My daughters gcsc’s

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Hi, my daughter has just received her gcsc’s and is applying to college, however she is 1 mark away from the grades she needs to do the courses she’s wanting, a level criminology, a level sociology and Btech psychology. She was told she needs three 5’s and two 4’s but only received two 5’s but she is 1 mark away from another 5 in her higher biology paper. She has sent it in for a remark but her college has confused us a little bit on weather or not she’ll actually be able to receive a 5. They’ve told us that even if she gets an extra mark they won’t be able to bump her up to a 5 unless the original person who marked her paper has made a genuine mistake throughout the paper.

Can someone with experience please just let me know if we should get our hopes up or expect disappointment, thank you so much! :)

Firstly, it's not a remark; it's an assessment of whether the mark for the GCSE paper was reasonable overall - more like a review.

It does happen that the adding up of marks is wrong, or that a question is missed out by the marker (I have seen examples on MN) so tho that is rare it is possible. School can look at the paper when they call it in tho to assess. But the regrading or not is not the school's decision.

Overall the outcome of a review is usually no change, sorry.

It's tough on your DD that she is effectively only one mark from doing what she wants. I would caution in general tho that GCSE grades of 55444??? (assuming the ???s are 4 or lower) is not a great profile to be starting A levels, unless there was some dramatic reason for the lower grades that would not happen again (an illness during exam season for instance).

A lot of schools IME ask for grade 6 in the chosen A level subjects or if new subjects, a 6 in English for humanities A levels or 6 in science or maths for things like psychology. Are you sure A levels are the right way forward for her? Might she be better taking more coursework-based qualifications?

What is her plan if she doesn't gain the 5?

Ah @TurtleGemSaturn0 good intel. I didn’t realise there was no A level criminology. Less of an issue then agree.

OP if there us any subjectivity, providing original marker is within mark scheme then even if reviewer would give it an extra mark the original one would still stand.

Biology isn't very subjective though so if reviewer disagrees then very likely it will be outside mark scheme. (At least that is my understanding.)

B

This is true @TurtleGemSaturn0 , yet for some reason her college told her that when she does criminology with then it is “basically an a level” and in turn, she needs the grades for an a level; not sure what thats about🤦🏽‍♀️