Are DCs actual teachers supposed to be involved in TAGs (GCSES 2021)

[Fridaydayday]

DS received a grade for one of his GCSEs that is lower than he expected. He emailed his teacher and was told the teacher was also surprised his result was low as he has always achieved a couple of grades more at least in tests, but he’d had no involvement in the grades given.
We emailed school and we’re told they had used head of the subject and exam officer to apply grade boundaries which were in line with 2017-2019 grades. They must have changed the boundaries from the way they were originally marked. It’s all very confusing but I’m trying to find out if school followed proper procedures.

Yes, having no involvement at all is unusual. Technically, each grade needs to be signed off by the head of dept and one other teacher; this would normally be either the second in dept or the SLT link for the dept. Grades could definitely have been moved down by a more senior person, but I’d say it’s general courtesy to explain to the original teacher why this has been done. That’s why CAGs were a much better name than TAGs as they reflect this process of going through several layers of internal quality assurance. If a grade has been moved down to be more in line with 2017-2019 then the school has in fact done the right thing as this “sense check” of the grades using 2017-2019 was in fact in the guidance to be done.

That said, there’s a reason why most schools are asking students to send queries to the exams officer or a designated SLT rather than their teachers. This not only protects teachers (for every polite query like your DS’ they probably get an angry rant too!) but it helps students as it means that if they do wish to appeal the senior person can get straight onto doing a check for errors.

So, while it does sound like the school have followed the JCQ and Ofqual guidance, your son is still entitled to double check what evidence was used and how it was used. All departments will have an assessment record and rationale which outline how they’ve used the school’s centre policy. These centre policies actually were checked by exam boards and should have been shared with you sometime just after Easter.

I didn't know what my students had until yesterday. Ours sat 3 lots of exams and we all marked other teachers students. Moderation was done by teachers from another school and marks were submitted to SLT by head of department. Moderation then happened again to ensure marks were in expected range. Exam board then looked at grades (when they could be changed).
So not really Teacher Assessed at all. We tried to ensure fairness as in normal years, as did many many other schools.

That must have been annoying. Not the being marked by other staff, moderated elsewhere and being ultimately submitted by the head of dept (all good practice to avoid bias and increase objectivity) but not then being told the final grade after all your hard work!