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.

Felt very frustrated by the state school system as the school had said that we had to request priority scripts and reviews by noon the day after results

Dd1's school had that and we were dithering over one when she suddenly realised we'd left it too late. We'd not even thought about it being so soon. Several of her friends were similar.

What I did though is sent them immediately a begging email saying so sorry etc and if I got it to them asap on Tuesday was there any chance. Then got a lovely email on the Monday (bank holiday) saying "of course, not worries" So that was great.
I'm not sure dd1 would have bothered about getting the script if we'd had longer to think about it though, but because she suddenly found out she apparently couldn't, I could see it would worry her.

She was right on the bottom borderline but one of her papers (history) was much lower than she expected and she wondered if some of the answers she'd written on loose paper hadn't been seen. She had to go up 18 marks and reckoned maximum 22 marks on the loose papers so a long shot.
When we got the papers her conclusion was that it was very harshly marked, but she didn't think it would get 18 more marks (although she thought it would be close on 16) so we then didn't put it for review.

The one I'd have liked to get reviewed was Eng lang, and I suspect she might have gone up. She got a 6 (one mark fewer and would get a 5) but was predicted a 7. But as it was AQA and we couldn't see the papers we didn't dare risk it, which is a pity.
However she did get an 8 (only 2 marks off a 9!) in lit, when predicted a 6 and she has absolutely no idea how she managed that as she'd have been less surprised by a 5. She does wonder if someone's paper got mixed up in hers, but we thought we better not look too closely!

Our English reviews have come back - I could cry!

In Language, DS needed 2 to go up. We didn't have the time (thanks school) to review one paper after the other so had to do them both together. DS got plus 3 on Lang 1, so went up a grade, for all of 5 minutes! He lost 4 on Lang 2, so overall lost one mark and grade remained the same. If we had just had paper 1 reviewed first, DS would now have a higher grade.

We also had Lit 2 reviewed - absolutely no change, although DS only needed one mark to go up. Gutted for him. (And me - £126 poorer)

Piggy - I'm with you on the theory that later review requests are being dealt with more harshly. Is this to protect AQA's grade boundaries?

Wid - Really feel for you, this gives us no confidence in the system!

Cafe - What a nightmare, it is not until you are in the midst of all this that you realise quite how arbitrary it is. Worse for you as it sounds like non-standard entries have not been properly processed.

In music they used to like a particular term - "melody dominated homophony" but this year you had to use the term “melody with accompaniment” to get the mark. In Biology you sometimes get points for obvious points such as "There are many neurons in the brain" and in other questions similar things were worth nothing. In English they are failing to bring consistency to something which is subjective, but so important. Grrrrrrr!

Witchend - We had a similar thing to your Eng Lit for RE - DS was convinced it would be his worst, did not think the exam went very well and expected a B/C, but when the mark came back had only dropped 1 mark across 2 papers (so 99%), whilst friends who consistently did better in school got lower grades. I concluded that the examiner was tired, could not face deciphering his dreadful writing, saw a few key phrases and gave him 100%!

Oh wid

:(

Tbf I think all papers should have to be reviewed because otherwise Wid he would have got a grade he didn't achieve.

... but didn't achieve in who's opinion?!

Both papers remarked mark the same.
Therefore correct grade given as one went up but the other had been marked too leniently and went down.

I take your point red but it does kind of illustrate the games people can play (including the exam board) and how the marking was shit either way in both papers!

The strong feeling this year is that the marking has been woeful, especially of English language as markers don't do whole papers and can just rattle off very quick marking of whatever question they fancy really. They gain no expertise that way.

Wid that's so frustrating.

In music they used to like a particular term - "melody dominated homophony" but this year you had to use the term “melody with accompaniment” to get the mark
Now I think that's wrong. If they use a term that means the correct concept then it should be right whether they use the "correct terminology" or not. I've come across that with dd1's revision in I think it was biology. She was learning terms that she would need to use rather than looking at the concepts and she said she'd get marks if she used it, but not if she described it correctly.
Bit of a difference from when I did GCSE when our French teacher (who did marking) told of one year she'd marked a load of papers from one school that had translated ticket machine as "the clickedy-click machine on the train."
They investigated and found the teacher had used that term (native French speaker) as so they got the mark as they meant the right thing.

