GCSEs 2018 (17) What will be in your coffee cup on Thursday?

[PeggySchuylar]

Thread 16 full to brim. Hope nobody minds me starting new one.

So a new grade for higher 3/3 in combined science? Well did they realise exams too hard or was there confusion in putting g DC in for lower/higher? Seems to me with the amount of real big errors in papers etc that this new exam system not going according to plan. Why am I not surprised!
Big row between dd and dgd yesterday. Dd excited about results day cos she's so proud of dgd even though I told her not to mention results day(sigh). I got apology from dgd for being such a horrible person for weeks. But cuddles a d kisses wipes away all sorrow. I love my dysfunctional family!

I can't find the bit about a new 3-3 in Combined Science. Can someone point me to the blog post please?

I did find this infographic dating back to March which shows the 3-3 existed then, so I think i've misunderstood.

Sandy - first day back after holidays is always a bit of a downer! Hope it goes well.
Mmmz I believe in Devon it's cream first then jam but Stickerrocks will not only be able to confirm but hopefully explain why they are different!
I made a massive sweeping statement that I'd better clarify!English exams are marked online by question not by paper (although I can see the candidate's whole paper to check part of the answer hasn't gone in the wrong place, I can't mark it in one go). I annotate the answer and put a mark in the box at the end, click the arrow and the next answer to that question pops up. Markers work on a quota system up to a certain date and then anything left in the system is marked online by any examiner. (That part went a lot better this year!) After that, the software collects the candidate scores and adds them up.
But where a subject has lots of short answers or short answer parts (e.g. maths) the marker may well be doing some adding up so human error could affect some answers.
Also there is some paper marking done by senior examiners for various reasons.

Devon is cream below then jam which is very very obviously the correct way round :)

Completely agree sticker. Didn’t read whole other thread but my first thought when I saw the title was how can you be ‘anticipating we wil need a couple of remarks’ when you haven’t even got the results yet.

With exam boards (and schools) stretched and struggling for staff it must have added to their problems when parents started asking for remarks for every grade that was close to a boundary and/or below their dc predictions or what they wanted. This is one of the reasons schools don’t like giving out marks or boundaries straight away. Although DD2 school like teens did propose remarks for those within two ums of the upper boundary (though that was in the old system of remarks not reviews and I didn’t really agree with it). I would have thought it was only worth it for real anomalies (such as the cie one in this thread) or if you are close and really need the upper mark to progress. As we have said someone has to be at the border.

In a levels DD1 was one mark off a maths a star but in the other hand just scraped a chemistry a being dead in the boundary 😄. She said she was very happy to get three As rather than a* a b !!

The 3-3 always existed on Foundation. It’s now been added to Higher as an extra safety net because without it too many students would get Us.

Also our butcher has been selling Devon pasties for around forty years as far as I remember so looooooooooooooooong before any EU protection for the Cornish rival.

Sostenueto yes Ofqual is trying to blame teachers while forgetting science teachers had minimal information from exam boards and the actual exams contained a lot of surprises. I think the tiers in combined science would have been even more difficult to decide than whether to do combined or triple.
Also, there's the hypocrisy of rushing in much harder exams without piloting anything properly.

I'm not sure that the 3-3 award for higher tier suggests unexpectedly low grade boundaries does it? I'm not sure that follows through from the reasoning given by Ofqual. What do you think noble?

If too many will fail higher so 3/3 added to higher to stop that does it suggest papers were hard? You cannot blame teachers as quite right they didn't have a lot of info to decide very well and the papers were ugh! apparently (dgd did higher triple) by dcs comments on media. So surely it would indicate lower grade boundaries for combined?!

Just read ofcals explanation am even more confused!
2 days to go then normality!

It surprised me when an examiner explained how they marked papers. The papers are all scanned in. The examiner is shown one person's Q7 (for example) and marks it then they are shown another person's Q7. She said if she had doubt about an answer and whether to give it a mark or not, she used to go and make a cuppa and when she got back, that answer had gone to someone else as she had effectively taken too long to mark it. Thus no one person marks someone's paper.

And it's cream first - you'd put butter on your toast before jam wouldn't you?

Sorry but it is clearly jam and then cream, what are you people thinking

I vote a 3/3 combination of butter, cream and jam on my scone!

And yes I would put butter on too.

Spababe That happened to me last year but it was my first time and I had a smaller quota. It all seemed very random. It does log you off after a certain amount of inactivity. This year, I’m pretty sure everything stayed in my quota. I’m not 100% sure but I think that’s what happened. The ability to view whole papers came in this year, so may have changed things.

I hope examiner on question 5 paper 1 English language, aqa for candidate number was very generous and understanding at tear,flob and sick marks on paper.

Sostenueto I would put butter on too. For me the easiest combo is butter, then a bit of cream, then jam. However, DH is convinced that jam then cream is better.
Unfortunately, for weight reasons, we have to view the cream tea as an occasional treat!

In terms of the jam/cream on scones - I'm obviously a Cornish fan because jam goes on before cream..I also have two pet hates (any one that also adds butter and that horrible synthetic cream).

I popped into a store this morning and they are obviously geared up for tomorrow ...

DD's stress has gone through the roof this morning when DF (we are not together) asked if we were going with her to pick up her results (she loves DF but he has a very big personality which DD struggles with in public - loose cannon), so I ended up butting in and saying Yes - but we would wait outside and not go in (DD's face had gone very pale).

We can't even agree on how to eat a scone good job we aren't doing the marking... excludes brilliant Loose of course

Oh no, Sostenueto - that’s awful! I think anyone marking such a paper would try to be kind!
Also, I’m sure the written answer was much better than the candidate thinks!

its has to be cream second because it is hard to move the jam around on top of the cream since its heavier than cream.

i am curious as to how somerset does it? jam on one side and cream on the other??!

not sure how far the EU takes the regional names thing. I know it was brought in to protect regional producers eg Champagne and Dijon mustard. But how about Yorkshire Puddings, Cullen Skink, Red Leicester and Cheddar (Cheddar Gorge)??

Interesting to know about the marking - DD said she really blew one question on Eng Lit paper but the others went really well so I guess at least the one question she blew will not have a influence on the marking of the other questions.

Good grief! I go to sleep for 11hrs and you're arguing about jam and cream! (It's jam first, then cream btw)

Hello to the delurkers and newcomers This thread is utterly bonkers but beautifully supportive. I think we should have a meet up in Sept when they've all gone back to school!