GCSE Art Raw Marks

[yellowhatonacapybara]

Was anyone else not expecting these at all? DD got emailed them directly today and is in tears as she hasn't done as well as her mock. I know they are subject to moderation etc etc, but realistically I can't see the grade boundaries moving much.

First exam of the exam period is tomorrow, so this is not great timing!

Thx I’ll ask mine about PE

For most GCSEs, the deadline for submitting marks and then the requested sample is 5th May. 60% of my subject is NEA and we told y11 that the submission deadline was Easter, 2nd April. Our Exams Officer said that we could potentially be breaching the guidance as she wanted students to have their marks back before Easter but we managed to keep everyone happy by being super-organised with marking & moderating.
As others have said, you can’t give a grade because we don’t know this year’s grade boundaries. What we normally do is put the last few years’ info on the screen in the classroom and say “if you had submitted last year//2024 you would have got…”

Literally none of this happened at my daughter's school 😥 I cannot begin to describe how awful, disorganised and non-transparent the school has been with courseworks. It's an independent school and I don't who to complain to.

@XelaM it depends how “nuclear” you want to go. It’s JCQ regulation and a quick Google has found this: https://www.jcq.org.uk/knowledge-hub/notice-to-centres-informing-candidates-of-their-centre-assessed-marks/

I think it’s the Head of Centre who has overall responsibility for ensuring that exams are conducted correctly so you could start there. It’s not a new regulation - candidates have had the right to challenge the marking process of NEAs for several years - so claiming ignorance is pathetic. If you get no joy, you could go to JCQ.

We used to give kids their marks orally and they had 5 clear days before we input them, but our new Exams Officer has tightened things up and we now have to give the candidates written information of their moderated marks. Hope this helps.

Please approach the headteacher and exams officer and request their policy on NEA appeals, we have to have one under JCQ rules. Request to see all your child’s coursework marks. If this is refused you need to go to JCQ as soon as you can and you could also approach the individual exam boards. We are inspected every year by JCQ during the summer exams and have to produce these policies. They will take this very seriously.

DD got her portfolio raw marks for art yesterday but hasn't been given the exam one yet. Is that given to them before results day too?

Also interested to know whether they're given their drama performance mark before results day.

Hi does this apply to A Level Fine Art Edexcel too?

All coursework, every single subject, they should all be given before the 15th of May except for Art which is a week later. Every subject must give the details of how to appeal before the marks are sent to the board.

Absolutely yes

Just got ours - she appears to have got exactly the number of the grade 6 boundary as it has been for past 3 years. Would this be a grade 6 if they repeat the boundary? Is it likely to change? Does anyone know? I actually feel like we didn't need this right now and didn't know it was going to happen.

Is it worth asking school to check unit 1 mark or is that just really rude?!

Thank you 😥

Unfortunately, the headteacher is only interested in covering the school's behind (so to speak) and is utterly unhelpful. I have now asked the school for a review.

They are truly awful with courseworks in every subject.

Still haven't received the art results, but I understand that may come at some point soon.

The PE coursework was another school fiasco. They really are terrible 😞 and I'm paying private fees for this. It's very unfair as we know kids at other schools taking the same subjects and most schools we know are super helpful and want to ensure their pupils achieve maximum marks, whereas ours appears to be as unhelpful and obstructive as possible, so kids are at a real disadvantage going into the exams with less marks from the coursework parts than at other schools.

@patate10 you can only challenge the process. I presume the moderator or examiner will view either a sample (large cohort) or the entire cohort’s work. If they agree with the teachers’ assessment, the mark will stand.

Sorry I have no idea about grade boundaries - nobody can answer that I’m afraid.

@XelaM I think it might be time to contact JCQ. You have tried to be reasonable asking the Head, so I would do that, copying in the Chair of Governors.

To clear up some questions and misinformation:

The deadline to submit marks varies dependant on subject and exam board. Pearson GCSE Art, for example, is 48 hours before the external moderator visits. Moderation visits basically go up to the end of June, so there is plenty of time to send out raw marks.

You cannot add raw marks for component 1 and component 2 together and compare to grade boundaries, as this doesn’t account for scaling (comp 1 60%, comp 2 40%) For example, on Pearson GCSE raw marks for both components are given out of 72, giving a maximum mark of 144. The grade boundaries are out of a maximum mark of 180.

The raw marks could be moved up or down during external moderation. Grade boundaries can move too by a couple of marks or so in either direction. Students, nor teachers, are informed if this happens, they just have to figure it out on results day.

