Low A level assessed grade from teacher who doesn't like DS - WWYD?

[Wonderwine]

DS has always had a problem with one of his A level teachers who doesn't seem to like him (a vibe we picked up early on at parents' evening).
Some of it is of his own making, as in Year 12 he was a bit disorganised/lazy and didn't do very well in his mocks. However he admitted this and has pulled his finger out and worked hard this year.

We had a bit of an issue with this teacher when A level grades were being predicted as he predicted a B for DS on the basis of his mock exam, whereas all his other work pointed to an A being appropriate. In the end we challenged it with the school as it was important for his UCAS application and the teacher reluctantly changed it. However he said that he 'saw DS as more of a 'B' sort of person' and that DS would need to do something very 'different' to change that .

Anyway, DS has worked hard this year, but still feel this teacher dislikes him (and us) for challenging the prediction.
As part of his A level he had a piece of internally assessed work
(20%) which this teacher has given a 'B' equivalent mark. It is a small class and DS knows it is the lowest mark. Knowing the usual quality of the work of some of his peers, he feels that he has been unfairly marked harshly.

What if anything can he do? The teacher is also the head of dept, so there is no higher teacher to appeal to.
I don't know if all the projects get moderated by the board, or just a sample of them.

DS has been told he can appeal to this teacher, but he has no information about why he has been given the mark he has, so doesn't know on what basis he would appeal?

He needs to ask the teacher what extra he needs to do to get an A. And listen. And then do it.

I doubt the teacher would deliberately mark him down but could you talk to the head of year/head of sixth?

Maybe the teacher is right?

If you feel that the Mark scheme has not been applied fairly then he can request a review of marking. All schools offering new (NEA) A levels need to provide it according to JCQ rules. In my school you get a form from the exams office and pay £50, we then get another local school to check the marking independently and report back.

No way would a teacher intentially mark down coursework. It’s the only slight control over outcomes (which she will then be judged on).

Trust that this teacher is professional; she knows her subject, knows her students and knows the marking criteria. Her marking is internally moderated and externally moderated.

She doesn’t have a grudge against your son. You’re being incredibly biased. If he wants higher marks, then he should have worked hard from day one of the A level. An A grade is not something easy to come by or should be expected.

I hate to come across harsh but I can’t stand this ‘I can’t get an A because the teacher hates me’ attitude.

And also a B is NOT a low A level grade!

Teachers have to sit down with smt and explain the grades of any student who underperforms. There is incredible pressure to have one's students score as highly as possible.

In the opposite direction, if external moderators think the school has over marked students' assessed work (they take a randomised sample, after marks have been submitted), the moderators reduce the marks of all the students entered for that exam.

In short, the teacher will have given your ds the highest grade they can justify within the rubric. Maybe messing about for a year has cost him in terms of both knowledge and skills.

It wouldnt be in the teachers interests to mark him down surely?

Given that the teachers salary is probably based on outcomes I doubt she dislikes your dc enough to cost her personally several thousand £....

You are really being a bit daft.

1. You have acknowledged he wasn't working v hard. You now say he is but that is hard for you to judge as you are mainly going on what he is telling you.
2. Even if he is working hard he won't always get an A on a piece of work. The teacher has already told you that his work is mainly a B. You have pushed him or her to change the predicted mark, but that won't change the reality which may well be that your ds is producing B grade work.
3. You are not doing your ds any favours with this 'the teacher doesn't like me' line. In a very short period of time he will be at uni. If he gets a lower mark than his friends at uni, what will you do?
4. B is quite a good mark.

If you persist in this, you could I suppose ask for the work to be remarked by another teacher in another school. But quite frankly, this will make things worse because you will make the relationship with this teacher very very difficult. If you criticise every decision they cannot work honestly with your son. I am of course assuming you have the necessary subject knowledge to judge the essay as an A and that you are not just going on your son's disgruntled feelings at getting a B.

