Calling any art teachers familiar with Edexcel GCSE marking process and appeals?

[Callmejudith]

A friend is having a nightmare with leaked raw marks for her DD. The school are refusing to investigate. Can anyone help with the complaints procedure/next steps? Would rather DM if possible.

What do you mean leaked raw marks? If it’s the coursework component then candidates are supposed to be told their raw, unmoderated marks before the deadline so they can appeal the marking.

If it’s the raw marks from examiners then the candidate shouldn’t know that yet, but any appeal would be about the leaking of the marks, not to the mark itself.

1. Are you sure they are leaked?
2. You see for a lot of coursework based GCSE’s we have to release marks two weeks before final submission - in line with JCQ rules. For my subject (not art) I emphasise that we don’t know what the mark will be at this point.
3. Internal marking for art is checked by an external examiner but what the final grade is still subject to scaling nationally. And the scaled marks can vary quite a lot eg there can be a 4 mark difference between one grade and 16 mark difference between another. Eg you need 100/200 for a 4 104 for a 5 and 120 for a 6. These grade boundaries are not fixed and change every year because they are based on the maths of how many children got how many marks.
4. What this means is that even knowing the raw marks - you don’t really know what a child is going to get until the final result is released in August.

So, usually this would only bother someone if they found out their raw mark was a lot lower than they were expecting.

You couldn’t appeal the marks/grade until they come out in August and then, you could go for a remark but if your friend’s daughter isn’t taking art further e.g for A level then, this is a lot of angst for them for not really much return.

I’m confused about the JCQ rules - no one I know at a state school has got their raw marks for coursework.

The leak was a picture of marks for coursework and final work. Everyone had been marked way below their predicted grades.

The person needs to be clear about the source of the picture. Was it the teacher’s marks, or the moderators?

If it was the teacher’s then a) they could change at moderation and b) the candidate should already have been told their coursework mark.

If it was the moderator’s then that is a breach, but will not affect the outcome. It does however, suggest that the teacher’s grasp of the mark scheme wasn’t great if they’ve been predicting consistently higher.

It is also important for the candidate to be aware of the difference between raw and UMS marks and the difficulty of predicting grade boundaries.

They should have been told their raw marks for Art (as given by the teachers but not yet moderated) around May time. That's normal and not a leak (but they should only be told their own raw marks - not everyone else's). They can then ask for the marks to be reviewed if they disagree with them.

@Callmejudith How many years have you worked in state schools?

(Me, 23 years)

@Callmejudith DD is at a state school and has just finished her GCSEs

Her whole class were given their raw mark for their coursework and final piece around the beginning of May and had the chance to appeal this if they wanted to. The work is then externally moderated and they will receive their graded score as normal in August.

@Sweetbeansandmochi I don’t work in a school hence why I’m asking for advice.

I only know that this child wasn’t given her raw marks in May so no opportunity to question them. Is that rule set by the exam board? If the school hasn’t followed this rule who is it escalated to?

Assuming you’ve gone through the head, it would be JCQ as malpractice. It won’t change the mark given though; the children don’t get their work back after the mark to do anything with it, and just get the raw score no feedback.

the appeal is so they can have it remarked in case the teachers misapplied the markscheme. in that case it might change but that time has passed as far as exam boards are concerned

if the mark is wrong it’ll be changed during moderation.
Which imo renders the appeals process redundant anyway but I can see in large cohorts it might be more useful where they don’t all go to moderation and the rank order is wrong

You have got good advice on this board. Including, that you need to clarify that your friend and her daughter are not getting worked up about something that is released anyway, as part of the process.

Just because you don’t think state schools release coursework marks - they do.

Even if, there was some sort of negligence e.g it sounds like some took a picture of the teachers mark book and shared it. It won’t make any material difference to your friends daughter’s grade.

The time for improvements to coursework is over. My best advice is for your friend to save herself from wanting ‘someone to be held accountable/pay/explain themselves’ is to log it with the school (which she has) and to leave it.

On balance, there is nothing to be gained from this stress.

My DD got her raw marks a few days before appeal deadline as she was sitting other exams she did not appeal. She was predicted 7, based on the last year scores will get low 6 if lucky. I don't understand why teacher inflates predicted so much, was a shock for us as well