Raw score and grades etc

[illiteratticom]

Hi

I've been googling and still confused about this and whether the GCSE grades correlate with , e.g. you have to get at least 50% to get a C ( grade 4 now?) or whether the actual percentage needed to get a 5 is lower? DS starting Y10 in Sept...

I think my question stems from when I was at school; the pass grades were A-C. I went to local school (just pre ofsted; well thought of locally). When there, during school, if you got 50-59% , it was a C, 60-70% a B, and > 70% an A.

I middled around mostly Bs and Cs with 1 or 2 As thrown in and then, in O and A - levels did much much better (not from harder work as so did the rest of us) and got only As and Bs ( just a majority of As!) . I then learnt that when you took the exam with the rest of the country, that the percentage score you needed to get to get the As and Bs were much lower than had been given at school - if you were at a school where the standard was generally higher than average.

So , as DS at a v good state, and is starting his GSCE course, I'm trying to find out a bit more about what this means for the scores he's currently achieving and how to support him in the next 2 years.

I hope my post makes sense as I'm confused!

Disclaimer: I'm not an expert

My understanding of GCSE grading is that all exams/coursework gets marked and then the exam board decides the cut off for each grade. This is based on a percentage so eg the top 8% will get a 9 in biology each year (totally made up figure BTW) but in year a. that might mean you need 76% overall but in year b you might need 80%.

At first glance, that might seem unfair if you end up in a tougher year but in reality it makes minimal difference and is also an acknowledgement than exam papers themselves might be more/less difficult.

That's what Ive always assumed is the case but I have no idea of its true or not. Hopefully someone better informed than me will post.

Hi there,
The grade boundaries will vary for each subject and exam board. The best thing to do is to get the info for each subject and then look on the exam board websites to check the grade boundaries from 2016-19, this will give you a rough idea of where each grade lies, but they do change each year.

@Taxiparent was i right that its done on fixed percentage per cohort or have I got that completely wrong?

I started to Google but I'm finding it hard to wade through the stuff about grading procedures this year

IMO there's no easy way to relate percentages to grade at GCSE. It's even worse in subjects where there are higher/foundation papers as you can what sounds like pretty low percentages on the higher paper and still end up with a pretty good grade.

DC's school said that you should just concentrate on getting as many marks as possible and not think about what grade that might be ... on the basis that it varies by cohort anyway. That said, the school should be giving you general information "this looks like a 7". If he's at the start of his GCSE course (end of Year 9?) the other complication is that some schools will start assessing based on GCSE style questions, so he can expect to do pretty badly at first as he's not sufficiently advanced (he's got 2 years to improve; he won't be getting top marks yet!). Other schools grade based against lower standards (expected standards at a point in time), so it might be possible to get high marks now but they aren't directly relatable to GCSE grades.

It's set at cohort level. So if the cohort as a whole are smarter, the grade boundary gets adjusted accordingly so the grade reflects the ability of the child. In other words a grade 7 no matter when achieved, should reflect the same standard, even so some years the raw score to achieve that 7 will have been much lower, or the exam much harder.

I think it's called criterion referenced as opposed to norm referenced where grades are allocated on a bell curve with fixed percentage getting each grade.

Thanks - that's so helpful. I had a look and found this - am screen shooting as have some questions!

Yes as others have said, the marks needed fir a certain grade will vary by subject and by year.

My subject is MFL and like maths, there is a foundation and higher paper - so the mark needed for a 4 on the higher paper seems very low, but in fact it's a much harder paper.

Most subjects only have one tier tho, even English.

There can be dramatic variation for example, the mark my Dd gained in A level French got her a C, where the same mark in German (exactly the same exam spec) would have been a B.

The last grade boundaries are for 2019 when 86 out of 160 would have got a 5 in English lang, 169 out of 240 a 5 in French F tier, 74 out of 240 a 5 in maths H tier...you get the idea

Trying to made it bigger as looking at this has helped my confusion a little but still need help..

What's your question op? Should say the figures i quoted were AQA and will vary by board as well.

Hi Clary, yes helpful thanks so wrt "The last grade boundaries are for 2019 when 86 out of 160 would have got a 5 in English lang, 169 out of 240 a 5 in French F tier, 74 out of 240 a 5 in maths H tier...you get the idea" as my head is stuck on percentages, am I correct in understanding that for maths the pass rate to get a grade 5 was 74/240 so v low at 31%?

Hi Clary, my question with the grade boundary shot was similar. e.g the maths grade for a grade 5 shows a mark of 78/240 so 32.5% which seems low for a pass? ( but may explain me an my friends' experiences of doing much better than we'd expected compared with the grades we'd been getting.)

Yes but that was the Higher paper...for a grade 5 candidate, the majority of it would be inaccessible as some of the questions are aimed at those seeking grades 8-9. I would never enter a student for higher if I genuinely thought 5 was their ceiling grade. So demoralising not to be able to do the majority of the paper. Think about looking at it and going no, no, no idea...

Much easier to gain a 5 on foundation (for MFL anyway).

It makes more sense to look at English, where a 5 is just over half marks.