Certainly for GCSE Art, getting a lower raw mark than they received during mocks isn’t really a thing. Their mocks ware part of their final component 1 raw mark, and contribute to 60% of their grade. It is possible that they have not created work to the same standard since mocks, and work which is significantly poorer quality could affect ‘consistency’ if that wording is used in assessment objectives. However, since mocks all students will have spent most of their time developing component 2 - again if this is underdeveloped or poorer quality they may have a lower raw mark for it, then component 1. Once scaled and added this could mean overall they fall into a lower grade boundary than if their component 1 would be if it was worth 100%.

When you receive your raw marks you cannot appeal on the grounds you think it should be higher. You can only appeal the marking and internal moderation process, and you would have to show that this process has been inadequate or the assessment objectives have not been applied fairly. This is very difficult to do. You can request to see assessment marksheets which can be helpful in showing how marking has been applied. You may be able to see marksheets from over the duration of the course which might show how mark has changed over time. If you believe you do have grounds for an appeal you can ask the school to have it remarked at another school - this might not go in your favour, they could mark it lower. Believe me, no one wants to give your child more marks than their actual teachers, they will always try to award the most marks they can justify. Poor outcomes are scrutinised by leadership and reflect badly on departments, nobody is going to go out of their way to mark a student down for fun or some sort of personal grudge.

I completely agree it is a ridiculous JCQ policy that benefits no-one and causes unnecessary stress for teachers, students and parents, at an already fraught time of year.

Thank you so much for replying. The school had not warned us so it was a curveball. I am very sure the school would have judged her work fairly and am just so frustrated to have calculated (properly using the weighting) to be right on a boundary used for the past 3 years! Her first two projects were ropey but she has shown real growth since then so its just a shame those two projects had to be included really!

@gotohellforheavenssake Believe me, no one wants to give your child more marks than their actual teachers, they will always try to award the most marks they can justify. Poor outcomes are scrutinised by leadership and reflect badly on departments, nobody is going to go out of their way to mark a student down for fun or some sort of personal grudge.

I completely agree that this is the normal approach and I am completely shocked that this is not the approach at my daughter's school. It's not a personal grudge - they mark everyone down from what I can see. For example in PE, they have been given feedback on what to improve and once all the teacher feedback was incorporated the top mark was still 12/20 for the coursework. How is that possible when the whole point is to give feedback to try to maximise the marks?!

The only teachers who have marked courseworks normally were the English teachers (Cambridge iGCSEs) who were very organised about the deadlines, gave feedback on how to improve marks and once the feedback was incorporated they gave marks accordingly. In all other subjects it has been a total non-transparent mess with no one even knowing if they marked the correct drafts.

We didn't know this was now a requirement (it's a long time since DH or I did GCSE Art!) and were quite surprised to receive our DC's raw marks by email yesterday. Slightly different for us as DC is in a small specialist provision this year, hospital education service. Art teacher said it was up to us if we share marks with DC, but to consider their wellbeing and adding pressure during exam time. As it happens, the marks were very good, but we feel that on balance it's best to not pass them on as DC's autistic brain is very capable of interpreting it as pressure rather than encouragement. E.g. If I've done well in Art I have to do well in everything else as well, the weight of expectations.

Remember any feedback given during any GCSE course could be to achieve the following:

Secure a particular level or grade by gaining a few more marks above the anticipated boundary

To get student to their target level / grade if they are working below it

To get student to level / grade above target if they are close and capable of it

Feedback given by teachers is not a guide of how to get the maximum marks possible/ grade 9. So doing everything listed in feedback doesn’t guarantee full marks, as feedback is not about that. There’s also doing all of the feedback, and doing it the way or ti the standard the teacher expects.

Teachers also need to get a delicate balance with giving feedback to exam students, some subjects are very strict about how much advice can be given, and the amount of feedback students receive needs to be fair. A student working at grade 4 would need a lot more feedback to get to grade 7 than a student working at grade 6 for example.

I understand this, but some of these kids are quite high level athletes in their chosen sports and were aiming for 9s rather than for 6s in PE. I would love for an independent person familiar with the PE Edexcel mark scheme to read and mark the PEP as I can't see where the marks were lost (based on the marking scheme and examples of previous High level PEPs on the Edexcel website). I would just like to know where she lost the marks or how someone else would mark it as I don't think it's transparent at all. I have read PEPs that received full marks from other years and I can't see what she did wrong. I'm scared to share the PEP with anyone though as obviously there's the risk of plagiarism.

Well done to your DC 👏🏼