English GCSE remark : expert objective advice needed!!

[Piggywaspushed]

Ok, I have been batting this round on a few threads and need to preface this by saying I am an English teacher... but it isn't helping me at all!

DS got a 5 in Lang and a 6 In Lit. Both below (rather generous ) target grades of 7.
We d found out he was 5 UMS marks into 5 in Lang and therefore needs 8 marks (I think) to get a 6. Not normal remark territory and I'd be terrified of him being downgraded.

However, I have now found out his breakdown and it is bizarre:

Language paper 1

1.4/4
2.4/8
3.3/8
4.12/20
5.8/24 + 6/16

Language paper 2

1.4/4
2.5/8
3.5/12
4.6/16
5.18/24 + 11/16 (this is amazing compared to paper 1!)

The last wording is not mine but the HOD.

The discrepancy between P1 and P2 is marked and the section Bs are the real oddity given that they aren't very different tasks. I have checked and he did paragraph. You also need to know his spelling is highly proficient. He has that teenage predilection for commas and probably didn't use much punctuation other than full stops and commas. His handwriting is hard to read sometimes but he does tend to write quite lengthy answers and was (before the exams) quite confident in jumping through the hoops of each question.

I would be interested to hear from fellow English teachers who have no emotional investment in this what they might advise? I'd like Paper 1 looked at - but once seen it can't be remarked.

I know a 5 is 'good enough' but he is a better student than that. In one of his lit papers he missed an 8 by one mark!

Any thoughts gratefully received.

Yes, I'm still hanging on to his P2 re mark, pending his lit ever coming back!!

He'd have to drop 9 marks to go down to a 4 but luck doesn't seem to be on my side. Today my hard drive failed and I have lost years worth of work!!

Oh ffs piggy that's awful!! Was it at home or school? I'm no techno boff but surely it can be retrieved by an IT expert.

School laptop. IT boff has tried and failed :(

DS's school laptop wiped half his English Lit mock before it could be downloaded. School computers lost his Comp Sci GCSE controlled assessments (60% of final grade) 3 times. This is a brand new STEM school. The IT department were less than useless. Yet they're forever retrieving stuff from Hard Drives in the movies. I feel for you

I've come out of the woodwork today to say a huge 'thank you' to everyone posting about this ridiculous AQA English Language marking farce.
Due to all the comments on here we decided to go for a remark. Paper 1 only. Up 4 marks...up a grade! Have decided to relax now and not throw Paper 2 into the ring too but I am so annoyed for these kids who have bust a gut to do their best on the day only to be let down by a sub-standard system which allows mass errors to go by undetected until further scrutiny is requested by the -victim- candidate.
If it hadn't been for you lot we wouldn't have known how widespread the issue was and settled for less than she was truly worth.

That's excellent news. Well done to you and yours.

STILL waiting for English Lit !!

Still waiting for Lit too Piggy.

When did you put yours in décor ?

ooh, I like the way Word has pretentiously spell corrected that!

😆 Send the form insuring the holidays but think the exams officer applied on the 4th Sept

"In during"

I submitted mine about the 5th but am not sure the exams officer submitted it til the 7th. Got Eng Lang back a week ago!

English lit reviews are taking a long time, with few changes in our experience. Quite a few language grades have gone up- I wish we had submitted more enquiries.

Still waiting for reviews for 2 x Lang papers and Lit paper 2 to come back. School submitted request on Friday 8th September, so 12 days so far.
School submitted our request to review DS's Biology paper 3 on Friday (15th) and it came back yesterday - Tuesday. Very fast turnaround and got my £42 refunded

The GCSE English senior examiners are overrun , I suspect!

Eng Lang P2 submitted yesterday after p1 went up 4 marks. I must admit I am shitting myself as this could go both ways. It s faintly possible his Q5 has been overmarked and they'll whack his marks down - hopefully not by 8 to go down a grade , and not by the 4 marks that would cancel out the increase on P1!!

I wanted to wait for Lit to see if Lady Luck was ever going to shone but it has not come back and the deadline, of course, for requests is today.

Well done toeven more of you who have had success and a relief to see so far that the most anyone has gone down is 4 marks.

It's been a week so far for DS's language paper 1. 4 marks up would see him go up a grade but he would need to lose 7 to go down a grade.

The exams officer said they take about a week so I am jumping each time an email comes in 😩!

@Notanothergiraffe it took a full 14 days to get DS's Paper 1 Lang. and Paper 2 Lit. review results back (and this is with an exams officer who has been hard at work since the A Level results came out). They both came back on the same day. I'm banking on it taking the same again for the other two English papers (only 2 and 1 point off upgrades to Level 7s now).

I would suspect that there may have been a flurry of requests for reviews once the new school year started - this may be the issue with the delays in getting feedback?

Put in DS's Geography to see if the A could be converted to an A* (three points off). Decided I may as well go for it!

Just hoping I see some positive return on investment otherwise it's been a costly (to me) exercise!

Teddy 14 days?! Ok, must calm myself and try to forget about it for now!

Piggy it's not likely that Q5 was overmarked - I think we've found our students were more confident on paper two. I wouldn't expect it to go down anyway.
Our college had a number of 3s go up to 4 on remarks - I think it was 2 weeks between the request and hearing back.

I posted on the GCSE thread just after results day about DD's English Language (OCR) - she got a 5 overall, but that turned out to comprise a 3 in paper 1 and a 9 on paper 2.

Her teacher completely freaked and insisted on a remark of P1, which we requested two weeks ago.

DD just messaged me to say that her overall mark has gone up to a 9, and she'll go to see her teacher later to find out the new mark breakdown.

I think we win for the most spectacular mark adjustment because that paper must have gone up to an 8 or 9...but WTAF are the exam boards playing at?

Wow!

So had English let P1 remarked and up 13 marks from 37 to 50 so overall up from 7 to 8. Seems to have been so many big mistakes in marking this year. Happy it has gone up but what a joke.

spiral goodness! Major clerical error there!!!

Great news!

We have put a few papers in for "review". Feeling really anxious about English as although we requested the review on the advice of DS's very good English teacher after he saw the papers, he was only 2 above the thresholds for the grades he got and needs 11 and 13 to go up. A mum on TSR said her son went down 10.5 points taking him from 85 to 74 (WJEC), which was a 4 to a 3 and she had persuaded him to go for the re-mark! Feel so sorry for her.

He has dreadful handwriting, so I think the examiners could not be bothered to read it as they are under such time pressure. I read somewhere that examiners can be pad as little as £4/paper. Seeing your posts gives me hope! Thanks to all for sharing, good luck to all of those still waiting.

The handwriting thing is such a big issue. It's a bias a lot of examiners have and often massively affects boys...

That TSR story is making me a bit anxious! My worst nightmare is DS going down from a 5 to a 4 because of me. Let's hope that's an isolated case!!!