You could request a review of marking - the grade can go down as well as up.

The work will have been moderated. If the teacher is the only teacher of that subject in the school, he or she will have moderated with another local school.

The teacher's marking will also be verified by the exam. board.

It is highly unlikely that the marker and moderator have deliberately marked down your son. They have nothing to gain from doing that, and many things to lose.

challenge the mark if you like, but I get the feeling that the issue is more your side than him.

And just a thought, if you force the grade to go up and its moderated down it will take some (possibly all) of the other students grades down with it.

I'm not saying that I think the teacher has necessarily vindicatively marked him down, just that he (the teacher) has got into a mindset that DS is a 'B level' student and won't shift from that.

Mamaryllis "He needs to ask the teacher what extra he needs to do to get an A. And listen. And then do it." - this is EXACTLY what he has been doing all through U6, and all his marks have reflected this. There were two rounds of feedback on his coursework from the teacher and he responded to it all exactly as required.
His class tests have all been A/A* level in U6 - that's my point really, he ISN'T a 'B' level student, he just eased off a bit during the first term of L6 and didn't revise enough for ONE exam as he was doing AS levels at the same time. (Sorry, I said it was his mock earlier, that was wrong, it was his L6 summer exam, when he was doing AS maths exams at the same time)

The fact that he didn't work as hard in L6 should be irrelevant in this context - the coursework element should be evaluated on the final document submitted, not on the basis of the process which led to it (the mark scheme is clear on this).
Mark schemes are so vague that I think it's perfectly possible to interpret them marginally up or down. The difference between the different levels is usually something like:

• the candidate has completely shown...
• the candidate has mostly shown...
• the candidate has partially shown...

The difference between completely and mostly can be very subjective!

FWIW his classmates are also shocked by his grade and think he has been short-changed, based on what they've seen of his work and what he submitted, and what they all got for very similar work.

I know it all sounds a bit whine-y but it just feels like something isn't quite right here.

I was mostly interested to find out what options he has to request that it is externally moderated etc.

If the coursework was an A grade, it would have been given an A grade. If everybody else in the class got As (which I highly doubt..and if that’s the case, how do I apply for a job there?!) the teacher obviously knows what they’re looking for in an A grade.

The moderation process usually is done internally, with all coursework from everyone in the year taken in at the same time and marked, ranked, remarked again and discussed by all the teachers of that subject to ensure fair and accurate marking. If there’s only one teacher, the process will be done with another school.

Then, the exam board calls for a sample - or, if it’s a small class, possibly all of it. Again, it will be moderated by examiners. Marks may change, but very rarely by whole grade boundaries.

At the end of the day, the amount of marks he has means more than the grade - grade boundaries move every year. Even with 20% at an A, he has to get enough marks in his exams to make up the other 80%.

Whatever you decide to do you need to act quickly - there might a time limit of only a few days (set by the school) in which to request a review of marking - you should contact the school's examinations officer without delay and ask for help/clarification of the procedure.

Spotty - everyone else in his (small) class got A* or A.
DS got the highest mark in the school for the subject at GCSE (98%)

Clavinova - good point!

Also to counter the arguments that of course no teacher would ever under-mark a pupil's assessed work, there might be an element of unconscious bias at work (I don't think anyone is immune from it), or else the teacher also might have misapplied the marks. We also know that humans form impressions of people instantly and that is quite difficult to shift our first impressions. There is also confirmation bias - so that if the teacher considers OP's DS to be a 'B' student, she might unconsciously mark his work in a selective way, looking out for signs that his work is B, rather than A grade. It is of course possible that the B grade is justified. However, trying to shut down a genuine concern won't increase confidence in the marking. If I were despot for the day, I would get rid of all teacher-marked work for public exams. It is just too open to abuse/uncertainty/unfairness.

I think Fords post is well balanced. Teachers aren’t automations, nor are they gods. They are humans and it’s part of the human condition to err occasionally. Experts across any field can occasionally call it wrong so I don’t see why teachers are exempt.

