Mock results and grade predictions using previous grade boundaries

[Alsoplayspiccolo]

DD has mocks in January and parents evening this week.

All but the history teacher gave grade results based on last year’s grade boundaries, having used last year’s papers and mark schemes. A couple of teachers told us they’d slightly raised the boundaries, to allow for a 5% movement this year.

However, the history teacher appears to have given arbitrary grades, telling us that he “doesn’t get involved in the dark arts of how the government set grade boundaries, because every exam will be a success”.
When asked whether his headings generally match actual outcome in the GCSE exam for his students, he said he doesn’t analyse that either.

As it happens, going by last year’s grade boundaries, DD was one mark off an 8, but the teacher gave her a 6 and a “working at” grade of 5.
Because of how hard she worked for the history mock, DD is now considering dropping it, because it is such a huge time drain to revise for only to get a 5 in, when she’s not taking it at A level and has other subjects she could concentrate on.

My question is, is the history teacher right not to use previous grade boundaries, and if so, how does any teacher know what year 11 students are likely to achieve?

gradings, not headings.

Did she do a full mock or part of one?

Has he (foolishly) tried to encourage more revision by grading students lower?

I'd tell her to keep putting in the effort otherwise she'll be annoyed on results day.

She had 3/4 of the papers in history, but the grade boundaries for each paper are published.

The teacher told us that previous grade boundaries are irrelevant because they are based on that year’s cohort. Fair enough, but all the other subject teachers are basing their mock results on them, so who do we listen to?

The GCSE history content is HUGE. DD probably spent longer on that than any other subject; we have no idea what the reality is of how well she’s doing.

I teach history and tend to use last years grade boundaries and then raise them by a few marks. That being said, I don’t think that the grade boundaries matter as much as the marks. Which marks is your DD dropping and does she know where she’s going wrong? Mock exams are far more important as a learning experience than as tool for predicting final grades.
To a certain degree I think he’s right that the grade boundaries are irrelevant. Like your daughter’s school we tend to use last year’s paper for the mocks. A lot of the more savvy kids predict this and have usually looked it up online and revised to that test paper. Their marks are often a lot higher than what they would have got if they’d sat that paper without any clue as to what might come up.
If the marks she got would have scored a grade 8 last summer then she’s doing very well. I’d also say don’t be fooled into thinking subjects that are more confident in their grade boundaries and predictions are any more accurate. If anything I’d be warier of subjects that claim that they can precisely grade mock exams. Grade boundaries can change and, even more importantly, the accuracy of the grade boundaries is irrelevant if the teachers aren’t marking to the same standard set at standardisation by the exam boards last summer. Schools will often standardise marking within the school, but there’s a good chance that they are marking to a different standard than the exam board used. I know that we definitely marked to a stricter standard for certain questions this year than the board did last summer, as we got some 2019 papers back and were very surprised by how generously source utility questions were marked.

@Alsoplayspiccolo we’ve had the same in history and biology - her mock grads would have just been a 9 for biology but the teacher marked it as a 7 and gave her a working at grade of 6. All very annoying but dd said girls in the year above have told her the mocks were graded low and they all got better grades in the real things, so she’s not too worried.

I wouldn’t give up History if she did that well (percentage wise) on the mock. It is a huge subject but it sounds like she’ll get an 8 or 9 on current performance!

Sabine, that's really helpful, thanks.
As you say, we'd rather have a pleasant surprise than a horrible shock, when opening results in August, so slight undermarking by teachers is a good thing.
The problem with this particular teacher is that he's really undermined DD's confidence by telling us that she did badly in a particular paper, when I can see she got one mark below an 8 in it. Of course, ideally, she'd focus on improving to get a secure 8, but actually, she worked really hard to get the mark that she did and would be happy with a 7 in August. The problem is that the teacher has given the impression that she'll get a 6, and in her friend's case, he told her she done much worse in the mocks, which has actually resulted in her deciding not to take the exam.

Another parent wondered whether certain teachers are keeping down mock grades, in order to be able to make a big deal of their students exceeding predictions in the final exams.

crazy, I'm going to encourage DD to carry on with history, as she's put the work in this far. I will admit, I am really quite cross with her teacher because he did nothing to reassure her or recognise her efforts, and didn't offer anything useful, other than "work harder".
She got a 9 in chemistry, but the teacher gave her a working at grade of 8 because DD was right at the start of the 9 boundary - fair enough.

