and e.g. did 3 questions from Section A. If they do this the candidates will score marks for the 2 questions in A and zero for section B so it can affect results.
Once they are in the exam room, candidates cannot be reminded which questions to answer.
I hope this makes sense.

I say this as a parent of a child taking GCSEs this year, you seem to be overthinking things a little.

Are you sure you have the correct figures for UMS and actual marks? That makes a big difference in the decision to go for a remark.

The fact the both papers are the same suggests that it's not a marking issue, how likely is it that both papers were marked by people who got the marks so wrong? I'd suggest not very likely.

What were the marks like for the whole year?

I do understand why you are considering a remark but I'd suggest you make sure you have your figures right first.

choco I don't think I expressed myself brilliantly, sorry- what my husband meant was that from his POV as a teacher the papers were tough because they weren't the questions he and his colleagues thought would come up. Of course teachers cover the whole course, but usually we (I'm a teacher too, although not Geography) can predict what's going to come up and teach with a bit more emphasis on those things. Normally this works out, you can predict in all kinds of ways from what was on last years paper to what the field work questions were for coursework, but this years GCSE felt like a curveball to him. Therefore your son may have done less well because it was on an area his teacher didn't concentrate as much on because they didn't anticipate it coming up.

I hope that makes sense.

Yes- my son!! Geography AQA - always gets top marks in exams, etc. Yet got 2 grades off in the 2 exams from what he was expecting/predicted. He is very diligent, worked very hard and felt the exams had gone really well. His school are supporting the remark as they were surprised at the result. As other posters have suggested the fact that it was in both exams does reduce likelihood of a marking error. However, my son is very disappointed and despite having done well in rest of his GCSEs has taken a bit of a confidence bashing. He just does not know where he went wrong.

Hi, assuming we're talking about AQA Geography A, I also sat this specification. I really was expecting an A* and put in a lot of work for it but ends up with an A. Obviously not disastrous but still annoying. The papers were both very strange and different from previous ones, so I don't think it's unusual to have not achieved his predicted grade - particularly if it was mainly based on past papers. Hope he feels better soon. :)

This year the exam boards will return scripts without remarks. Edexcel will send them unnannotated by markers but AQA will send the actual marked script back. Requests need to be in v soon (next week or so) And cost around 11 pounds. Remarks can be done after for around 45 pound.
Rather than the HOY speak to the exams officer. This is a new service and HOY may not be aware of it yet.

Thanks designed this way so I don't think that missing the deadlines is an issue. Could be wrong. Check with the exams officer!

pirates Teachers can see Edexcel marked scripts online immediately free of charge (with permission from parents). qualifications.pearson.com/content/dam/pdf/Support/results-certification/Access-to-Scripts-FAQs.pdf
Obviously no use to the OP though!

Sorry, I forgot HOY had ruled out clerical error due to both papers being the same.

@catslife: Now something like that would make sense. I just ran it by him but he said he definitely remembers following the instructions carefully and as you noted However, he may well be shocked when the scripts come back.

@15minuteswithyou I hear you. Thanks for clarifying. I am waiting for the school to put up how the sectors did overall. He just said he remembers everyone finding it okay.

@SandyDenny Over thinking? Perhaps. I am a proud, renowned critical thinker. Thanks for getting me to check points vs UMS scores. It was 9 UMS away. Would need to check raw scores.

@LucyLou Phew! Someone else. Can we keep in touch? It may well be nothing and the children have simply messed up. Equally, for me, things just must make sense. In my lifetime, with further investigation, they usually do.

@Throwitaway Indeed, annoying but much more likely an outcome from A to C (would have been C grade without A course work). In fact, he had three A* predicted that ended up at an A.

@Attheonelylivingboy. I hear you. Even a high B would make better sense. HOY is not denying something is odd and gone awry. I gathered he doesn't think it's the usual marking error as too large a gap. Truth is we can second guess all day long and won't truly know until we get the papers back.

I checked with AQA, the dates they send scripts are 25th onwards and end of submission date is 21st.

Someone from one of the other boards made an important point. He said 'remarks' should not be seen as a risk, but rather, that you truly believe that something has fundamentally gone wrong and you have not received the incorrect score for your work.

If it goes down further, then it was even worse than we thought and the true mark.

This happened to me at A level, though rather more extremely. I was predicted AAB....and got ABE. Was turned down by my university of choice and everything seemed like a total disaster. The school had my E subject re-marked and the E was upgraded to a D, but the process was so slow that the university I'd been desperate to go to had started back already by the time I got the re-mark and said they probably wouldn't have accepted me with a D anyway. All a total disaster. I went off to do a degree course at a university I didn't want to go to. The good point was that I met DH there....making my life what it is now....

I really do sympathise OP, but it's not a total disaster for your DS, especially as it isn't one of his chosen A level subjects. Good luck with deciding what to do x

Correction Someone from one of the other boards made an important point. He said 'remarks' should not be seen as a risk, but rather, that you truly believe that something has fundamentally gone wrong and you have not received the correct score for your work.

If it goes down further, then it was even worse than we thought and the true mark.

AQA Geog paper 1 was v odd this year, there were NO case studies included, yet always have been in past...and grade boundaries are MUCH lower than other paper. If he had been prepped on case studies the paper will have thrown him (as it did some of our students) - honestly, unless he needs it for a-level choices I would not risk only 7UMS into C grade. How did others in class do? Are you sure CA wasn't marked down??

I am a geog teacher and most of my students are at least one grade below what I expected-due in most cases to paper 1. Getting 3 remarked then will take it from there.