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.

It really worries me that in two years time ds is going to be sitting an untiered English paper where he can'ty access most of the content and this could really un-motivate him.

mmzz - No, he has already been told by the stroke consultant that from their point of view he hasn't had a stroke or brain tumour and so the driving restrictions no longer apply.

However from a purely safety point of view his continuing dizzy spells which can be sudden in onset and fairly severe, mean that he knows that he is not safe to drive yet.

Today's appointment is with infectious diseases to discuss his symptoms which tie in with possible Lyme disease. we are still waiting an ENT apointment.

Is there a Lyme disease blood test, AH?

Let's hope English language low grade boundaries
Yes noble well explained. Am adamant NOT teachers faults though about entry for higher tier.

Thoughts and best wishes to alexanders dh. Lyme disease can be very serious! Hope all will be sorted for him and your family alex

Thankfully they don't use negative marking (where an incorrect answer means marks are subtracted from your total) in any GCSE exams.

They do use negative marking in the last section of the first round of the UKMT Maths challenges, so I had to remind DS2 that the usual 'just make an educated guess if you're not sure' advice did not apply.

They used negative marking for some of the exams I did at university; it was possible to end up with a mark below zero.

There are two different kinds of blood test but they are notoriously unreliable.

I have got to the point where I dont really understand why new exams were introduced because there seems to be no point other than to highlight a very small percentage of DC's who will achieve a grade 9. Will a grade 9 make such a difference to a grade 8 when it comes to Uni/Career? Will linear exams make a huge difference to our DC's when we have the Internet to look things up at a press of a button....seems a lot of pain and hard work for everyone in education for very little if no gain.

AH - Good luck to your DH today...and GL with finding a host family for DD.

why new exams were introduced

Remember the pass grade was supposed to be a 5. Raising the pass grade was supposed to raise standards (even though comparable outcomes means this can’t happen as pass rates are maintained year on year to stop grade inflation). Kids were supposed to have to resit maths and English if they didn’t get a 5. Pass rates were going to plummet.

Except the government bottled it 5 weeks before the exams last year and said a 4 would be an acceptable pass after all. Pass rates didn’t plummet because they were set to remain exactly the same, rendering the whole exercise a waste of time.

Nobody ever made a distinction between an A and an A* anyway so the whole -9 thing will remain incomprehensible to most.

Stickerrocks they did distinguish at certain unis and for certain courses but the government is focussing on the needs of the very able (who definitely do get a far better GCSE education with the new exams). The less able have been tossed to one side.

Oxford & Cambridge might care about grade 8 vs grade 9, but they filter applicants using their own admissions tests anyway.

Shall we nominate mmmz our official leak detector as per noble's post at 11.02?

Great thinking Bluebelle

"The less able have been tossed to one side."

Yep!

Blimey just catching up with the posts this morning. We really will need a new thread before Thursday morning.

Loving the Waitrose photo Oneteen - I am
Off to find one as soon as I get home. On the scone front - always cream first - the cream doesn't spread on top of the jam.
I so don't understand the 3/3 combined/triple science thing. We took 3 individual sciences - what is that?

Loving the reminder about positive marking - yes clinging to that especially for the sciences - they did have ridiculous mark
Schemes.

Alexander all the best for today

We talked a bit more about Thursday today. DD asked if I would come in with her because if we are too challenge any results then she wants me around as
Process seems complicated. I told her yes I will and will lurk in background while she gets her results. Just want it done now.

5 minute slot on GCSE marking and grade boundaries this morning on BBC Breakfast at 8:40am
twitter.com/ofqual/status/1031815959198224384?s=21

They show a maths marker with a paper on screen so you can see what it looks like and then someone from Ofqual is interviewed.

When you're faced with 20 fresh faced graduates all with straight As and A*s who whip out a calculator to work out 10%, the GCSE grades are irrelevant, you only care if they can do the basics and can get on with other people. A lot of quality employers don't even know what an RG university is, they want people they can mould!

eagle triple science gets an individual grade for all 3 papers, so you can get a 7 for physics & 4 for biology. Combined gives two grades as an overall outcome.

Thanks sticks - that makes sense. Is there an advantage of doing the combined then - because if a grade on one subject may bring the other down.

So is it that a3-3 has been set as the minimum for a pass instead of a 4-4/4-3 - am I understanding that correctly - and so implying that grade boundaries low?

Literally less than 48 hours to go.....

TheThird (slightly depending on subject) they filter on aptitude tests combined with GCSEs, which is why the old A* was important for those wanting to apply.

On the higher paper, aimed at 4/4-9/9 grades there was a safety net of a 3/4 grade before you got a U. Now that's to be 3/3 because too many would have got U otherwise. The foundation paper was aimed at 1/1 to 5/5. A 'pass' is a complicated thing! 5 being a 'good' pass, 4 a 'standard' pass and 1 is a measurable grade similar to an old CSE grade 4 or 5. An achievement still for a low ability child. But it does still seem like a fail, sadly.

Awww! DS's preferred sixth form has sent him a good luck and look forward to seeing you in September email! Along with a brag about their A level results, presumably just in case his other choices also send him good luck messages!!
I thought the breakfast tv segment explained it well although I'm still not sure why they dropped the foundation tier in English language as there's a pretty huge spread in ability and it would have been good to have a tier that was a bit more skewed to comprehension and less towards inference.

No eaglefly, triple science gives you separate grades for all 3 sciences, so biology has no impact on chemistry grade for example. You get 3 separate GCSEs.
Dual award or combined means you study all 3 sciences, but not as much content as triple. You get 2 GCSEs, the grades combined from the 3 science subjects as 2 grades.

A level 4 is what you need to not have to resit maths and English, level 5 is a 'strong pass'.

The level 3-3 thing in dual science is a bit of a red herring. It looks as though a lot of children entered for the higher tier dual science would not have received a 4-4 (or possibly a 4-3 I'm not sure), and therefore would have got a U (ungraded- outright fail) because the 4-4 was the lowest mark you should have got on that paper. To stop children getting a u, there has been the extra lower level grade added to what is possible on the higher tier papers - meaning children can receive a 3-3 rather than the u .

Hope that makes some sense!