What are GCSE Grade 9s for...?

[Balootoyoutoo]

Just that really. I work in a university but am also a mental health professional, and I'm struggling to see the point of them. They cause a shed-load of stress and angst, but for what...?

I understand that they were introduced to help distinguish between the very able and the exceptional, but how many universities really need to make that distinction? The University that I'm with (think lower tier Russell Group don't tell them I said that, I'm fairly sure it's an instant dismissal offence) is very unlikely to need them for selection purposes, for even our most competitive courses. In fact, the only universities that I can think will make any use of them are Oxbridge, and maybe Imperial and UCL for their most demanding degrees.

Did we really need to upheave the entire system and demand ever higher levels of perfectionism, in the interests of a tiny handful of universities? Or have I missed the point?

We won’t know that until Thursday. My hunch is that the new spec in my subject will reward the most conscientious more than the brightest. The amount of content went up hugely and the exam papers were narrower with fewer question choices. Very able pupils with gaps in their revision will be penalised far more than in the old history spec where it was easier to avoid questions on topics you hadn’t revised as well. I suspect that the really consistent ones and those who were lucky enough to have their favourite topics come up will be the ones to nab the top grades in history this year.

I hate the fact the new system devalues results for many other students. An A was great. Now a 7, which is apparently equivalent, doesn't look special. Why not have a 7, a 7 with merit and a 7 with distinction?

Grades aren't getting devalued. There will simply be more differentiation between grades.

Less differentiation at the lower end.

Ask Michael Gove. I think he just wanted to be remembered and didn’t care what for( or how many teachers died in the process).

DumbledoresApprentice I was shocked how much broader the history curriculum was compared to two years ago!

Don’t forget Gove gave all schools the bible too...

Any teachers able to tell us whether Grade 9s really do pick out the most able...or simply the most conscientious

That’s a very good question. There’s a huge amount more knowledge which students are required to learn at gcse now. Probably about a third more than in the old gcse in my subject. Therefore the most conscientious should score well - but in order to retrieve that much information they have to be pretty able! But you also need to have demonstrate some flair or be able to use your knowledge well in order to gain high grades too.

In Maths for example (not my subject) questions in the old style gcse tended to be based in one topic area. They are now mixed, so it requires more mathematical ability. But at the same time they have to learn by heart the formulae they will need.

I have one student that I teach that if she doesn’t get a 9 I genuinely don’t know what a 9 will look like. Well I do actually because in my subject (languages) funnily enough the native speakers tend to get the highest grades.

"They wait to see what marks people get and then set grade boundaries, otherwise grade boundaries would be fixed and the same every year."

Isn't that a description of new system not old one, Can a teacher comment?

I always read that under 1980s-2010s GCSE system, the approach was fixed threshold: the thresholds were supposed to be pretty much identical each year (even if numbers changed slightly to reflect differently written exams) so that a 1985 GCSE grade C meant the same minimum ability level as a 2015 grade C. Whereas under new GCSEs, the thresholds are purposefully moving goalposts; the 2018 grade 5 will only tell you relative to the cohort that the person was a Grade 5. If the class of 2020 turned out to be exceptionally thick, their Grade 5 could be lower average standard than 2018.

I work in a school where a significant proportion of the year used to get all A** stars which meant it was impossible to differentiate between them. Hopefully the new system will help although the boards have gone back on what they had originally said about how rare a grade 9 would be judging by the first exams last year. I suspect we will still get a few kids with a string of 9s but hopefully not as many as with A stars.

I wonder how many years before we see a 10 being introduced....

Sorry having an issue with writing A*/star!!

At some schools almost 40% of pupils last year (2017) got grade 9 in English language, English Literature and Maths.

Whereas in previous years it would have been a much higher percentage getting the old top grade, A star.

So the new grade 9 does seem to differentiate between the very able/hardworking, in that less are getting the top grade.

lljkk comparable outcomes has been used to maintain outcomes and stop grade inflation since 2010, but grade boundaries were always set after the exam using student performance to decide how hard or easy a particular paper was.

