Will this GCSE result impact on A’level predictions? Really worried

[GCSESbegone]

My DS has received a mark a couple of grades lower than he was expecting for a subject he is taking at A’level. It was a real shock as it has always been a subject he’s excelled in and even his teacher has said he would have expected him to do much better and has no worries about him taking the subject at A’level or doing well in it. The exams were marked externally and his teacher had no input. We’ve looked into appealing but are pretty sure it will get us nowhere. I’ve now started a spiral of worrying that this is going to have a big impact on predicted grades and subsequently getting university offers as he needs high grades for the course he wants to do. Can anyone reassure me as I really am worried. All other grades were very good.

mums I'm shocked by your process. They were teacher assessed and supposed to be awarded by class teachers. They shouldn't have just come from one assessment either.

@Hercisback they didn't. They came from 5 pieces of evidence, each individually weighted. And I think you'll find most schools followed a v similar procedure. Teacher assessed just made Gav sound like he had given schools a clear plan. He hadn't. He gave a vague useless set of guidelines.
JCQ passed us on all counts with flying colours. All the schools in our area did the same so we could standardise moderation. We wanted to be fair to the kids but everything had to be clearly evidenced.

They came from 5 pieces of evidence, each individually weighted. And I think you'll find most schools followed a v similar procedure.

This might have been the case in your area / MAT mum, but I’ve not heard of this happening (and we’re part of a huge MAT). I think the OP should challenge the result - the TAGs should have been applied by teachers who knew their students. It does sound like some schools didn’t trust their staff, for whatever reason.

I haven't heard of that happening anywhere else either including our large MAT and a number of schools country wise. Most schools knew the names of the students they were grading!! Removing bias is one thing but some students needed positive bias. It was important we knew who we were talking about when deciding final grades.

It does sound like you used the same papers moderated each others marking and, presumably, used a standardised markscheme. Arguably, that is school protecting themselves against scrutiny, rather than anything really about the kids... all that aside ( and we did in school blind marking, produced same rank order!) OP has no evidence that this is what was done in her school.

Not seeing your own class' s submitted grades before results day was never part of the process . What happened about eg special consideration?

@DenbyChina nothing to do with trusting staff. It's about equality and fairness between all schools, like in a normal year with real exams. I can't believe schools just let teachers award grades as that leaves so much up to individual bias.
Our results have been shown to be pretty much on par with a normal year so we did our job. Students have been awarded the grades they got through exams over a 7 month period. JCQ have commended us on our procedure and individual teachers are protected from parental pressure and appeals as we can show the evidence for each grade has been applied consistently across every subject.

Old grade boundaries were not meant to be applied whichever way you swing it. The schools bumf does suggest they did do more than just that.

@Piggywaspushed special consideration was applied by head of years during the moderation process. Teachers could input any known reasons and then overall action was taken.
I know schools did things differently & we all worked within the guidelines. OP said her school had done exactly what ours had - that's why I contributed to this post.
We have not had one appeal yet. And 98% of our students got their first choice Uni. Seemed to work quite well.

School did not ' let teachers award grades'. That sounds arrogant. I am a teacher of 25 years experience. I would not necessarily believe the marking of someone in another school was more sound than mine. Were all your subjects taught at other schools mum? Not sure who would have marked our Latin!

@Piggywaspushed ??? What old grade boundaries are you talking about ? I wrote the papers from scratch, making up questions (I also do this for an exam board normally), and using some from Exampro, ensuring relevant AOs were used in the correct %s. Once all marked I used our previous data, as well as FFT and KS2 data to set grade boundaries. Took me hours and hours, but made it fair as we could,

Heads of years got involved with grading .

Our results were also on a par with previous years.

@Piggywaspushed our Latin was moderated by the v expensive private school down the road. We moderated theirs. We all marked our own.

All subjects were externally moderated to ensure consistency of grades.

@Hercisback heads of years are all senior teachers at our school. Why wouldn't they ? And they didn't change grades, just gave the special circumstances so % changes could be made by SLT.

In fairness our HOYs are all pastoral only so makes sense if they are teaching HOYs.

Our grading process was more holistic. We used data to rank the kids, then had conversations around the borderlines.

I still think as a minimum, subject leads should have been grading students, not SLT. SLT QA check by all means, but the SL should be the person listened to.

@Hercisback we did not want to ever have to do ranking again ! We have a 350+ cohort for GCSE and 250 for A Level, and last year was horrible, trying to decide whether Johnny or Bob should be 139 or 140, knowing this could change their grade. So this year in my subject I looked at the mark profile, applied our usual (took last 5 years data) spread of grades and split the results up without knowing who had got them. Odd one or two on border I marked for further analysis by SLT (they could see the child's name and look back at all past data to determine final grade).

@Hercisback as subject lead I set the grade boundaries, so did give the grades. I just didn't know which child related to which bit of data (they used their exam number). It took away any bias towards knowing lovely Julie had worked really hard but had bombed the exams - we published our procedure and were clear on how each bit of evidence would be used.

DSs school used 3 assessments, 2 of which were done prior to exams being cancelled at Christmas. All GCSE format in exam conditions (no mini assessments) and containing whole syllabus.
I’m extremely relieved he did well in other subjects as a few of his friends have unexpectedly not received the required standard for getting into 6th from and many have got grades lower than anticipated/predicted in February.

@GCSESbegone no harm in raising a query with school over the grade and asking for his individual scores and the grade boundaries. We gave all this info in the exam envelope to be helpful.

@GCSESbegone also, most recent evidence should carry more weighting, especially if was from before exams were cancelled. That was JCQ guidelines.

mum am talking about OPs school re the grade boundaries.

Nonetheless marking should have been tied to grade descriptors, otherwise you are just ranking again.

I had this argument at my school. If you said the top 8 students were grade 9s, based on a distribution curve, how do you know they all were? How do you check students 9 to 15 also weren't , say?

I'd still be appealing OP!

We did similar but had to rank them. You must have ranked them on raw score to assign the boundaries, even just as a data list. I really think you should have been given final say as the classroom teacher who knows the student best. Borderlines exist on either method.

Still comes back to the fact that you marked your own mum. This is not what happened to OPs DS. It's not your school under scrutiny here but you do seem to be defending it, using your system which was different

@Hercisback @Piggywaspushed if you'd like our published procedure I'm v happy to send to you. JCQ were happy, parents and students are happy and I was knackered from all the extra work. It was fair, honest and the grade descriptors were a pile of crap for our subject - difference between a 7 and 8 was 'just do more'. More of what ?

OP it's always worth an email to ask. Mistakes can be made so give it a try.

@Piggywaspushed I did not mark my own students. And I'm trying to help. Too tired after last week to be criticised for that. I'll go. Good luck @GCSESbegone