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.

@scrumdiddly123 - it’s so stressful, isn’t it? His request was sent in on Friday morning, so I guess still a few days to go if it is about a week. 😢 I don’t know what the school will say if the grade isn’t back… 🤦‍♀️

I had dd’s English Lit paper remarked two years ago. She had been predicted 8 but got a 5, had achieved an 8 for English Lang. Her school wouldn’t let her do Lit a-level with a 5 so she went to another sixth form.

It came back an 8! She had already started at the other school as it was mid September by then, they had accepted her on her predicted grade thankfully. She did well this summer and is now going to study English at an RG uni so it was a really important remark for us.

@Foxesandsquirrels ”AQA English in particular, is too unpredictable and inconsistent for me to listen to the teachers opinion.”

Teachers often have a far better understanding of the mark scheme than the average marker. AQA can’t get enough current, well qualified teachers to mark for English Language or Literature as it’s too time consuming and laborious for too little pay. So, long retired teachers who have never taught the spec, trainee teachers, PGCE students etc end up filling the gap. It works out less than minimum wage if you want a marker who genuinely takes time to read the paper in detail. I did it in my second year of teaching and on both maternity leaves and wouldn’t do it again. Even my more recently qualified colleagues (so younger, more time, lower paid) won’t touch marking with a barge pole.

Re. Remarks - please be aware that a grade will only go up if the mark for a question is found to be out of tolerance for the level it has been put in. It’s not as simple as ‘just’ finding one mark. Eg. Level 3 for a Literature question spans 11-15 marks. If your child was awarded 11, their mark would only be adjusted if the remarker would award 16 or more.

I can try the main switchboard tomorrow but suspect it won’t be manned.. It’s annoying as I keep having to ask DC to check their school inbox to see if they have replied directly to them. Generally i’m trying to downplay it to DC as in all probability the grade won’t change and I don’t want to make DC or their siblings feel like the grades aren’t good enough! I would just like to get the wheels in motion so we can put it to bed!

We are fortunate that DC is already accepted in their 6th form but there are definitely friends of DC who are not sorted yet so would like to think school is being responsive to them.

I understand all of this and DDs English teacher is absolutely brilliant, I'm sure her opinion would be correct but the review isn't going to be based on her knowledge or opinion. As you say, the examiner marking it is unlikely to be as up to date as the English teacher so it feels completely pointless to even bother her in this exercise.
It's so different with STEM where the mark scheme is very black and white and not really up for interpretation.

From what another poster said they are trialling AI in English marking this year as well! I am just agog that they are making our DCs memorise poetry but won’t have the decency to have a human cast an eye on their written work.

Exams do create winners and losers! Would much rather there was a coursework/classwork component for English.

From everything I've read this seems the most common situation where grades get corrected- there's a big unexplained difference between lit and lang grade and or between predicted and actual grade. STEM seems to be more about how close to the grade boundaries you are.

Well, the kids in private schools sitting English IGCSE can and do do coursework if their schools choose to. It's worth 40% of their grade. It's grossly unfair that that option is not available to state school kids, a much higher % of especially SEN kids would be passing English if it had coursework.

20 days is the timeframe all boards are expected to work to.

I'm assuming more niche subjects are quicker? We had DDs drama remarked and it's come back in 12 hrs! Gone from a 4 to 6!!

@ByHangrySloth about 6 years ago my eldest got a paper reviewed and LOST 27 marks. It was A-levels. He almost lost his original grade. It has made me very wary of seeking review/remark. Currently I have asked for scripts Eng Lang (as was predicted higher and he thought exam went well) for teacher to look at but even if they encourage a review I will be anxious because of previous experience. Your post suggests either something has changed since my eldest had paper reviewed or something very odd happened. Grateful for any wisdom or insight

It will depend on the size of the panel of reviewers and the number of requests.

It also depends how quickly the centre does their bit.

Ah I see ok. I was assuming the core subjects will be the ones inundated with requests so will take longer. Thanks

It'll be quiet-ish at the moment because schools are closed. By the end of next week, it'll start to ramp up.

I’m currently doing review for one of these subjects for one of these boards (not allowed to name it, so treading carefully).

Nobody is likely to go up by just a mark as (unless there’s been a clerical error) essay subjects look for “a range of reasonable marks”. If it was given 4, and I would have given 5, the mark is still reasonable.

Just this morning I’ve had to drop someone by six marks, just on one question, as the original marker was just too generous. I don’t expect a teacher checked that paper as they would have encouraged the child to keep tight hold of the original grade.

The vast majority are unchanged. But nobody is feeing kind, giving students the benefit of the doubt or finding marks just because they’re near a boundary. It just doesn’t work like that. We’re checking for errors and they are only occasional, but go in both directions.

In my experience, @LividReviewer, some schools either give bad advice ("it's one mark off so get it remarked") or are simply profligate with other people's money.

That's what we've been told. The only reason I've sent all 4 English papers off without the teacher looking at them is because it makes no difference to us if the mark goes down- DD is on a 3 for both. The worst that can happen is it goes down more and is still a fail. The only reason we sent off Drama was because teacher told us to and she was correct.
It's really not a good system if marks can move so much though. A 4 Vs a 6 in drama is the difference between someone continuing it at A Level and then possibly going to uni for it, or just never touching it again. All because of an examiner. Equally there could be a kid sitting in an A Level drama class next week who is totally not suitable for the course as they've got a 6 instead of a 4 because they so happened to get a very generous examiner and will now really struggle at A Level.

@LividReviewer from what I've read, the 1 or 2 marks away seems to apply for STEM subjects though, would you agree with that?

No idea re STEM. Sounds likely as they have right/wrong answers.

Ah ok yh that's what I've been told. DD is actually 13 marks off a pass in language and I wasn't going to send those papers off originally but after everything I read I realised for English it just doesn't matter how close to the boundary she is. If she goes up a level in both papers it may well be 13 marks in total so worth a try. If the worst thing that happens is she ends up with 2s, were no worse off than we are now!

The boundary thing used to be a good benchmark in the days of remarks and grade protection.

But the papers I've asked for are where I have looked at the question level marks and I want to check they're as they should be.

Last year my centre -stupidly- paid for more than 50 borderline papers to be reviewed without anyone looking at them. Not one moved.

I would have looked at them all first.

When did that change? From remark to review? It explains why so many schools still have this policy. One of DDs friends schools pay for any review if the student is FSM and are 1-2 marks off.

Absolutely agree with this.

DD had several subjects with NEAs this year. Out of 6 modules, she scored 100% on 5 and 99% on the 6th... the 99% was for an essay.

Had coursework modules been available for English Lit/Lang, where she could have used spell check and had time to edit for SPaG, I suspect she would have got a very similar score and her overall grades very different from what she has.

Same here. DD has got a distinction, grade 9 and grade 6 in the subjects she took with coursework elements. Low grade 4s or grade 3 in fully examined ones. I just don't feel it should be viewed as the same qualification, it's not like for like at all.

Why did they scrap grade protection if they had it in the past?

Is there any kind of review of mark reviews published that shows which boards and subjects have the biggest issues?

I do feel that a lot of us have a lack of trust in grades these days in a way that wasn't the case in the past.

Would also be interesting to see if there was a difference in grades between papers submitted 'because it's within 2 marks of next boundary', and papers submitted after a teacher has had a good look and thought hmmm.

If some schools are just submitting anything within x marks, that could explain why only 22% change upwards.