Year 11 mocks - What’s the point of having grade boundaries?

[Newhere11]

Wondering if this is normal or common? DC is getting mocks results back and they are told which grade they have achieved and which grade they will get at the end of the term report, which for some subjects isn’t the same. So let’s say you needed 120 marks for a 9 if you get a few marks above this, again as an example 128 you will get an 8 instead (even though you achieved a 9). Apparently to get the 9 in this case the student would have needed to achieve a lot more marks above the 120 to be awarded the 9??? I gave an example with grade 8 and 9 but it can be any grade really! So my question is, what is the point of having grade boundaries if the teachers just give the grade they want anyway?

So your issue is that their end of term report grade might not be as high as their mock grade? Makes perfect sense. I'm s teacher and I've given plenty of kids a grade lower for their end of term report grade than their mock grades, for lotsbof reasons. For some, coursework is low so I know will pull them down. For others, they were VERY lucky in their mock and performed much worse in every other assessment. Plus, as others have said, we're expecting tighter grade boundaries this year than last year, so a 9 in last year's exam papers may well be an 8 this summer! It's foolish to get too hung up on the mock grade- it should be used formatively, not summarily!

A mock mark is based on the paper(s) for the mock. It makes no difference if the student does or does not normally achieve similar results (and how do you define similar anyway, unless they take a lot of practice papers?)

It really sounds like the school has told the students indicative grade boundaries, but decided for this particular paper they are imposing different ones.
As PPs have said, mock grades are irrelevant anyway.

I gave grade 9 as an example only! My point is if the school gives the grade boundaries and says to achieve a 9 you need 120, the student achieves 128, always achieves similar results, surely the student should be given the 9, otherwise there’s no point telling the students the grade boundaries!
But the boundaries change and the questions change.
For example, I teach Romeo and Juliet at GCSE. Some questions are harder than others and the grade boundaries will reflect the performance of the cohort who sat Romeo and Juliet that year. If I give them the 2017 question then that will have a different set out boundaries.
If I give my class last year's mock paper then that will have one set of grade boundaries. If I give them an exam style question then there are no grade boundaries because I've made the mock paper up.

Giving students a rough idea where they might fit in the grades is useful. If a student or parent is seriously spending their time getting worked up about whether they like that the teacher said grade 5 or 6 / but they're always getting a 9, then they child and parent likely have a fixed mindset and aren't likely to be grasping the point of mock exams: to get feedback on what to work on.

@Newhere11 the only people who can give you a detailed explanation are your child's teachers who have written the report and given the grades.

What I suspect is happening is that you are being told two different facts - the first being what score your child got in the mock exam itself, and what the grade boundaries were for that exam specifically. The second thing you're being told is the overall final predicted grade for your child, based on all their previous test scores and any predicted or actual coursework/assessment marks that will be included in the final grade.

So, even if your child got a 9 in the exam, if the predicted grade is an 8, the teacher is expressing their doubt that this performance will translate into the final grade of a 9. So your questions for parents evening to the teacher should be about what your child can do to progress to a secure 9 grade between now and the real exams.

So they got a 9 in their mock but are predicted an 8 ?

This
The grade may include the result from one exam/test/piece of work, PLUS result from another exam/test/piece of work, so that might change the overall grade.

It isn’t about teachers ‘giving the grade they want’. The teachers will be spending a lot of time considering the marks a pupil has received in their assessments and giving grades, according to a process agreed across the gcse teachers in the department and across the school. Marking etc and grade boundaries will have first been applied according to the exam board’s requirements. The teachers are doing their best to give students and parents a fair representation of the grade they have been working at/should attain.

Seems reasonable to me.
They are told the mock grade, which is what they achieved in the mock.
The report will give the 'expected' grade for the final thing, which is based on more than the mocks.
They don't want kids to think 'oh I got a 7 for my mock, job done' when in reality they are usually working at a low 6 but got lucky that the questions in the mock were on their better topics.

And it doesn't much matter anyway, the only grades that matter are those in the envelope in August.

The issue is that it is notoriously difficult to say precisely what grade a student will get. There are loads of reasons for this...
Grade boundaries vary each year.
Grade boundaries are especially movable at the moment due to covid.
How they students perform in mocks isn't necessarily how they perform in the final exam. This is because some students haven't covered all content which they may be better or worse yet, they haven't fully honed their revision and exam technique, some students unexpectedly under or over perform in exams.
All this means that the mock grade isn't always the same as the final grade. As teachers we are doing our best to give an accurate indication but also not to mislead.this can be especially difficult with 8s/9s.

they are told which grade they have achieved and which grade they will get at the end of the term report, which for some subjects isn’t the same.

This is really, really normal though. It is very rare for grades on an end of term report to be based on one piece of evidence, even if it is mocks.

If the student got a 9 on their mocks, but other assessment this term, or their general classwork has been more like a 7, then it makes sense they would be given an 8 on their report.

The school can use whatever policy it likes to give grades on reports, and the policy won't be- "give the grade they got on their most recent test, even if you don't think it's accurate".

I don't understand why this is an issue?

BTW, there are always issues with mocks, including small numbers (usually) of students managing to get hold of the mock paper online (if it's last summer's paper)- or worse, the mark scheme.

Or they might have a friend in the year above who can remember some of the questions that came up.

Or they may have found last year's topic lists online, even if these weren't given for mocks.

Or general discussion of the paper online.

All of these things mean that students can over perform in mocks compared to the real thing.

It's a mock, it doesn't actually matter. If your kid is only a couple of marks above the grade boundary then they're not securely performing at that grade so they don't judge them to be definitely likely to achieve that grade.

Grade boundaries were a bit lower than they might have been last year. That's because the teacher-assessed grades in the previous two years were higher, and rather than go straight back to 2019 levels, the decision was taken to split the difference, and give slightly higher grades overall for that cohort. This year they'll be looking to return to 2019 levels, so students will have to do slightly better than last year's cohort to get any particular grade. If the mock was last year's paper, then that might explain the discrepancy straight away.

The grade on this term's report isn't what really matters - it's what they get in the summer. If someone was borderline on a grade, arguably giving the lower one may be the spur they need to make sure they get it the higher one in the summer. Even better, don't give a single grade.

However I'm not sure this is always right. DD had one science teacher who gave rather more pessimistic predictions than the others; it was DD's lowest prediction for science, and the one she did best in when it came to it. For some, if they took the predictions at face value, it may have affected whether they opted for that subject at A-level.