Interesting blog here about the switch from mainly examiner judgement about standards to prioritising comparable outcomes (at GCSE and A-level) here: <a class="break-all" href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110718114012/www.ofqual.gov.uk/files/2011-05-16-maintaining-standards-gcses-and-alevels-summer-2011.pdf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110718114012/www.ofqual.gov.uk/files/2011-05-16-maintaining-standards-gcses-and-alevels-summer-2011.pdf

I think people were surprised last year that the grade boundary for a grade 9 in maths was 79%. The perception was that the ‘most able’ in maths would be pulling in 90-odd percent.

Many student need the harder content, though. I've had lots of maths students who've really enjoyed the new material, and haven't found it too stressful - they've just risen to the challenge, and it's been good for them to have to do that.

If you didn't have a separate grade for it, you'd have a massive category at the top of A (or whatever new equivalent) that covered a huge range of ability/scores. Or you'd have people capable of rising to the challenge but couldn't be bothered becasue they didn't need to if they could get an A much more easily (which obviously says other things about their personality etc, but would probably happen). Or you'd get calls to get rid of the new, harder content, because it wasn't needed to get the A, etc.

Much more helpful would be to keep the hard content, keep the higher grade, and work on the amount of pressure and stress that's put on pupils. Not everyone has to get a grade 9. Lower grades are an excellent achievement and could be rewarded as such. Perhaps the grade 9s could be made even more rare.

Equally, make the bottom level of the papers more accessible rather than pushing everyone to do the harder material. Make that a qualification worth having too, showing real mastery of the basics and functional maths.

I don't know as much about other subjects, but I expect there are similarities. It's the culture of 'you need all top grades' that has to change, not what the top grade is nor how hard they are. There is a group of students for whom the top grade is now a much better challenge and they need to be catered for as well.

But lots of schools put their most able mathematicians through further or additional maths so it’s not like they were sat twiddling their thumbs in previous years.

Now we have a higher paper where you only need 50-odd percent to get an A equivalent and could lose 1 in 5 marks and still get a 9. How is that a positive change? It hasn’t supported the leap to A-level, and it did a good job of putting able mathematicians off taking A-level at all because they perceived they were crap at maths. You don’t feel good enough for A-level if you can’t do half the GCSE paper.

Really, do you think the grade boundary for a grade 9 in Maths is only 50 odd percent?

Oh, sorry, just realised you meant 80% for a 9. But that's still quite low, in that you can't differentiate between those that got 80% and 99% correct.

Last year for Edexcel maths it was 79% for a 9 and 52% for a 7.

Although they will no doubt be higher this year.

Wow, that is quite low. Then you almost already need a grade 10 for the 'very' top performers, say those who get over 90%?

Why do you think they’ll be higher this year, noble?

Do you think the headlines tomorrow will be ‘lowest top grades in years’ types?

It would actually be very interesting to see the exact distribution of percentage results of all pupils taking an exam, showing what percentage of pupils got 100% all the way down to the lowest mark. Does that get published?

Because of the ‘sawtooth effect’ - performance is always much lower on the first year of a new qualification because teachers are less familiar with the spec, there are fewer resources, no past papers and pupils aren’t as well prepared. Performance then recovers over the next couple of years as the new specs are embedded.

So if the maths papers this year are of a comparable standard to last year, the grade boundaries should be higher as pupils will perform better on the papers, but comparable outcomes mean results have to be similar to last year.

(I also got the impression that this year’s Edexcel Higher papers were easier than 2017 - Foundation were deliberately so as last year’s were inaccessible to the bottom end and Edexcel had to make changes).

I see what you mean-I’d forgotten that the new maths (and English?) started last year.

Are you expecting many 9s in your cohort, Noble?

Noble - fascinating linked article re comparable outcomes and performance.

Also, am I right in understanding from it that GCSEs only switched from fully linear in 2011 exam year - ie really quite recently?

I have struggled a bit with the whole discussion about how horrific the switch to fully linear is in the current round of reforms (maybe a levels were non-linear for longer?) as I am old enough to be one of the last to take O levels, and most of my friends with older children who have talked about such things over the last few years are at schools which have elected for igcses and Pre U expressly to avoid course work and modularity, so I never really got a sense for the other system.

DS tells me that at his school-15 students (which is 10% of the year) got over 70 points in the mocks, which is good wedge of 9s each. It will be interesting to see what it all looks like tomorrow.