GCSEs 2018 (3)

[mmzz]

Following on from:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/secondary/3113917-GCSEs-2018-2

Algebra my dgds forte so she should be fine for the A level then!

Stick Triangles etc are pointless!

Ahem. I think you will find that all triangles have 3 points each.

Teenmum

Sorry it should be teen times two

Last year If the pass mark for a 4 was 17% and a 6 40% and knowing that an awful lot of children were put down to do foundation paper from the higher were there children who could have continued doing higher paper and who therefore lost out getting a higher grade?

Sostenueto IMO the teachers needed to play safe last year given it was the first year of the new 1-9 GCSE's and they were completely in the dark about grade boundaries who would have thought that 17% (it was just 15% on OCR) would be a 4! I get the impression that more schools are opting for the higher paper this year if the DC's mocks justify this.
The difficulty with all exams is the wording of the questions - DD's Chemistry teacher was explaining to me that most of the girls thought the first Chemistry mock paper was hard but it actually wasnt that hard - it was just that the questions were worded differently.

11 weeks until French Oral of which only 7 are term time.

Wondering if anybody knows - for those subjects that are doing 9-1 for the first time this year will there be special rules put here too accommodate the new students and therefore the uncertain grade boundaries (in the same way maths and English were done last year). And also is that the same for the igcses that are doing 9-1 for the first time this year.

Slinky I really don't know and that is my biggest concern that this years cohort will not have as many concessions and as all exams the new system will be significantly unfair and more stressful for them all. No one seems to feel sorry for this cohort like they did for last years...the poor things having yo do English and maths the new way....well what about this cohort then!

Actually my DVD has just informed me that the English and maths teachers have told them this years GCSEs will be significantly harder than last years which will make our poor DC even more insecure and underconfident!

I think all the grades will be protected inline with previous years for all subjects other than English and Maths( in the same way as they were for English and Maths last year). There were English and Maths 1-9 exams for IGCSE last year so they have some idea of the grade boundaries (Pearson Edexcel) and grade boundaries were very similar to the GCSE boundaries) My Dd is still doing mainly Igcse's in the old A-G format apart from Eng/Maths & Computer Science where its the new OCR GCSE - the school changes to 1-9 for all exams taken next year.

this years GCSEs will be significantly harder than last years

Where on earth have they got this from? Edexcel at least have said that this year's maths Foundation paper will be easier than last year's. They can't possibly make them harder given the low grade boundaries, that would be madness.

Do the teachers possibly mean that they are expecting higher grade boundaries this year? That's possibly true because students will be better prepared, but if the papers are harder, the grade boundaries will be lower.

Grade boundaries are decided by comparable outcomes. The grade transfer from letters to numbers was decided by pegging 4 to C, 7 to A and so on. The year-to-year grade boundaries are decided by looking at KS2 results and the previous year's results. If students with a particular KS2 profile last year got a 4, then this year, students with the same KS2 profile should also get a 4 on average.

English language had better not be harder than last year's exams or I may as well give up with my class! It really depends on the day on how students react to the unseen texts. If the students do better nationally I see the grade boundaries going up, but I suspect it's too early for that to happen significantly.

It's all very confusing. DD got 80% in mock maths exam and teacher said that she expected her to improve on that and be getting a 9. When pressed what % would constitute a 9 she said she would need 90% plus. Not sure where this arbitrary boundary has come from. Similarly for other subjects departments seem to have taken a guess ie a few percentage points above previous grade boundaries to predict a 9. Some are setting very high grade boundaries in order to secure a top score.

My dgd got 89% in math mock and the school boundaries always pegged at 50% 5/C 60% 6/B etc so according to her school 89% is an 8 1% off a 9.

But last year 50% was a 7 not a 5

I'm mean, I get that we don't really know what the grade boundaries will be, but telling kids who should be aiming for A-level that they're working at a 5 seems insane.

Noble that's it higher grade boundaries is what she meant. Still not fair imo

Teen Mum can you point me in the direction of the edexcel/Pearson igcse 1-9 grade boundaries. I could not find these - I only found the gcse grade boundaries for 1-9. Thanks

Dgds school has always used high grade boundaries in line with Fischer family stats of the top 20% of schools in the country.
Mocks don't really matter, they are not the real thing, they just help as a guide really.

Sos it's as fair as they can make it, I think. They can't simply keep the grade boundaries the same as last year because that would penalise last year's kids for having been in the first year of the new exam and not as well prepared as this year's cohort.

And grade boundaries are different every year, there's never any guarantee about where the grade boundaries will fall.

Grade boundaries for aqa last year are on their site.

Yes realise that noble. The bit I don't like is pegging to keystage 2 results too. My dgd is way above what she should be at for her keystage 2 results so how will that affect her? Or do you mean as an average?

I think this years cohort penalised in lots of ways, I'm really convinced of that. This years cohort the first to sit ALL exams new system. Last year they only had to worry about two exams the new way. So there's a disadvantage for a start for this years cohort.

Yes Sos it won't affect your DD, individuals can over or underperform, it's performance as a group on average that's looked at.

Deciding grade boundaries by looking at KS2 results has been done for a few years now. Basically, if the KS2 results for a particular year group taking an exam were lower than the year before, then the pass rate will go down. When they say that the grade 4+ boundary will be pegged at the C+ Pass rate for the year before, they actually don't mean exactly. The 4+ rate for maths in the summer was 69% where the C+ rate the year before was 70%. This was because last summer's cohort had a weaker KS2 profile than the year before.

The obvious problem with this is that KS2 results are unreliable. They're trying to move to a new system but it needs a couple more years to tweak.

Slinkyme - Ignore me - I picked up the GCSE one's my mistake hence why they were similar (they are exactly the same!) ...this is the first year for IGCSE Maths and English !

Noble - I had a look at KS2 results a few months ago for our cohort and they were 1% better than the year before so I guess this would mean that the DC would be expected to perform slightly better?