You need fewer points to get a 5 on a higher paper than you do on a foundation paper. The higher papers are really aimed at people who are aiming for 6+, and the grade for a 5 is a sort of "backstop". There are no easy questions on the higher paper! DC who are expecting to get a 4/5 would normally take the foundation paper where you need to get far more marks as the paper is easier.

You can't compare anything that happens now to what you experienced at school.

Think of foundation and higher papers as two parts of the same subject. Imagine everyone had to take the foundation paper. If you got 75% right that was a 5. Then those that were aiming for 6 and higher did a further paper which just asked harder questions. You had to get 25% of that extra paper for a 6, 50% for a 7 etc. Then imagine an exam board/ teacher etc going 'well what's the point of all my 6+ kids doing the first paper - we know they'll all get very high marks, so we'll just ask them to sit the second paper.' And that's what has happened.

Titchy - wow, I really haven't understood much. So I do know that he's in the higher for everything, and nothing unexpected so far in that he's an 8/9 for his fave subject and 7/6s for the rest but is weak on one ( which is a core subject) and is a 4/5 (he seems to really struggle with the concepts in it )so got him the cgp book in that subject which is helping a little)

So I don't know about maths, but to take MFL - for the writing paper which is a quarter of the exam, for F you write four sentences about a picture - totally fine to use "there is xxx, there is yyy, he is xxx"; then you write a 40-word paragraph on a given theme, using four key words (eg hobbies and you write about Tv, sport, music and cinema); then translate 5 sentences into target language, the level of "I have a cat and a dog"; then a 90-word essay with a choice of tasks and four bullet points, including past and future tense.

For the higher paper, that 90-word essay is the starting point; you then have to do a 150-word essay with just two bullet points (so v little support) and then translate a paragraph from English with relatively complex language (using words like because, therefore, using past tense).

Do you see how the second paper is so much harder than the first - so to gain a 5 on the F paper would need about 66%, but the same candidate would need 48% for a 5 on the higher paper - much much harder. It will work the same way in maths

And yes, I agree, never mind what you did at school and how it worked, it is totally different today.

Most subjects don't have tiered papers tho OP, hope you are clear on that.

Only maths, MFL and science. Not even English . No ideas why not but hey.

Thanks Clary, I'm beginning to get to grips with it now - sounds like just in time....I think I wasn't worrying as DS had generally been doing ok, doing his homework, a bit of revision etc and seems to be slowly getting to grips with the subject he struggles with. It sounds like I should talk to the teacher about that subject as it would seem a bit unfair if he gets put down to the foundation level for it.

I wouldn't worry about translating percentages into grades - there's just no consistent way for you to obtain accurate info this way.

Each school will have a different approach to grade reporting and each department will have their own approaches within that framework.

To track your dc's progress and help support him, I would just go through his books with him regularly: You will see assessments, mini assessments and work done during feedback lessons after exams etc. All the info you need should be in his books.

DC's school doesn't make final decisions on tiers until the January of Year 11. So plenty of time yet if he's currently working at 4/5.
Incidentally you do need to understand if the 4/5 is a current working at level or a "based on current levels he is projected to get" level Big difference.

I should also say that for a borderline child sitting foundation and getting a solid 5 is a better choice than sitting higher and running the risk of no grade at all.

MissKeithsNeice - thanks. He does show us his work, and we know when and what he revises etc, obv aware from his reports and parents' meetings that he's on track for a good combo of grades and he's enjoying all his extra curricular stuff etc so schoolwork hasn't been as important to him as I guess it will become next year. However, I'm aware that I didn't really get to grips with the whole foundation/ higher paper thing and we've been told he's on the higher tier for that and I think I had confused this with the sets he's in.

With this thread though, I'm now worrying (!!!) about the subject he's struggling with so just relooked up last report which said current 5, working towards 6 ( this compares with his strongest current 8 working towards 9) so will wait to see with this year's EoY report. I'm now googling - when do children get put into foundation/ higher paper - but have so far understood much more from Mumsnet that I have from what I've found on googling - many thanks

You haven't said which core subject, but I needed to look into this for DD2.

Maths: For a 4/5 student, then doing Foundation could be the 'safer' option as they won't get thrown straight into harder questions. However if prone to make silly mistakes this could be an issue. If they are a 5/6 student then the only way to get a chance of a 6 is to take Higher.

Science: The Foundation papers have more straightforward questions, slightly easier maths, and the harder content is dropped. It was interesting, the content we were instinctively dropping for tests if DD couldn't manage it all, was the content not there when she switched to Foundation.

OP, if your DS is only just going into y10, the focus at the moment should be gaining as many marks as he can. After all, somewhere along the line 1 mark means a grade boundary.
Some pupils will obviously be headed for Higher or Foundation. The ones in the middle they should wait until end y10 at least to decide.

Yy as the estimable Teen says, it's later than start of year 10 when decisions are made about F/H tiers.

What is the subject op? People may have some good sources of revision material if they know.

Thanks - feel there's time now and could think about a tutor for this subject....It's science. Although doing combined science, has been split into 3 separate ones in the lessons and exams and the one he can't get his head around the concept, is Physics. When we did bbc bitesize, he was " getting it" and doing well on the chemistry and biology tests but the physics seemed like a foreign language ...