Last year’s reformed A-level maths grades could be changed

[noblegiraffe]

Ofqual have opened an investigation into why this year’s A-level maths grade boundaries are significantly lower than last year’s. If they find an issue, hundreds of students from last year could potentially have their grade increased.

This only affects students who sat the new reformed A-level last year; they would have sat it in one year instead of two and would most likely be further maths students sitting further maths this year.

www.tes.com/news/exclusive-ofqual-investigating-a-level-maths-grades

The exam boards are confident the grade boundaries are correct and won’t change.

I am glad there aren’t too many affected by this ( less than 2000 it says) but feel sorry for those who may have had to change their destinations based on their (potentially wrong) result

Maths teachers around the country will be saying ‘of course the grade boundaries were weird, it was a small cohort of mainly further mathematicians’

Just like we say every November ‘can’t trust the resit grade boundaries, they don’t really apply to a full cohort’.

But then if we assume that the grade boundaries for a small cohort of a narrow ability will be weird, then that implies that they’re not really very good at measuring a specific standard.

Are these all students who did the new Maths A-level exams at the end of Y12 in 2018? Then did Further Maths A-level exams at the end of Y13 this summer?

Yes.

So if applying to university last UCAS cycle, they were applying with one (possibly artificially low) grade in the bag and three predicted grades. Many schools probably capped the predicted F.Maths grade based on their actual Maths grade.

This would have limited the scope of universities they felt confident applying to, and limited their chances of receiving an offer, especially for Maths or a related subject such as Physics or Computer Science.

Unfortunate and unfair. I suppose they could reapply this year, but would the Maths grade be revised in time?