Eng GCSE grade oddities

[Sausagesandpeas]

DD consistently pulled 9s in her English Language mocks but has come out with a 6 in her results yesterday. She said she’d thought the exams went well. I am requesting copies of the papers to see if there is anything glaringly odd going in. Is it worth asking for a review? It just seems so odd.
Didn't get chance to talk to school staff in the bedlam yesterday.
Thanks

It sounds like the marking is very rigorous and they all should be marked accurately against each other.
Some mentioned the online you tube videos and similar. There are also so many videos saying how they can get you to grade 9. Do we think alor of kids taking them as gospel and these videos are doing more harm than good? They actually give out quotes that fit every question in Macbeth for example.

The marking does sound rigorous and makes me think perhaps DDs 6 (in lit not Lang) was about right. She was adamant about not watching any YouTube videos. She thought if you knew the texts really well, liked them, thought about them and understood the mark scheme and how to pace during the actual exams, she'd be fine as she had been in the mocks. Her friend, who did not read the texts, just relied on YouTube, got 5s in mocks, came out with an 8. I'm sounding like sour grapes and I definitely don't mean to. DD is totally at peace with the 6. It's a perfectly good grade, and whilst an all-rounder, the English lit paper 2 this year was the only exam that DD did come home from saying - yikes! It was My last Duchess 😂 (but she was still confident she'd secured at least a 7)

Marking can be rigorous, but ultimately it's so subjective. I am an English Lit examiner, although not for AQA and I know my exam board has in person training and standardising whereas other boards are online and done!

I feel very frustrated this year.

In the examiners report AQA specifically mention that these videos are not always helping students and that knowledge of, and engagement with, the texts studied is always best.
Speaking as an examiner for Lit, seeing the same quotes again and again every year, regardless of the focus of the question, is concerning.

Speaking as an examiner for Lit, seeing the same quotes again and again every year, regardless of the focus of the question, is concerning.

Exactly this. And the rote learned pieces for the writing sections on Lang.

We got the scripts back from Language and DD lost over 50% on the transactional writing (write a magazine). I had during revision suggested she writes 'sample' speeches etc to rote learn (as I'd heard some of her friends who are not strong in English do this/ or have parents do this). But did she listen? No!

She virtually scored full marks in the Reading and Passage to India (this was iGCSE Edexcel) but lost 10 marks (10 out of 22) in the compare Text 1 and 2, even though she wrote a fair bit (maybe 2.5 pages is not enough), did the comparisons and supported with brief quotes.

In the transactional writing (45 marker) she lost around 20 marks. It was to write a magazine article about a place or places which were memorable and explaining why. I think she had done most of this but had failed to set it out with a title and her name at the top etc, or an introduction (put her name at the end), so maybe that's why she lost 50% and perhaps she wrote it too much like an essay using 'I/we' i.e. first person. Her spelling, vocabulary were 100% I thought, she has always been great at grammar/spelling.

So 75% in Section A and around 55% in Section B. Section B, I think is the one where you can create templates and rote learn a bit more. Frustrating!

In the last couple of years she's achieved in the high 80s/low 90s for her English Language, so just goes to show, nothing is certain.

My DS has failed English Language with a 3 and got a 5 for English Lit. Not AQA but EDEXL/GC. The year before his projected grades were 9s for both subjects. He did struggle significantly once the second year of GCSEs began, both with his mental health and with barely controlled inattentive ADHD (for which we are on the assessment pathway, 3 years in and still no resolution). English was always his best subject throughout school though and he is extremely articulate. But he is also a perfectionist and constantly goes for quality over quantity and never writes enough. But still, I find it hard to believe that he didn't even scrape a pass. His Eng Lit pass should be enough for him to take up his college place (he passed Maths and all his other subjects apart from RE. And earned the highest grade for music) but after everything I'm reading on here and elsewhere I think I will ask for the papers and then consider challenging the result. Can I contact the school next week, does anyone know? Or will I need to wait until the new term begins? He doesn't seem too bothered as getting into college and getting the highest grade in music was his goal but I'm a bit upset about it to be honest. Also with a 3 there's literally nothing to lose by challenging it!