However, the history teacher appears to have given arbitrary grades, telling us that he “doesn’t get involved in the dark arts of how the government set grade boundaries, because every exam will be a success”. When asked whether his headings generally match actual outcome in the GCSE exam for his students, he said he doesn’t analyse that either

Sounds like you can safely dismiss his predictions as uninformed bollocks then.

From a teaching point of view many teachers err on the side of caution when it comes to mock exam results. The teacher is right in a way the government screws the kids over at any opportunity with grade boundaries. Sounds like your DD is working super hard, well done her, but for some kids giving a ‘higher’ grade a mock in jan means they will slack off their revision and work ethic thinking they have ‘nailed it’ already. Doesn’t sounds like your DF would do this just offering another train of thought. Finally lots of schools will absolutely use exam grades as stick to beat staff with and so many predict lower than they actually think because in terms of brutal performance management it’s always better to have better results than worse.

Good luck to your DD

noble, that's basically the conclusion I 'd come to! I tried to press him on it - if he refused to use grade boundaries as an indicator, what DID he use? - but he didn't give me an answer.
If I'm to ignore ground boundaries, by the same token, I should ignore his headings as well.

Aaargh! gradings, NOT headings!!

The history teacher has a point, though. Each cohort determines the grade boundaries. The most important information from mocks is the feedback on each question on how to improve. If you really want to hound them about it, find out who the data person is on SLT. Ask them for the mocks versus actual outcomes for the last 3 years. Unless each dept has GCSE examiners standardising (for subjective disciplines like History and English especially) each teacher and they've done a full paper for every subject then the mocks really are a bit of a paper exercise. Teachers have a better chance of predicting a child's height in August than their result.

Then why give predicted grades at all.

Cat, I take your point, and in fact, DD's English teacher did say that they track pupils and actually, their tracking is pretty accurate. In the case of the English mocks, all students' papers were marked by both teachers, separately, and marks moderated accordingly.

However, the first thing we were handed on the final parents' meeting before GCSEs was an envelope with mock results 1-9, working at grades 1-9, and target grades 1-9, and each subsequent conversation with individual subject teachers was based on that.

Much is made here, and elsewhere, of students generally going up one grade between mocks and the real exams. Ditto aiming to get good enough grades to be able to go on to the next stage in education. If no-one has any idea how long that particular piece of string is, how can that happen?

Motivation is the key. Just keep chipping away at the work after listening to the feedback. I've known plenty of students to get grade 8s at GCSE and then flunk the A' Level and also perform relative poorly at GCSE and get an A grade at A2. If she isn't going to do history then get her to do enough work to get a good pass. The essay practice will be good for other subjects too.

Which History board is she taking for GCSE? Ds seems to be the only one who sat the OCR exam last year, everyone on here was AQA. For his mock in both November and February he got a 6. But this wasn't a lack of knowledge (AO1) but an essay technique.

So because, as you said the content is huge, he was constanty just trying to put all the facts into his head for 5 topics. However, after the February mocks and knowing he had all the AO1 he needed, he could essay plan.

He looked at previous questions such as Cotton was the main reason for expansion in the US, how far do you agree? and he could now plan a response. Not a full written one but know what facts he would argue to agree and disagree and his "clincher" final paragraph. In the end he got a 9.

Don't let her lose faith in her ability to do well in this. Where is she losing marks? What does she need to change or add to increase her marks? Is it knowledge or second order concepts? (as in why this led to that, and as a consequence this happened.) That is where she needs to look.

Her teacher sounds awful. All of Ds1's teachers fell over themselves to help, booklets of past paper questions, revision guides produced by them, booster classes etc.

The mocks are the best indicator of where your child is, but there is nothing to stop them improving that grade. Ds1 got a 7 in English lit but the year before that exact mark was an 8. So yes boundaries move with the cohort. All they can do is their best and the teacher should be encouraging that.

DD is doing Eduqas history, which is a nightmare because there's so little revision material available (presumably because, as you say, most people seem to do AQA).

Thanks for some great advice. I've been helping DD with revision, so I'll take on board your suggestions and steer her towards past questions, rather than trying to suck up every single piece of information for all 4 topics. In actual fact, when I was trying to get anything out of her teacher, the other history teacher, noticing my increasing frustration, came over and said that DD didn't need to know everything (which was sort of reassuring but also sort of unhelpful, because how is DD meant know which parts she doesn't need to know?!)