Monkey dd1's got beautiful writing so can't be that. When she said that she had an 8 and a 6 for English I assumed 8 for language-above hat expected but not out of the ordinary, 6 for literature-thank goodness she managed to get a 6, that was probably a close run thing! Never dreamt it would be the other way round.

wid - how utterly gutting for you and and your DS.

red - I think your comments are really harsh, especially as independent some schools have the money to play the re-mark game and are very savvy about checking raw marks, marks per question etc straight after results day and then hedging their bets. Those of us who don't have that information readily available, or the ability to splash the cash for reviews, can only play the cards that we are dealt, especially in 'subjective' subjects such as English. One marker's 25/30 is another marker's 20/30. If everyone had to get all components of an exam subject re-marked, then fair enough. But as long as the exam boards allow each paper to be marked individually then it's always going to be a game of Russian Roulette. Add to that Edexcel allowing all scripts to be viewed on-line by teachers before requesting a re-mark and OCR allowing scripts to be returned before requesting a re-mark, and AQA allowing neither, it it not a level playing field. There was an article in The Telegraph in August which estimated 45% of students would be awarded the wrong grade in the new 9-1 exams. Fine if you got a 9 instead of an 8, but appalling if you got a 5 instead of a 6 or a 3 instead of a 4. This can/will affect A Level choices and even 6th Form choices.

Well said café

That s what I meant the whole exam should be remarked for everyone who wants a review. As stated the person in question did receive the correct grade overall- If they had just put one paper in they would have got a grade above what they deserved and been lucky.

If they had just put one paper in they would have got a grade above what they deserved and been lucky

Wondering how many pupils with top grades perhaps have been erroneously given them? Sure it works both ways.

I am feeling less and less confident that DS's two English disciplines will go up a level, even with only 1 and 2 points to gain.

The thing is Red this thread has been going for almost a month and, with over 400 posts, I feel invested in the grades of many of the posters' DCs, even though I don't know any of them IRL. So, whilst what you say might be true, it's not really (IMO) in the spirit of the thread. wid is feeling gutted for her DS and is £126 down to boot - and I feel gutted for them. Saying that they would have been 'lucky' and 'undeserving' of a higher grade is unhelpful at this stage and (again, IMO) not necessarily true. We are not talking about maths here, where an answer is either right or wrong. We are talking about a subject where the margins of error are down to the different interpretations of various mark schemes by different examiners. English is not an exact science (and in my experience, even science is not an exact science). There are GCSE 'winners' and 'losers', those who got given the 'correct' marks and those who got 'lucky' - and none of us knows for sure who falls into what category.

Still waiting for DS's Eng Lit review.
He got 11/20 and 11/20 for his answers on Jekyll and Hyde and the Head of Dept at his school said she'd have marked them at 18/20 and 17/20.
Remark request went in last week. Still waiting ...

I do understand it's gutting in a way. Dd has agreed school can send her 2 English for remark so we too are in the waiting game.

This lack of consistency makes a joke of the increased granularity of results in the new 1-9 grades. Looks like different examiners differ by a couple of grades, when previously the difference would have been one. Next year will be even worse!

I think this year the quality of marking from AQA has been shocking. As HOD for English in a state non selective. I was lucky that, prior to the results, the HT told me I could put any I was concerned about in for a remark. This was a one year only offer. As a result 20% of our cohort have gone up a grade and we started at over 80% 4+. On results day I put in the first requests and only finished on the 21st. Yesterday we got back one boy who had gone up 17 marks in Lit, going from a 3 to a 5.

Piggy please come and work at my school!

*monkey^ just got round to perusing your table : be interesting to see the stats for 2017 when they come out!

Piggy, has your DS's Eng. Lit. review result still not come back?

Redsrule, you said 20% of your remarks went up a grade, so how many didn't but went up 2+ marks? And how many, if any, went down a grade?

When I initially started reading this thread I was full of (naive?) optimism that DS's grades would go up (being so close to the boundary for Level 7s). However, I'm getting more dismayed by the day (particularly at the thought that the £144 spent would have half-paid for his Geography A Level field-trip).

Cafeconleche what a total nightmare for you and your DS.

Think I really need to take a chill pill. I'm not sure that knowing how close to grade boundaries DC's results are is entirely helpful either. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. I now know that in five of his 11 GCSEs DS was four or fewer points off Level 7s/As. So near and yet so far.

Nope, still waiting for Lit and Eng Lang paper 2....

On the plus side, finding out exact marks has made us aware of how many grades DS squeaked by a whisker! he got the exact mark to get a 6 in maths and got 2 marks into a C in about three subjects!

not my dd but my niece - she got her AQA physics back yesterday, up 6 marks from a C (3 marks from boundary) to a B.

RedHelenB Don't think we can be certain anyone got what they deserved where AQA English is concerned. It's been a lottery and we didn't understand the rules - that's why I was gutted.

Sorry I worded it badly, 20% of our cohort went up a grade, about 30 pupils, and about 11 pupils were unchanged. Nobody went down a grade, the average uplift was 8 marks. I am convinced we were one of the schools left to the last minute, our Paper 2 in particular was poorly marked and administered. We had fewer changes in Lit but they tended to be more due to family disappointment than Lang which was my focus on disparity with mock results and individual questions having odd marks.

I am so happy! Just had an email to say DS’s English has been upgraded to a level 5 .

No idea how many marks it went up yet though.

I am ecstatic, he doesn’t seem to care! For me it takes the worry out of he potential for a 4 to not count as a good pass going forward.