GCSE English Lit and Language review of marking

[SomersetBrie]

There is lots of chat about review of marking on the GCSEs threads but I am interested specifically in anyone who is reviewing English (Lang or Lit) and whether the review provides an increase in grade.
DS, predicted a 7, got a 6 in both. He is not very close to the grade boundary (4 marks away) but the difference in marks between Paper 1 and Paper 2 have encouraged me to request access to the papers and see if it's worth a review.

Is anyone else asking for a review? I am curious to know how many marks people go up/down and if it results in a change of grade for many people.
(DS does not need a 7 but he was expecting a 7 out of 1 or other at least.)
This is AQA.

That's incredible! Was it 2 papers that were remarked? So 3 and 10 marks found across 2 papers?

Yes - he thought at least a mark or two in each of the language papers (we’re doing 1 at a time in case 1 goes up and 1 down). He was less sure about literature but said ‘maybe’ about the unseen poetry…

You must be so happy! 🥰 what exam board was that?

Dc English lit teacher looked at the scripts. She felt the examiners had been quite generous on one paper but not the other so we just asked for a review of that paper. I think dc friend had two papers looked at if I remember correctly.

I think if your dc is close to the boundary then it’s worth paying for a review if the teacher recommends it.

I think it’s far more common to get extra marks for English than the stem subjects.

It was Pearson Edexcel.

Edexcel is the only one that allows priority reviews for GCSEs- that what you guys paid for?

Have requested that we get access to the papers for lit and Langbut radio silence from the school, don’t know if they have done anything about it yet. Still don’t know DCs actual score for Lang.

Are you not worried about the grade going down? My dd got a 5 in lit, but a high 6 in one paper and a 3 in the other. We wondered about reviewing the paper that got a 3, but worried about dropping down to a 4 overall.

Slightly!
I wasn't going to have it reviewed at all when I saw the overall mark and how close it was to the lower boundary.

But when I got the marks for the individual papers, it just doesn't make sense. If she'd got the same percentage on each paper, she would have just missed the 6, and that feels right for how she felt after the exams and what we would all have expected.

I have asked school to look at the papers first and if they think she just really messed up then we won't send that one. I will be a bit anxious, but only 0.1% of papers go down.

If the marks in each paper were the same, I wouldn't be doing it, and would also be more anxious - but it's the difference between the two that doesn't add up.

I've read so much a lot reviews now I feel like it's coming out my ears but everything I've read it seems the successful ones are almost always the ones where marking is very different paper to paper. That's a big discrepancy.

DC one mark off a 7. Predicted an 8 but felt he had done v badly so was actually preparing for the worst. Eng lang is very strange, he has had a 9,7 and 6 over mocks and exam, sadly the wrong way round.

School informed me going for a review

They shouldn't be going to review without the permission of the candidate.

Ask someone who knows what they're doing to look at the paper first.

Same for us. 9 language and 1 mark off a 7 for lit and taking lit for A level. All 7s to 9s, except for this 1grade 6, best subject is her worst score. She was practicing essays and getting 28. One has been marked as 13 which she was horrified by. Maybe she just cpmpletely misinterpreted the question.
English teacher thinks it is harsh marking.

He signed a form when collecting results. I think they all did. School then informed me.

Sorry my message wasn’t clear. Whole post is about Eng lang, not lit. Good luck to your DC. At least presumably not limiting A level choice (I know from other subjects with my DC this is not necc making them feel better right now)

Sounds like you’ll be fine. Our situation is a bit different in that Dd2 has never passed lit before, so the 5 is a great mark. I suspect the 3 on paper one was correct and she just got very lucky with the poetry questions on paper 2.

My son was 1 mark off a 7 in English Lit (but got an 8 in Language which is is weaker subject of the two!). We requested the scripts from school and it turns out that paper 1 was scanned in incorrectly (he uses a laptop so his answers aren't in the answer booklet so it's a sightly different process). It made it really hard to follow as the pages are completely in reverse, ie page 8 first, page 1 last.

I can only imagine how annoying it must have been for the examiner - I found it really hard to read and I wasn't marking hundreds of them! He got a much higher mark in paper 2, which was scanned correctly.

Currently awaiting his teacher's opinion on putting in for a review, but I can't help but feel it has put him at a disadvantage (even subconsciously), so I think we will be putting in for a review regardless. It's so frustrating as he's had to overcome so much already (hence the laptop) and this has just added to that when it was meant to level the playing field for him.

On the whole DD is extremely good at self-reporting on exams, and is also entirely unbothered by admitting when she's massively messed up.

She's never ever had below a high 4 on an English lang paper, so a low 3 on her favourite is weird.

I think I'm also factoring in that her dyslexia means the examiners are dealing with phonetic spelling, creative punctuation and odd syntax but content that should be around a 7 in level (she generally loses a LOT of SPaG marks). So lots of room for marking to go in different directions.

I think that is the thing though - whether you know the 3 is right and the high 6 an outlier, or the high 6 is right and the 3 is the outlier.

Yh I guess that's the thing, it's hard to know what to do in those situations. I have a feeling my DDs was marked incorrectly. She has the exact same number of marks for both papers, despite missing a whole section in one of the papers, so would've lost nearly 30 marks just by doing that. I can't see how she managed to get the exact same number of marks on both in that situation.

I'm an exams officer. A review of marking just looks as the original marking to check its "reasonable" - they don't remark papers looking for extra marks.
AQA English lang/lit papers rarely increase by 1 or 2 marks in my experience - we put in loads each year and the vast majority come back the same. Any marks that go up usually increase by at least 3 marks.

DS is WJEC too.

is 1 mark off a 9 in language

Was predicted a 9 in literature . Got a 9 in paper one but low 7 in paper 2 which was his best paper. Got an 8 overall

we’re happy with his grades so don’t wanr to risk going down.

Do you think I shouldn’t hold out too much hope then? 😢

That’s really interesting - DD also on a laptop, so wonder if it’s something similar.

The kids I know personally whose marks went up last year it was generally quite large numbers and there was something off. None of them were 1 mark off and looking for an extra to get to next grade. It was students who were on track for an 8 and got a low 6, or a 5. All went up at least 1 grade and some 2. Mainly AQA but some Edexcel.

@ByHangrySloth is it the parents paying or the school?

When you say you put in loads is it normally because people are very near a higher grade or where they were predicted a better grade than they got? Do teachers at the school look at them first to advise whether to bother with a review or not? I guess the biggest fear is the Russian roulette element - have you received any that went down?