GCSE 2022 Results - the moment of reckoning!

[Rollergirl11]

Hello everyone, here is a shiny new thread ready for DC’s results day tomorrow and a much needed hand hold for us nervous parents. 🥴🤪

Tomorrow is the culmination of an incredibly turbulent 2 year journey that our young people have had to navigate. Fraught with ups and downs. They have done us all proud!!

Here is a link to the previous thread: www.mumsnet.com/talk/secondary/4566030-current-year-11-2-more-weeks-of-exams?page=37&reply=119483572

Thanks. Guess that was a lower mark with more wiggle room then. Hoping he gets 1 mark credited to then get a grade 4 and all 10 GCSES passed…..

Our school have said they believed harshly marked in English papers across the board when I asked for a review of English Lit because DS failed it. He was expecting DS to get a 5 in each. He got a 4 and a 3.

Sorry yes I see now. We have the grade but not the mark. I wonder if we will ever get it.

In fact next to where the mark should be for English language there's a D. What does that mean? Hopefully not Dunce 😆

D for Distinction (the speaking part?)

We've put in for a review of Eng Lang. Also AQA board. The school recommended it as we were all surprised at the grade given.

I have twins and they had to really work hard for these GCSEs with me sitting alongside and helping or they would just distract each other so I'm delighted with them passing the lot.
One got 7s 6s and two 5s.
Other got 7s 6s 5s and one 4.

Please can I ask the teachers here is grade 5 a b or a c thanks. Internet search suggested it's both....

The grade 5s were in AQA English which was a surprise as the mocks were higher

I'm totally delighted with their results as this was a tough time. 3 kids, me working from home and homeschooling through the pandemic. The 3 of them had a race to finish the set work and were usually finished it by 10.30am.....🙄

Just a thought but if loads of people put in for reviews of the Eng. Lang. (and potentially get upgrades), won't it then totally skew the bell curve distribution of results?

I'd be interested to hear what the English teachers on this thread think, but personally would have thought that Eng. Lang is a bit of an 'outlier' in that it's possibly more difficult to 'learn' to ace the papers than for some of the other subjects?

For my hard-work averse DD, it didn't surprise me that she got one of her best marks (7) in Eng. Lang. simply because she writes creatively very well (less good at the comprehension and language analysis side), and more importantly could do it 'off the top of her head', i.e. without any revision.

@dee73 A grade 5 is an old high C / low B. It is a 'strong pass'.

There is no direct correlation from letters to numbers but this is the guide. Realistically it only matters what a college, sixth form or employer asks for in the numbers.

Does anyone know the "timetable" for re-grades/looking at scripts etc. The school said that the deadline was 28 September - is that for initial requests to go in? I know that the actual GCSE certificates don't come out until about November, so presumably we have to wait until October some time to hear the whether an appeal has been successful? Thank you.

School know how they expect their pupils to perform in any given subject, based on previous cohort’s results and individual students’ performance in year 10 exams, mocks, class work etc.

It’s not a case of English language being an outlier generally, but seemingly this year’s results being markedly out of step with previous years.
Add into that the reports of chaos among the examiners specifically for English and alarm bells start to go off.

Obviously, there will be some students who just didn’t perform as expected, but there seems to be a general trend in some schools.

Very happy here. DD got:

5 (x2)
6 (x3)
7 (x2)
8 (x2)
and a D2* with the highest marks in her year.

So I’m very pleased for her. She thought she’d fail at least Chem but she got a 5 in that so that’s almost the part she’s happiest about. She always struggled in Maths but pulled a 6 in that so again made up with that.

So it’s not the highest grades she’s happiest about but the ones she achieved despite struggling. I’m proud of her.

It's 20 calendar days from the submission of the request to the completion of the review, for AQA at least. I don't know what the timescale is if you're appealing the review.

@MrsHamlet Thank you. Scripts were requested on Thursday. I got the impression that they go to the school who then look at them to see if they think we have grounds to appeal, and at that point the request is made. (I might have got that wrong - it was quite a stressful few hours).

