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.

I wouldn't take the students twitter tweets as evidence, tbh. They seemed original and fresh the first couple of times, but about half-way through the exams, the memes and the that-was-beyond-awful tweets were all looking a bit samey. No one was ever relieved or optimistic.
Not to mention that the tweets would appear within a couple of minutes of the first moment that the exam could have ended, so they must have been prepared in advance. If you were that traumatised by the paper, you wouldn't have the presence of mind to create the tweets the second that you retrieved your phone from your locker.

mmmz on an occasion where I was trapped in front of Countryfile I believe there was an issue with marketing cheese as Feta if it was made in Yorkshire and not Greece! Looked like Feta, though.
Oneteen why do they give you butter if you’re not meant to use it? It’s so confusing. With you on yucky synthetic cream, though. And I Love the photo! I’m waiting for newspapers to say that consumers are going for reusable coffee cups in a big way, not realising that demand is fuelled by Gin-drinking GCSE parents!

oneteen I cling to the fact that a marker once said they actively try to give as many marks as possible....positive marking as opposed to negitive and I close my ears to anything else

Sorry meant to add for Oneteen that definitely one question on English lit won’t influence the way the others are marked.

Loose - Very true but the thought of the overall taste of butter on the scone with the jam and cream ...its the same with bacon butties - I have a pet hate for butter on that too.

Solve scone problem by having 2 tops and if you prefer jam and then cream or cream then jam just turn the scone over! Problem solved!

Yes re the positive marking. I keep trying to remind myself that dd got an A in last years ICT GCSE and yet when I discussed with her how the paper went post the exam she said "Well I didn't really know what was going on with the first two pages of the exam, so I made educated guesses" - I thought she must have flunked it, but when the results came out apparently not

Thanks Loose and Bluebelle - Lets hope for positive marking throughout the papers

Just catching up with posts and its interesting about the introduction of the 3:3 for combined science exams....can we assume that the same would have happened with Maths and a lot more DC's were entered for Higher Maths this time around and therefore that 17% grade boundary could be more than rumour?

The examiners will have needed gin in their cups marking DS's English papers - crossings out, awful handwriting, silly spelling mistakes and random punctuation The content is excellent but the presentation..!!!! I'm relieved to hear that one person doesn't have to suffer the whole paper.

Loose do you know if all subjects require you to have a qualification in them in order to be a marker? Obviously English/Science/Maths/languages but what about some of the subjects where it's a right or wrong? And how would you get into it, assuming one were suitable? I am planning to apply to school to be an adjudicator next year, would love to feel more involved in the whole exams process.

I'm not sure that the 3-3 award for higher tier suggests unexpectedly low grade boundaries does it?

They’re going to be low anyway because not only are the papers way harder, but coursework has gone, and pupils who previously didn’t do so well on the papers would have had their grades boosted by coursework that they normally perform better on. Pass rates need to stay the same as last year so grade boundaries will go down to compensate.

No quite I get that noble - that they'll be low - I just wondered whether you thought the 3-3 decision indicated that they'd be super low. I'm not clear that that follows. It might do, but it seems to be more about the higher/ lower tier cut off?

that 17% grade boundary could be more than rumour?

17% was the 4 grade boundary for last year’s higher tier maths. There was also a grade 3 safety net on higher, but there has always been a safety net (used to be an E on old higher). The grade boundary for the safety net for higher maths was set at half the width of a normal grade boundary below the grade 4, and this was decided well in advance of the paper being sat. E.g. if a grade 4 was 20% and a grade 5 was 30% then the safety grade 3 would be 15%.
I wonder if they were going to do the same for the 4-3 on science, but have decided to have a 3-3 at 10% instead. (Obviously the grade boundaries will be different for the real thing!).

One young lady returned to the train station to continue her journey home. (Alarm didn’t go off so was a huge rush but we did it.)

Dh has a hospital appt this afternoon then we have to start phoning round potential host families for dd.

I thought 18% (not 17%) was the grade boundary last year?

AH is today the day that your DH will find out if he can still drive for the next few months?

17% was Edexcel’s maths higher boundary last year (41/240).

Alexander good luck for today!
Terf I suspect qualifications vary according to the type of marking and how difficult it is to find people to do it!

I think the introduction of a 3-3 at higher because students have been ‘wrongly entered’ for higher and would get a U means that there is a large tail of students at the lower end who the exam boards would have preferred had been entered for foundation, not just those U students. Students aiming for a 4 were ‘supposed’ to be entered for Foundation, but no one knew who they were. They won’t have done very well on higher, but still need to get a 4 (to maintain pass rates).

Grade boundaries between the 4 and 7 (which are pegged to previous pass rates) are set at equal distances. If they’ve got a bunch of students on higher who need to get a 4 to maintain pass rates but haven’t done very well, the 4 grade boundary will be low, and due to the equal spacing requirement, this will pull down other grade boundaries.

Jam first - no butter!

2 more sleeps!!!

Noble is there a specific time that the results are sent to schools tomorrow? I know the results are embargoed, just want to know what the journey looks like.

Midnight, mmz. This AQA page explains what happens when: www.aqa.org.uk/exams-administration/results-days

I’ve attached the tweet from Edexcel maths about when grade boundaries are released

I see - thanks noble. Makes sense to me now. By which I mean your logic makes absolute sense but the overall thing in terms of the aims of these new exams doesn't makes masses of sense. But then I don't think they've ever made sense at the lower end of the ability scale tbh.

noblegiraffe [grins]

Jam first so it can grip the rougher surface of the scone (to rhyme with cone), then cream to weigh it all down. I just have jam though, as I'm the onlyCornish person who hates clotted cream. I was traumatised by school milk in the 70s, kept in a warm classroom until it formed a crust.