Re-marks, worth it?

[Orangesandlemons77]

A teacher emailed to tell me DS was one point off a 6 in a subject (GCSEs) and looking at his scores he is also one point off an 8 in another. He is taking the latter subject for A level but not the other.

She asked if we wanted a re-mark of the 6? Is it worth getting the two subjects re-marked? It costs about £45 and no guarantee of a change in grade.

DS says he is happy with the grades as they are as he has got in for 6th form etc, but I wondered if it would make any difference to for example UCAS points for university? I expect they would be mainly bothered about the A level grades though.

Any advice welcome. And best of luck to anyone getting their exam results today or dealing with re-marks / resits etc.

Just noticed I missed something, it says if the grade is changed they refund you the money.

Yes - but I wouldn't ask for a review until someone who knows what they're doing has looked at the papers. Some people are always going to be on the cusp of a grade.

No. DD is on FSM and I've had to pay.

@WombatChocolate I do find it interesting how the results are presented look different in all schools. I think for the vast majority though, the number of marks they got is next to the grade so most do know their marks. I don't think people checked grade boundaries until that blew up on sites like tiktok etc.

Yes, and across A-level and GCSE. A more detailed breakdown of the stats is here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/reviews-of-marking-and-moderation-for-gcse-as-and-a-level-summer-2024-exam-series/reviews-of-marking-and-moderation-for-gcse-as-and-a-level-summer-2024-exam-series

I find this vindicating. Thank you.

Having seen my child's mismarked maths paper this all sits very uncomfortably alongside the hard cut-offs sixth forms have for A level entry.

Mismarked questions can be changed at review even if they are small mark changes

I think we're going to leave it. 4/5 chance it wouldn't change anyway, and cost reasons too.

GCSEs are looked at for some courses at some universities.

Maths at Bristol for example - your best 8 GCSEs count 20% towards the overall score that they give to each application. I can’t quite remember how the rest is made up, but I remember that it part as it was different to some other maths courses that DS had looked at.

Yes, that’s right.If someone at school has reviewed the script and thinks there’s a good chance of a remark getting the extra mark and changing the grade I would go for it.

Sure. If the student has a skilled enough parent or (strong preference) a teacher prepared to look at the paper, AND a parent or school prepared to risk £45 on the remark, AND your grade is enough of an anomaly that anyone checks it in the first place. Plenty of kids won't have all the stars align like that. Their wrong marks will just stay wrong.

She's just correcting something someone said earlier.

That's really helpful to know. Thank you!

I don't think my colleagues are unusual in that we will - by the end of the first week back - have looked at the data and picked up any anomalies. I've emailed all of the students whose papers I want to look at.

And I've also dealt with a couple of other queries - if parents or pupils have concerns, they should ask for support.

Your students are very lucky. We have to pay £10 for the teacher to look at any papers. My DDs English teacher called me to say DDs scores look strange but she can't look at the paper unless I go through the process which is £10. This is a state school. They also charge £10 admin fee on top of the exam board review fee.

They are entitled to charge an admin fee - but I think it's unreasonable of them to do so. I bet the teacher who'll be doing the work won't see it!
My school is a state school too.

I suspect it's an attempt to try to mitigate against huge demand and added workload for teachers. Which is fair in some respects.

I think that's likely the reason as this is a very high achieving school and lots of people are paying for reviews hoping to get grade 8s or 9s. We just want a pass and DD is on FSM so this is not money we have laying around

That's poor of them. I'm sorry.

My son was 2 marks off of the next grade up in two of his A levels last year. I paid for a review of marking of four papers but nothing changed.

DD was one mark off a 6 in English GCSE last year - I was just so happy she had passed I didn't want to risk a review in case it went down to a 3!

Her friend was also one mark off a 6 and she did get the grade up to a 7 on review but for her it was the difference between staying on at 6th form at her grammar or moving to a comp.

Sometimes school pays if it's their suggestion, as they think a positive change likely (especially if this helps their measures eg. 9-7 inc E and M, as many results in most subjects won't change much for anyone if kids are already accepted to courses).

Teachers and heads of dept will read and reflect on the specific scripts they want to anyway without speaking to pupils of their parents, as part of their own results analysis.

But it's interesting that so many think the obvious answer is to pay nothing for a script and 'get' someone qualified to give their opinion for free and I wonder if those are the same people who think teachers don't have extra expectations upon their unpaid time than other professions.

GCSEs are the only actual grades you have in the bag when doing UCAS (as opposed to projected A level grades). So I would do the ones likely to be pertinent to his future study perhaps.

Teachers and heads of dept will read and reflect on the specific scripts they want to anyway without speaking to pupils of their parents, as part of their own results analysis.

Not any more: JCQ regs require us to have the permission of the candidate to see the script.

I'm so sorry you're in that situation. FWIW it was not an option for us either but we found it valuable to look at the script ourselves, with the mark scheme, even though we are not experts. It may get you nowhere, but you never know. Or does your school charge for the student to get a copy of their own script too?

I think your students are very lucky to have a teacher who gives up the second half of the summer holiday to do this. Whilst I know of lots of teachers who analyse the results of their classes or departments, I know far fewer who contact students or parents to suggest the script is requested so it can be looked at by them.

One of my DCs collected results yesterday. There was nothing with the results that gave any idea of what students should do if they were disappointed or mystified by their grades, if they'd missed college offers or if they'd decided they wanted to stay at the school for sixth form. There was also no information about how to request access to scripts, marking reviews etc. There were upset students there yesterday who couldn't find the teachers they wanted to talk to (they'd not really realised most teachers wouldn't be in for results day) and were unable to work out what to do about it.

That's down to my DC's school for not providing clear information about processes but I do think Ofqual needs to set up a system whereby there is equality of access to accessing exam scripts. If candidates could log in and download their own scripts it would lessen the teacher workload, potentially reduce some of the panic and upset experienced by students and free up the time of EOs who currently have to download papers but could instead focus on supporting marking review applications and exam queries.

My own DC emailed the EO yesterday to request access to a couple of their papers but they know about the process because of older siblings. Their email hasn't been acknowledged, even by an autoreply. It isn't desperate for them because they don't have a college place needing a missed grade but for another student it may be a different story.

Yes this is what they are asking for- the form for this