I don't really get the new GCSE grading....

[AuntieMatters]

Everyone keeps saying that 7 is an A and 8 an A star and 9 A double star?

But then there is this other narrative sometimes, in posts on here and conversations elsewhere, that treats anything less than a 7 like it would be a really poor grade....

Certainly for my son's chosen subjects at 6th form he needs " at least a 7" and he and his teachers feel he should aim for 9s across the board

I don't mind him having high aspirations but I just feel like there's mixed messaging about what the grades really mean?

Our college wants people to have an average grade of >5.5. In science you need a 6 in the subject you are studying, maths requires a 7 and FM requires an 8 (plus review by the maths dept).

It's a very good college (has a recent outstanding OFSTED) and their progression results are well above average. To give an example, a friend of DD who moved to this country in Y9 (from an English speaking country) was put in the bottom set at secondary school and got 5s and 6s in most of he GCSEs. She's doing one A level and a BTEC and is going to get top grades in them both and is off to University in Sept to study nursing with the equivalent of 3Astars. She was failed by her secondary school but the college has turned her options around. My own DD now has a medicine offer despite having an average grade of 7 (with a fair sprinkling of 6s) because she's now predicted AsAsA after doing really well in Y12. The 6th forms that are highly selective are hiding their inadequate teaching.

I can understand A levels being an issue since you can only choose 3 or 4, but can't students basically take all the GCSEs they want (up to like 11 which is more than enough)? How would you have chosen your GCSEs differently?

It's bad if students are forced to choose their GCSEs in y9 with no option to make changes in y10, but I don't see the harm in starting the core/mandatory GCSEs early (maths, sciences, English) since all students would need to take those anyway.

How many you can take depends on the school mostly, as you can generally only take as many as they can timetable for you. And lots of them are compulsory - maths, eng lang, eng lit, three sciences (or 2 if combined) are all compulsory. That’s 6 compulsory ones. At a school where you can take 10, that leaves 4 option slots for any of:

Art, food, DT, computer studies, drama, any of the languages, geography, history, RE, business studies, PE, etc.

And sometimes it’s only 3 option slots. And sometimes RE is compulsory too.

When kids are taking 11, that’s not often because they can have 5 or 6 of these options - it’s because they’re doing extra maths ones eg statistics, further maths.

The most common number of subjects is 8 or 9

At my school we did 9 GCSEs. We had to do Double balanced science, two English subjects, Maths, a language, a humanities and an art subject plus one other. If I could have, I would have done triple science (so Biology, Chemistry, Physics) but that wasn’t an option at my school.

For my art subject, I did Graphic Communications (basically technical drawing) because we’d done a fun project in year 9 … but it was a lot of coursework, I was useless at it (I couldn’t keep my paper clean) and I got a D. It didn’t help that we had four different teachers in two years and each time kept going back to the stuff we’d been taught in the beginning. I probably should have done art but I’d become convinced that I wasn’t very good at it.

For my humanities subject, I did Geography (which was great - the teacher was terrifying but excellent) and the extra subject I did History (had two teachers in the two years, overall teaching was patchy).

It depends. In MFL if you got a 5 at GCSE you will struggle with the jump to ALevel. Generally, that means that by the end of your 2 year course, you might get a D grade. You‘ll have found the A level grammar hard, the texts you read will be hard - it‘ll all be hard for students who eventually get a grade B/A too, but it‘ll be that much harder if you didn’t master the requirements of GCSE languages (if you got a 5 at GCSE you didn’t master the subject - you’ve got by and done a decent, average job). There will be exceptions: if you are a steady, hard worker and catch up over the summer, if you’re really resilient, if you go above and beyond, if you suddenly ‚get it’, if you weren’t far off the next grade at GCSE, etc. It may be different for other subjects. However, I‘ve worked at a few schools and generally all expect higher than a 5 for the subject you want to study.

I don't think the increase in high grades is necessarily about grade inflation. I think a lot of teaching is a lot better than it was when I was at school.

Nearly all my classes up to the equivalent of year 9 were over 30, as were some of my O'level classes. For a year at primary and two at middle school, we had a lot of subjects being merged into "project" work, which replaced a number of subjects, including history and geography, but others as well, and then we had little structured teaching in those. I don't remember much guidance or feedback. We had more formal, structured teaching in RE, and I wasn't at a church school!

In comparison, GCSE papers now have a more complicated structure, with questions of different lengths and complexity, and students are taught what to expect.

The fact that everybody keeps converting them shows how problematic they are.

If A levels had also switched to a number grade that might help, but it might just irritate and confuse people more.

They should have just added a double A star grade.

I think people convert them until they have direct experience of going through them (or their child going through them). I did until mine got to GCSE and I’m fine with it now.

I agree @Talipesmum
Things changed between my first 2 DC and I was converting my 2nd's results in my head. But by the time it came to my youngest I didn't need to because I understood the new system. Now when we get job applications at work I have colleagues who complain that they don't understand these new fangled results but that's only because it is different to what they did themselves and their children are either old enough to have been through the old system or too young for secondary school yet. Those of us who have had children sit GCSEs in recent years have no problem understanding the results, and they're not that new now. In time nobody will convert to the old grades, just as nobody converts money back to pounds, shillings and pence now and relatively few people have to be reminded that year 10 means fourth form.

I convert as in Wales where they kept letters for GCSE - as I think N.I. board did as well so I think kids there sit mix of N.I letters and English board numbers.

Plus you then often swap to A-levels where it's letters again.

We have friends and family in teenage years in England who get numbers for their GCSE.

But A levels still follow the letter grade system. I think it would be far simpler to have switched both at the same time or just switch back.

They're different qualifications though. What about SATs, BTECs, degrees and so on - they all have different grading systems and people don't seem to have any difficulty understanding or accepting that?

Yes this makes it tricky as Wales still has A B C.

BTECs are definitely converted to A level equivalent in informal discussions. But that's fine. Scottish qualifications are different to the English system.as well, Nat 5s, Highers and Advanced Highers are all A to D.

Maybe I'm wrong but I always thought Scottish exams differences are more widely know and obvious with different exam names.

I know educational establishment like Univerities have equivalence qualifcation tables for all over the world but I worry more about interviews as oldest two are in England now though they have higher qulifications than GCSE.

It the same name GCSE that causes the confusion. We and our wider family have all encountered individuals adamant kids can't have A stars because GCSE are all now numbers and seem to be very surprised to find out hat Wales in now different.

Though TBH once you realise 9 is top mark and 4/5 is roughly level1/2 qulification border - new English GCSE aren't that hard to understand.

But you've already got it wrong. 4/5 is not the border at all. They are both a level 2 pass. Old c equivalent. Needed for jobs, higher education etc.

No you are right grade 4 is level 2 and I'm sorry I implied otherwise but I'm aware that increasingly dependent on course and area a 5 is being asked for a minimum not 4 - know this from family and friends in their bits of England - it seems to vary a lot.

I also read government initally wanted 5 to be new min level but not enough kids were going to make that so they fudged and went with 4 as level 2 qualification boundary. So I know grade 4 matters hugely to some students as it lowest mark that re-takes in Maths and English don't have to happen.

I convert as my kids who just sat exams at GCSE - last one last year -didn't get numbered grades because we are in Wales and do not use this number system.
We all still look for a C - I also don't have a job where I'm hiring or looking at exam grades - so this English system is all background noise to me.

Yet I've grasped 9 highest mark - 4 low C and 5 good C from news and MN - I'm surprised people involved in hiring haven't and find it hard still - as PP says it's not a recent change - they should know letter/number their orgainsiation is looking for as min and which way the grades go.