Schools had to submit their process to the Boards.
The grounds for appeal are in the process was not followed correctly.
The fact a student got X,Y,Z grades on various pieces of work, cannot tell you exactly what they will get or should get. It really isn’t a case of just averaging, but as a PP said, holistic judgement s had to be made. Boards sent schools grade descriptors which had to be applied….so for example, consistency was important for higher grades….that means not just producing a couple of pieces for higher grades. Remember, that work from across the course will have been taken into account and schools were asked to take more notice of recent work, it that wasn’t the whole picture.
Remember too there were no grade boundaries this year. Therefore, when students look at their work or think in terms of grade boundaries for an individual piece of work, or grade boundaries as they were used for previous exam sittings, this wasn’t how it worked this year. However, getting your head round this as teacher or student is quite tricky.
It isn’t always easy to know as a parent exactly what was said by teachers to students. Teachers were told not to talk grades for individual pieces of work or overall…and most won’t have, but often students seem to think they have. Even if they have, that can’t be the basis of an appeal. You need to evidence the school not following the procedures properly. Work won’t be remarked (often earlier work from the course isn’t in the schools hands but was returned to the students and cannot be retrieved) but it will all be about the processes the school used.
And lastly, one thing to remember is that schools have been extremely generous this year. Grades are significantly above the historic pattern. Schools and teachers really don’t want to downgrade students, but often were extremely (questionably too generous) generous rather than mean. No teacher wants poor results and neither does any school. So the chances of being treated meanly are actually pretty low.
In all this, having a conversation with the school/college is really important. Launching an official appeal before doing this would be crazy and in fact, the appeals process tells people to speak to their educational setting first. Conversations can help throw light in the processes used and the evidence for a particular student (and often students remember their best pieces of work and forget some of their weaker ones) and also give a sense of the cohorts performance in relation to historic averages, to help get more of a sense that meanness is extremely unlikely. Those conversations can aid understanding and help acceptance of grades which are disappointing. That’s really important.
After these conversations, some families will choose to lodge a formal appeal, but most won’t. No doubt there are some cases where it is warranted and will result in an upgrade, but it will be low numbers….and that’s not because the system is denied to prevent it, but simply that settings were extremely careful with this process and where there was any doubt were generous.
And finally, remember, that every year, large numbers if students receive grades that disappoint them in exams….this is often by several grades as well. Students might be surprised, but teachers less so. It was inevitable that some would be disappointed this year too, even in a year of large grade inflation.
Have the chats. Approach it as a query and be positive rather than critical and aggressive. All schools should have someone who is available for these chats at the moment. Look at any documentation you have and the website too and make sure you are contacting the right person to have that chat with. If you’d ant find that info, email the Head of Year or Section and the Academic Deputy to ask for help and stress you’d like that conversation in the early part of next week.
It’s all very raw at the moment and will feel better in the next few days, but it’s important to get a sense of understanding why the grades were awarded if they were a shock….and it is possible to do this, as the grades came from the school.