@Womblesaremyfavouritefood
There are several stages and I'm not clear where you are in the process so forgive me if I'm telling you what you already know.
1 Requesting priority scripts - it's free with aqa this year. Other boards may charge. They come back to the centre electronically and someone on centre who knows what they're doing should look over them before stage 2
2 requesting a review of scripts. Costs £38.35 per paper. There's a 20 calendar day time scale for this. They get reviewed electronically and the clocks starts when the review goes in. The result of the review goes back to the centre.
3 an appeal if there are grounds. That's got to be done within 30 days of the review result and costs £115.
All of these have to be handled by the centre.

@MrsHamlet Thank you soooo much. We're at the start of this (Stage 1) - I thought the scripts went back to the school, but I was so focussed on DC getting back in to do the A levels of their choice, that getting a re-mark was a long way down our list of priorities as it isn't vital to them continuing. We're at the "free" stage, but I'll definitely pay (anything) if we've got grounds to chase this.

We are also considering putting in for a review for AQQ English language.

He got an 8 which is great, but scored 70% when he has been consistently received 85% plus in mocks and assessments. He got 129/130 for English Literature as a comparison.

I requested the scripts on Wednesday afternoon and was emailed them around 9am yesterday morning!

No clerical error, so will get an English teacher to check if it is worth getting it reviewed. The one thing that stood out was the SPAG points on both question 5’s. He has never scored below 14 before, but got an 11 and 10 in the exam, but it is very possibly he has been over scored in the past.

Since there are a number of us querying English, do you think it it’s worth having a separate thread?

@Womblesaremyfavouritefood not a problem. You need someone in the centre to have a proper look at the marks, remembering that if they're "reasonable" they won't be moved, and that marks can - and do - go down as well as up.

@Jaxx I mark both Lang and Lit and the marking criteria are very different. In my experience in centre, some teachers are very generous with their own candidates - they often give the benefit of the doubt that examiners cannot. That's not to say you shouldn't consider a review though.

@MrsHamlet thank you. We have actually questioned if he was being overmarked in the past, so I do accept that as a real possibility. Feel free to message me with a quote if you are willing to have a quicker read through his scripts to help our decision.

It is difficult to know what to do. This was his only 8 which complicates things. We are so proud of his results and all the work he put in to get them, we don’t want to risk him thinking we are disappointed by asking for a review. I don’t think we would have even asked for his scripts if it wasn’t that lots of people are questioning AQA’s English marking.

Dd missed a 7 by one point. Do you think it’s worth asking for it to be checked? She doesn’t need it so not sure if worth bothering but it’s literally one point and it’s media so a large part was her NEA?

school haven’t said anything

Not AQA but Pearson here for English. DS got 5 and 5 although in his two sets of mocks he was getting 7s and 8s, not sure if he just under performed or whether we should be looking at this. He certainly didn’t feel the papers had gone badly. @EngHOD

DS missed a couple of 9s by 1 or 2 points. We are not bothering to remark or whatever it's called now. It won't affect his future in any way so there's no point.

NEA will have been moderated so - unless you're asking for remoderation - there will be no movement there.
OFQUAL have been very clear that reviews shouldn't penalise the candidates who don't go for review - so small mark changes shouldn't happen.
If you can get the papers for free and get someone with experience to look at them (I keep saying that because my HoD is keen to ask for borderline scripts to be reviewed and he's wasting people's money) before making a decision, then it's worth doing that.

English marking this year seems a odd one as so many are talking about grades were so different to predictions.

Same situation here for my ds. He has got a 9 with English Lit and 6 for Language where initially were predicted way around. He has got 8 or 9 for every other subjects. My ds’ hand writing is terrible though, we are guessing the person who marked his paper was put off by his bad hand writing.😅

We are requesting the script, we did the request form yesterday and need to hand in on Tuesday as bank holiday on Monday. We need to pay £18 for this (IGCSE), we will be asking his teacher to have a look the script to see if worth to request a review. He hasn’t been given the raw marks on his results paper so we don’t know how many marks off from a 7.