GCSE mocks and predicted grades

[Blackberrycream]

Hi,
I’m posting for advice as I have only taught primary. My son has just received his mock results and estimated grades. I was quite upset as 2 subjects have predicted less than his mock score. His upward progress has been steady in these subjects eg. 6, 7 then 8 in pre mocks then mocks but the prediction is a 7. In reality, with months left to go and sustained work I’m not sure on what basis they would expect him to go backwards. Other subjects where again he has shown sustained progress, they are predicting the same grade as his mocks. Only one subject teacher has given him a predicted grade 1 up from current achievement. Normally, I would just continue to encourage him to work hard and prove himself in the exams but obviously he hasn’t got that option now.
I have posted previously about my concerns with under predictions with black students. Anecdotally, a girl who performed really well in mocks has also been downgraded from her achieved grades. She is a black student. Obviously these are private concerns. I do wonder if the schools themselves track this data.
I will be raising the estimates that are lower than achieved grades with the school. Do high school teachers think that this sounds appropriate? Any advice would be much appreciated as I have a knot in my stomach at the thought.

Sometimes the mock is not a reflection of the real paper. This can differ from subject to subject. It may have been an easier paper or one written by the school or mirror and end of topic test more.

In some subjects teachers even give a hint as to what might be on a mock paper.

This subject teacher may have explained the mock would only cover the y12 work or even just the y 13 work to date. They may feel that with extra added in DS would not perform at higher than a 7.

Sometimes they may not yet have taught the harder areas that will be on the real paper and this may give a false higher grade in the mocks.

Sometimes the teacher may feel that once a student has the full set of work for all 10-11 subjects they will not perform at the level in the real exam.

Some teachers mark more leniently than others.

In other words there are a whole number of reasons why one test would not necessarily mean that a child is working at that level, the same way one poor test or off day should not impact a final grade.

I suggest asking that teacher what the reasoning behind the grade was.

Thanks for your answer SeasonFinale. I do understand your points but he can only jump through the hoops actually set and he has consistently scored well and improved on previous grades. He also would have been on a level playing field with classmates in terms of content.
I will be asking teachers but wanted to get a sense first if this was usual to not expect progress in grades between mocks and the actual exams.

Are you 100% sure they’re predications and not targets (so he’s beating his targets in his mocks) Given that GCSE predictions aren’t really a “thing” the way UCAS ones are, I’d think it really risky for schools to be giving predictions right now in case students confuse them with their teacher assessed grades that GW just announced yesterday, especially as we have no further details about how we’ll work them out.

They are definitely predictions. We have targets ( given at the end of year 10). These are mocks and final adjusted estimates. I think you’re right about the danger of confusion. Normally I would just see these estimates as being extremely cautious and a bit of an extra incentive to push forward but nobody knows what is going to be used at this point to calculate the cags hence my concern at the predictions. I will e mail tomorrow.
I expect they were inundated with queries today!