Each cohort does determine the boundaries to a certain extent but it’s based on how difficult that years exam paper was balanced against KS2 data for that years cohort (to allow for a specially poor or weak cohort).

So basically the history teacher is talking utter bollocks

Dd had similar with physics (except it was excusable as there were only sample papers the first year of 9-1). But half of the top sets failed physics mock, dd was graded a Grade 4. (Predicted a 6/7) and with Grades 6-8 in all her other subjects. It caused uproar as some of these kids were wanting to apply for A Level and were wanting to know why they hasn’t been made aware they were doing so badly.

She got a Grade 8 in the actual exam.

But it was incredibly demotivating and some of her friends changed their A level choices accordingly.

It’s the demotivating that’s I’m worried about.
DD has ADHD and has to overlearn everything, because of memory issues. Her self-confidence is fragile and the majority of her teachers work really hard to boost her; that belief in her ability has seen her go from someone who “is rubbish at science” to getting 9-9 in mocks.

Whatever DD gets in history, it will be no thanks to her teacher.

I can see the hesitation.

My ds is doing maths appears frequently in the run up. I always use the grade boundaries to guide him to a grade. What the school do is use pin point to pick up strengths and weaknesses to revise the gaps.

But in a way it does appear to be what appears on the appear will determine final grade (well in maths anyway!). Ds gets 7-9. It's not his ability fluctuating!

He also did extremely well in science but they only did paper 1 (unit 1). He is predicted a 6 in science. Got 8 in biology and 9 in physics and chemistry. Got 9/9 overall based on last years grade boundaries and diving by 2 as only did unit 1.

Realistically they cannot predict a 9. A) because it may just so happen ds was very knowledgable on the question in that particular appear and b) he hasn't done unit 2 (yet!).

And I don't understand why him pointing out she did not so well in one palaver is a bad thing? Ds did 3 geography papers. 2 were very good (for him) and one wasn't good. He was told that. Told he needs to focus on x y and z to improve grade.

Ok, the history teacher sounds difficult but your dd shouldn't really be dropping a subject because she thinks she'll get a 6. She should be resilient and working for higher. A 6 is hardly a bad grade a anyway!

She should be resilient and working for higher.

Children with ADHD and ASD are not resilient and no anmount of telling them they shoud be will make them. Too much stress or pressure can cause them to completely crumble.

I agree with @comefromaway. Ds has ADHD and he's so easily knocked back. We're working on it, but he does need encouragement and doesn't respond well at all to punitive measures or criticism.

But a 6 in mocks does suggest a 7 or higher in the real thing so I wouldn't give it up!

Right, here is the Educas past papers and their mark schemes

www.eduqas.co.uk/qualifications/qualification-resources.html?subject=History&level=GCSE&pastpaper=true

Take note of the mark scheme, especially the phrasing that they award marks for such as

-his role in transforming West Germany into a prosperous industrial state as part of theeconomic miracle;
-the introduction of the Deutschmark in June 1948 which stabilised the currency and encouraged investment;

• the levying of high taxes on the wealthy which raised revenue;

This will help her form her sentences and use key words like introduced, transformed. Have the mark scheme and past paper open in two tabs (or computers) so you can see the question and what they want as a response. There are only so many ways they can ask about a situation.

She has plenty of time, the exam isn't tomorrow and she can do this. The whole thing can be soul destroying even for the most confident and able children, she is not alone in feeling like this. I always tell my sons, this is the game, we might not like it, we need to know the rules of the game and what gets you points. And in 4 months this will all be over.

itsgettingweird, I can’t understand some of your post, and I’m not sure you’ve understood mine.

DD is working hard; in fact for her to achieve what she has, she has to work much harder than others, because of her SEN.
The paper that her teacher said she hadn’t done well in was actually one mark off an 8, according to last year’s grade boundaries, but her history teacher didn’t tell her that.

With a grade like that, she doesn’t have to work harder, but he’s basically suggested it’s a disaster. Due to his attitude, DD’s best friend has just ditched history, because he gave her the impression she would barely pass - when, in fact, she’s almost certainly at least one grade above what he’s saying.

As for that popular educational buzz word, “resilience”, does that mean pushing someone until their MH gives way? Asking them to achieve the impossible?
I don’t have any issue at all with 6s and neither does DD, but I do have an issue with a teacher that claims someone’s only going to get a 6 and clearly needs to work harder, when the reality is they are already trying their best and are actually achieving higher than they’re being told.