Lemon curd, I’m not quite clear from what you say about if your child’s grade increased.
You mention an increase in grade on one paper, but there is no grade for an individual paper…just a grade based on the totals of all the papers. If one paper rose but others dropped, did the total mark change or change enough to get a grade increase, or was it still within the original grade?
Generally people put in for one paper at a time. They go for the one with most scope or liklihood to increase. The reason is that as above, papers can move in different directions. And negate the benefit of one paper rising, or if all dropping , can result in a grade drop too.
Lots of people who are very close to a grade boundary will work through the 3 papers one by one. To do this, especially if you want scripts first, you need to get going early in order to get all requests in before the deadline..which has now passed.
I’ve known people who would have gone up a grade if they just got one paper back, but because they got 2 and one dropped, they were in the same position. Of course, if they had just gone for one, it might well have been the one that dropped. Although they would have remained within the same grade, that might have put them off going for the 2nd one, so they might never have known that paper would increase.
There’s definitely an element here of some parents know the system better and some schools are better at making things clear about how it all works. Some schools will tell students the results for each paper and the grade boundaries. In other places, students know they can ask for the breakdown of papers and boundaries, but it’s up to them whether they do or not, or are proactive to look at the websites for breakdowns. In other places, schools tell students pretty much nothing behind their grade and total mark.
And then some student bodies have families that will be willing to spend several hundred pounds getting papers reviewed. The norm will be to get anything that is anomalous or close to a boundary reviewed. The cost isn’t a big deal for these families and with an understanding that if they are close to the top of a grade, dropping so much that the grade goes down, means they are willing to spend and take the small risk. In these schools, the final results can be quite significantly higher than the provisional ones, because so many have gone for reviews…even when the majority of reviews don’t see a change.
But in other schools, tiny numbers have a review. Knowledge of the system might be low amongst the parent body, or ability to risk £40 per paper just not possible, or quite often people are simply satisfied with the grade that’s been achieved and take the attitude that the grade is a pass and good enough to move into the next stage, so it doesn’t matter if it’s a 5/6 or a 7/8 type thing. It’s a different to getting the highest possible grade and to whether that matters.
Ultimately though, knowledge and availability of cash means the more affluent get more reviews and see more grade changes and the inequalities that already exist in educational outcomes become greater. The system might have been changed to Review rather than Remark to try to discourage those with cash from being able to benefit from a 2nd examiner who might be a bit more generous, because now if the 2nd examiner thinks the original banding was right for individual questions, there won’t be any change, but still there is significant disparity simply in which background students come from who put in for remarks. It’s wrong.
And I don’t care how much people say that a small proportion of reviews result in mark or grade changes. No figures are actually produced to show exact numbers of reviews that lead to a mark change or grade change. I can see in my own school every year there are exams, and where lots do put in for reviews, that whilst some never change, sizeable proportions do change, and every year at least one subject at GCSE or A Level ends up with large numbers being changed due to rogue marking. It hugely reduces my confidence in the system. And that’s so discouraging given it’s the system we have and have to work within and rely on and kids rely on for grades to open doors to their futures. Comes down to insufficient resources and funding as usual.