Does this predicted grade sound right to you?

[Maglin]

The subject is Sports Science. So the lowest dd has been given for any work this year (12) is a B. She normally gets Bs, As and she's had a couple of A stars. She recently had end of year exams - three sports science papers and they used the 2019 boundaries to mark them. She got B (three marks off an A), A, A. She's been predicted a B. She's not happy! I'm not going to say/do anything but I wonder why? Surely she must be on for an A?!

If it’s anything like the schools my kids are/ were in. It’s to kick them into working harder!
A tactic which my kids hated/ hate

But this is what they are going to predict for her uni application so she won't get offers from the ones who want As.

Yep, that’s what my kids school did!

Seems a little harsh. If I were your your dd I would ask the teacher to explain why the predicted grade is B, not A.

Personally, I would predict an A in that circumstance, but maybe they have experience of students dropping a grade in Y13? If overall, her most common grade is a B, that may also influence her teacher.

I'd suggest she speaks to her teacher and asks if there's anything she can do (like a resit paper) to bring up her grade.

What are her predicted grades for her other subjects?

I mean, it's not worth doing it to encourage her to work hard for an A if she's not going to get offers from unis who want As? Or am I missing something?!

I don’t know. I truly don’t understand it!
I moved my girls, but my boy has stayed, I can see him out performing his predictions, needing to take a year out and reapplying. It is what it is!!

I agree it seems odd, but I would expect them to have another chance to improve PGs?

DS2 was predicted a really low grade for PE in June of year 12 (?D I think) - teacher told me it was bc he was able but not doing the work (not saying this is your DD btw) but it urged him on and in the end they predicted an A for him.

I might ask her to raise it and see if it can be altered in sept/Oct

Thanks - I thought this was it! Hopefully she'll have a chance to improve it.

It might not be the final predicted grade OP.

We’ve just graded our students provisionally and then will give them a final UCAS grade in September after they have taken another practise assessment. We’ve been careful not to over-predict now, but we expect to raise a few predictions if the students perform better in September.

Check with the school.

see, that’s what schools do!! It’s rubbish!!!

this sounds like the school is being overly cautious but there might be circumstances like some of the work contributing to the prediction is high-scoring coursework, and “banked” marks, but the teachers know her unaided writing is less secure, and a big chunk of what’s left are timed essay exams…
The UCAS grade is what you want to concern yourself with, OP. Schools will be thinking about these now, so it might be worth an email to the head of PE: “In order to gauge which post-18 providers to apply to, could you let me know what DD’s UCAS prediction will be?”
then query the fuck out of it!

That is shameful. Poor kids.

OK well apparently dd queried it with him and he said he's predicted everyone a B 🤔

She sits between 2 other girls. One got As and A stars in the exams and has also been predicted a B and the other one got Cs and Bs - guess what? A B.

The grade she's given now might not be the grade given on her UCAS. UCAS unless Oxbridge won't usually go off until the beginning of October. Plenty of time for your DD to Impress her teacher with her work. Also if she gets higher grades than predicted she can go through clearing.

I doubt it's the one used for UCAS as they aren't due yet. Ask the school and find out.

It might be that staff are held accountable for the predictions so don't over predict, it might be that based on previous performance of students with similar profiles they've all gone on to get a B. You don't know unless you ask.

There won't be any sports science degrees at high ranking unis left in clearing. It's extremely popular. She's predicted AA in her other two and was aiming for Bath or Loughborough.

*OK well apparently dd queried it with him and he said he's predicted everyone a B 🤔

She sits between 2 other girls. One got As and A stars in the exams and has also been predicted a B and the other one got Cs and Bs - guess what? A B.*

Can you raise it with the head teacher? This sounds just wrong, and likely (as you say) to mess up your DC's applications 😳

I think you need to ask to speak to someone to find out more. It may be that this is not the final prediction for UCAS, but even so, if you are looking at which universities to apply for, you need to have a good idea of whether an A is likely/possible/an outside chance.

Normally, schools are a little more generous with predicted grades for UCAS than they might be if they were just asked "what is this student most likely to get?", because you don't want someone with a 49% chance of an A not getting an offer because their predicted grade is B. (This caused problems with the teacher assessed grades in 2020, as some parents assumed that the TAG would be the same as the UCAS predicted grade.)

Is the teacher relatively inexperienced?

DD had a GCSE teacher who didn't predict any 9s, at any point. Year 10, that's fair enough, but these were kids who were applying for a very competitive sixth form. I fear that some kids may have decided against their subject for A-level because it was the only science in which they weren't predicted a 9. I don't know whether he'd considered the knock-on effects of the prediction, and I'm actually a little cross that the head of science didn't query the lack of predicted 9s.

She recently had end of year exams - three sports science papers and they used the 2019 boundaries to mark them. She got B (three marks off an A), A, A. She's been predicted a B. She's not happy! I'm not going to say/do anything but I wonder why? Surely she must be on for an A?!
Did they sit the 2019 paper and use the 2019 boundaries?
Or have they sat a different paper / a school created mock exam and used the 2019 boundaries?
On the A papers, was she securely an A or just tipped in?

The answers to those questions might affect my decision because you can't take boundaries from one year and accurately apply them to another paper that's of different difficulty (which is why grade boundaries change each year).
For the end of Y12 reports I'd be conservative with the evidence in front of me. I'd be more than happy to talk to students and parents about why to put them at ease and give them some direction on tipping into the A too.

Personally in your DC's situation I'd predict her an A for UCAS if she was hard working and that was her end of Y12 exams.

He has emailed dd today to say he is going to set her another test and if she gets an A in it he'll predict an A. So she's now quite anxious but determined!