I’m not quite sure what you do about it though OP.

Is his grade secure enough that you can leave it and chalk it up to one of life’s rich tapestry of learnings... that you pick your battles / that even the august and mighty can be subject to unconscious bias on occasion / sometimes we just suck it up and move on / prove em wrong by the final grade?

Whilst your DS and his class mates are astounded it will more than likely be that although it maybe a stunning piece of work but if he hasn't hit the particular criteria then he will not score. For example I've had students write fantastic pieces of work that initially you would automatically think would achieve the highest grade, but they didn't address a particular aspect and therefore, no matter how good overall it seemed it for that criteria it could not be placed in the top band whilst others may not look as good overall but have addressed each assessment criteria so did achieve a higher grade.

The 'grilling' we get in September over grades by SLT means that no teacher I know would purposely down grade, we try our hardest to find a possible plus point in every sentence to try and get a single extra point

What makes you think B is a "low grade"?

And getting a high grade at GCSE is only a vague indicator of what they will get at A level eg DD got an A in maths at GCSE. She could no sooner do A level maths than fly to the moon. She got 100% A* in RE - she has no interest or real ability in RE as far as I know

I'm guessing that this is an essay based subject. Essay writing at A level is a dark art and one that not everyone masters no matter how bright they are or how much they know

If your DS has the lowest grade in the class then his work will be called for moderation.

I’m a teacher
No way on earth a teacher deliberately marks done coursework-low grades reflect their teaching and of course they want students to do well.
The A level board I teach (and mark for) ask for a sample or may ask for all the coursework in a small class to check marking.
If your son has an A on his UCAS as a predicted grade and misses that it’s going to restrict his choices.

*down sorry

I only meant a 'low' grade relative to where he has been tracking previously, with the exception of his one L6 exam.

I don't want to drip feed, but there have been other issues with this teacher:

• new to the school as DS started the A level course
• the A level course was a new board for the school too (it's not an essay subject btw, it's a technical subject, think Electronics/ Computing..)
• there were some issues about teaching in the early days when DS and his classmates realised they were being taught the wrong combination of modules and pointed this out to their teacher.
• at the parents evening where he told us he 'saw' DS as a B level sort of candidate (based on one exam) he then proceeded to discuss each of the other pupils in DS's class and tell us where he thought they were relative to DS. DH & I were completely as it was so unprofessional.
• when we challenged the UCAS prediction, the headteacher, the head of Sixth form and his form tutor all agreed with us, so the teacher was more or less told to change it, which he clearly wasn't happy about.
• I think this teacher is out of his depth. He is teaching a bright cohort of students who ask questions and challenge him. When they ask him questions he tells them to 'google it' to find out the answer.

There's probably nothing we can/will do. DS will have to make sure he does even better in the exam 80% of the A level as ideally he needs an A for his UCAS offer (but is doing 4 A levels, so it doesn't matter completely).

Does anyone know if we could ask for the assessed work to be remarked after results day if he is on the grade boundary or do we have to act now?

A friend was convinced they'd been marked down on work as the teacher disliked her. She'd been advised before she started that the subject wasn't her strongest and she should really do another subject instead.

She put us all on the spot trying to get us to say she was being treated unfairly. She was fairly loud and disruptive in his classes and disagreed with everything he said. She missed several sessions and missed a deadline for a piece of coursework. She blamed him for not reminding her of the deadline but everyone else had heard and he'd mentioned it numerous times.

She was convinced he hated her and had this vendetta against her. She failed the subject. I couldn't see anything wrong in how the person treated my friend. He was a very well respected teacher and no one else seemed to have any issues with him. He was quite strict but seemed fair. She got angry when I expressed this.

I would say it was all in her head - she had the problem with him - not him having a problem with her. If anything, I'd say he gave her extra leeway than other students.

Her parents sort of backed the teacher though they picked up he seemed to dislike her.