You can contact the exams office now. They might not be working all week next week but at least you've got the ball rolling

@GreyHeron we are in the same situation, My DS got a 3 for Eng Lang and a 5 for Lit but has his place at 6th form. The problem is they will have to retake English Language as you need it for EVERYTHING....

No, a pass in English (lit OR lang) is fine.

@GreyHeron my autistic DS took Eng Lang GCSE 5 times and never passed. Like your son, he writes extremely articulately but struggles to write "off the cuff" on subjects of no interest to himself, so paper 2 was always a complete disaster. Even with extra time he never wrote more than a paragraph for his story (a beautiful constructed and expressed paragraph...but no time for development of ideas).

He eventually passed functional skills level 2 which means we could move on and put the whole nightmare behind us. I truly believe Eng Lang is a terrible paper for many ND students.

@IndiganDop maybe for 6th form entry but not for jobs and university entrance.

Another one here with an unexpected AQA English language result of 6. DS got a 9 for English literature then 8s for all the others. He was predicted 8s for both English language and literature and has always scored well.
He thought paper 1 hadn’t gone that well but scored a 7 for that and he was pleased with paper 2 straight after the exam. This is the one he scored much worse on.
I have got copies of both papers and his teacher has reviewed them. Her opinion is paper 1 was marked ‘fairly’ but paper 2 was marked ‘quite harshly’
He is on the lower end of the grade boundary so we are not risking a marking review in case the grade goes down. If the mark was only 1 or 2 off a 7 I would definitely get a marking review (of paper 2)based on what his teacher has said.
His A level choices are maths/science so a 6 in English won’t affect him luckily but it’s interesting to see how many have been affected by a lower than expected English mark

English Lang is skills based -practise, practise, practise. Those who didn’t get a lot of extended writing practice is 8,9 and 10 due to lockdown have found it hard to do well on the writing (in my experience of marking).

Those who ‘rote learned’ may have just written more - Q5 on both papers needs to be sustained and developed for the higher bands.

It really shouldn’t be subjective - the mark schemes /bands are really prescriptive. And the random seeding built in should ensure consistency.

The teacher who says the question has been ‘marked harshly’ is really just saying the marking does fit into the band but another examiner may have given it a few more marks. They are not saying the marking is wrong.

I’m not saying that everything is perfect but it is much more likely that on the day the candidate didn’t do as well, the question didn’t suit them and other students did better which moved them down the rankings.

When marking mocks, assignments teachers tend to be far more generous than an anonymous examiner who doesn’t know the student.

Do you mean at the school @MrsHamlet ? Sorry, this is all new to me! It's a tiny school so don't think they have a specific exams office, just the general office. I guess I can email them now anyway and they'll see it as soon as there's someone there.

@GreyHeron yes. Only the school can deal with the exam boards.

@IndiganDop Your DS sounds very similar to mine - I very much hope we don't have to take a similar route, it sounds like you've both had a very challenging time. It is confusing - the number of people who've said to me over the past couple of years that GCSE results really don't matter in the long term as long as DS can get onto his chosen college course yet here people are saying that it can matter a great deal in terms of university and job prospects. Are they really interested in GCSE results? Or is it critical because it's English, even though he passed the other English GCSE? Getting more worried now! College will facilitate maths and English GCSE retakes alongside the course but not sure they'll do this if it isn't strictly necessary.

@MrsHamlet Thank you, I'll get that email sent today.

Placemarking as DS was predicted 9 and was awarded a 6. The school is looking into it.

Just coming back to this thread to see whether anyone has had teacher comments or thought further about review? DD got 8/9 through all the mocks but ended up with a 5 in AQA English lit. The head of English at her school has just got back to us to say that she's reviewed the papers and cannot understand the low marks that have been given. She says she rarely advises students to review but thinks this marking is wrong (though of course can't be sure whether the review will find that). Given those comments I think we will send it in to review, though I feel quite sick at the thought it might go the other way.

Which paper, @WaitingforThursday ?

Not sure! She looked at both so we've asked for clarity on that.

Can I ask whether handwriting affects marking in your experience MrsHamlet? There were some sections where it was trickier to read and there simply aren't any comments on those (then a low mark). It's legible but takes some work at points. I am wondering whether the marker just skimmed those parts...

It shouldn't but it could.

We're not expected to write huge amounts though - I actually got told this year that I was annotating too much!!!