GCSE Appeal 2021 on the ground of unreasonable academic judgment. What do you think?

[Questioningit]

Just found out that school have set grade boundaries incredibly high in a subject my DD got an unexpectedly low mark for. I’ve got a day left to do a stage 2 appeal. Any advice would be much appreciated.

With the administrative error being that they didn't substitute evidence? Sorry to all, I'm trying to get my head around it all in very little time.

You need to know what the raw marks were and what the grade boundaries were. Then you can see how far he was off the next grade. If he's only a mark or two off the next grade then an appeal might be worth the risk since the exam board is unlikely to mark him down a whole grade. If he is slap bang in the middle or towards the bottom of the grade they've awarded then its too risky IMO.

We requested all this info in August from the school. They never sent the info to us, instead they assumed we didn't want to carry on with the appeal without checking with us. We did get an email saying that grades could go down and their processes were very thorough. Still don't have the information from them. The deadline is tomorrow so we might have to risk it, but dc consistently scored a grade or 2 higher than his tags in all other exams and tests during the year.

I think the problem is that the adjustment for special circumstances isn’t very big and they are not allowed to use different pieces of evidence for different pupils.

I personally wouldn’t want to appeal without knowing the mark was very close to the next grade up.

The thing is with appeals this year, the boards are not really challenging the schools judgement unless there is a clear reason to.

The deadline for ALL appeals is tomorrow, so if you haven’t already asked for a Stage 1 appeal, you might struggle to get the school to complete it in time for you to prepare a Stage 2 appeal by the deadline.

Yes I think the timeframe will be the issue. Whatever happens we'll find out tomorrow if we can submit the stage 2 appeal. School have said they'll need lots more evidence but I don't know what else they need other than the completed appendix b that has already been sent to them. Thanks for all the advice on here.

I'm annoyed that school never got back to us with the info requested, we never followed up (a lot of serious family stuff going on) and school then assumed we'd abandoned the appeal without checking with us. I feel guilty about overlooking the deadline, but it's just been one of those awful months.

Does it occur to you @questioningit that your child’s teacher Is a
Professional and might actually know what they are doing?

That they spent a significant part of last term creating rigorous assessments, and the corresponding grade boundaries to go with it?

That they have seen hundreds of children and know what grades fit them? You only have seen one, yours.

That your child is not as bright as you hoped?

That Parents appealing, Shows Such a sense of entitlement and Lack of support, that makes many teachers want to leave.

I don't think a high grade boundary is grounds for appeal because the grade-boundary will have been set to bring the cohort into line with previous years. Seeing as schools had to devise their own assessments it was up to them to adjust the grade-boundary accordingly- you can't compare it to any previous exam papers because grade-boundaries are set after the papers are marked. So using previous years grade boundaries for mock results which is common practise, can't be applied to actual exams.

@Quarks69 you know nothing about the assessment methods at my DDs school.
That her teachers were not actually involved in her TAG grades.

That her actual teacher has since questioned her grade in the subject and said she would have expected her to get at least 2 grades higher but had no control over grades given.

That to get a grade 8 she would have needed to get 90% on a full length GCSE paper to fit pre historic school data.

I have never questioned a thing since my dd started school but I did feel entitled to question this mark, sorry to have upset you,

So have you appealed? What subject was it?

That Parents appealing, Shows Such a sense of entitlement and Lack of support, that makes many teachers want to leave.

Hahaha! That sense of entitlement and lack of support saw my ds correctly awarded the ten marks he ought to have had at the outset because the teacher incorrectly recorded his grade. This pushed him very firmly into the next grade.

Perhaps the sense of entitlement and lack of support works both ways.. What a ridiculous post. People make mistakes.

Yes of course people make mistakes, that’s why in the real exams anyone can ask for a remark. it was obviously right for you. But poi’s questioning grade boundaries, which she doesn’t understand. An easy paper has high boundaries. a hard one has low ones. It’s not an error.

That her actual teacher has since questioned her grade in the subject and said she would have expected her to get at least 2 grades higher but had no control over grades given

but this is exactly the correct procedure - noone was knowingly assessing their own students to grade them, it had to be done entirely objectively

And you can't compare the grade boundaries one year to the grade boundaries another year. They are not related.

The boundaries are set after careful weighing up of the difficulty level of each question - nothing to do with what the grade boundaries were last year.

@Quarks69

Does it occur to you *@questioningit* that your child’s teacher Is a Professional and might actually know what they are doing?

That they spent a significant part of last term creating rigorous assessments, and the corresponding grade boundaries to go with it?

That they have seen hundreds of children and know what grades fit them? You only have seen one, yours.

That your child is not as bright as you hoped?

That Parents appealing, Shows Such a sense of entitlement and Lack of support, that makes many teachers want to leave.

Glad I didn’t get berated for being entitled when appealing my son’s grade, since otherwise he’d still have his 3 instead of a 4.

What a truly nasty post.