[Closed] Riddle me this.. gcse content..

Not sure what was wrong woth A's, B's and C's really.

Not that I got any of those.....

Its daft op. The exams are not marked harder they are harder so kids get less correct. I was also under the impression a 5 was equivalent to a C until todays news.
Not sure how kids getting more wrong drives up standards.

Grades aren't absolute. They're awarded based on the distribution curve of marks given.

5 was going to be a C until the government data bods realised the impact that would have on 'pass' rates, so it was not-quite-revised down to a 4. I say not-quite-revised as a lot of schools will now publish two lots of figures - one based on 'passes' and 4 and above, and another based on 'good passes' at 5 and above - whichever makes them look better to the layman checking out the league tables.

Whichever grade you see as a pass, personally I think (as a teacher) that the sooner we ignore that and all get our heads round Progress 8 as a measure the better...

Daughter got her results today(all good :D) but I'm failing so see the logic behind the 1-9 score system purely for Maths and English, If its to be rolled out across the board for all subjects in the future then fair enough.
But if not what's the reason for tinkering with it, could they have not made the same adjustments for testing and kept the same A-U grading system?

1-9 coming on stream for all subjects from next year's results.

No reason for tinkering with beyond the desire to tinker with it. Could just as easily adjusted the assessment process for the existing A-G grade system. But that wouldn't have been new and improved would it?

The thing I or any correctly wired up person, is how is 9 the highest and 1 the lowest grade when every other measurement of . . . well pretty much anything, is the other way?

Should a third be better than a first now - or something?

FKN daft - not that anyone asked me

Emperors new clothes and all that.

Because 9 is 8 bigger than 1...

Grades are always being tinkered with. When I did GCE O levels in 1970 it was 1-9.

As kids don't vote, as a politician, you can **** them about to your hearts content to make you look good

from everything I've read, colournoise has it regarding the 4/5 pass / "good pass" fudge.

At the top it was to address the every growing number of A* grades being awarded - it was supposed to be an exceptional mark, but the exceptional performances were being lost in the same category as the very good.

So 9's sort of supposed to be something close to "A**"

It's all going 1 - 9 next year apart from Business Studies as far as I understand it (at least on the curricula our kids' school are using). No idea why that is.

It is a bit daft this year with the mixed scheme - the strangest one is maths, for those doing Additional Maths it hasn't changed, so my lad's got a numerical grade for Maths and an alphabetic one for additional. Formatting his CV will be much uglier than it should be.

Presumably it's been changed, and goes up to 9 in order to allow them to award 10s when they need another category. And at some point it will go to 11.

mutter, mutter in my day the best grade was an A, mutter, mutter

edlong - Member
from everything I've read, colournoise has it regarding the 4/5 pass / "good pass" fudge.

You wouldn't believe (or perhaps you would) how many in the same profession don't currently have a scooby though...

Opposite way round from standard grades when I was at school. 1 was the best down to 7 which was a complete fail.

At the top it was to address the every growing number of A* grades being awarded - it was supposed to be an exceptional mark, but the exceptional performances were being lost in the same category as the very good.

So what's happening? We're not getting any smarter (relatively) as a race so are we just better at teaching kids to pass exams for political reasons?

Speeder - Member
So what's happening? We're not getting any smarter (relatively) as a race so are we just better at teaching kids to pass exams for political reasons?

Govey was behind the re-structure of the grades and Gove = twunt

That said, my daughter got her results today and they were awesome 8)

So what's happening? We're not getting any smarter (relatively) as a race

Yes we are - all the time. Its the Flynn Effect.

My daughter got her results yesterday (fab). I was chatting to the principle and teachers and the maths grading scale shocked me a little. I understand and agree with the need to moderate and have roughly the same proportion of each grade from one year to the previous (as despite the Flynn effect, between any two years the biggest variable is the difficulty of the paper, not the smartness of the kids), but this maths paper must have been fiercely difficult. Imaging going into the exam, not being able to do 4/5ths of it and coming out with a "pass" grade 4. As my daughter said, in theory you could skip half of one of the three papers and still have got a 9 in maths! Or to put it another way, out of 500,000 students, only around 17000 got 80% or more correct in maths in order to get a 9.
I support the push for harder exams and grades. Whether that is grade 9 or A** doesn't really matter.

The thing I or any correctly wired up person, is how is 9 the highest and 1 the lowest grade

Gove

Re: the OP's query, it was always stated to be the case that "[url= https://www.gov.uk/government/news/setting-standards-for-new-gcses-in-2017 ]Broadly the same proportion of students will achieve a grade 4 and above as currently achieve a grade C and above[/url]" (ditto 7s and As) therefore this first year after the reform were arguably better off than future years may prove to be in terms of grade boundaries. Far from being the unfortunate guinea pigs of a new system they seem to have benefitted from being the first through and protected to an extent by the changes.

Edit:

the strangest one is maths, for those doing Additional Maths it hasn't changed, so my lad's got a numerical grade for Maths and an alphabetic one for additional.

Additional maths isn't actually a GCSE of course... But I agree, a bit of a mess for this year's cohort! I suspect most will just put, for example, "6 (high B)" where there might be confusion.

Thanks colournoise, just looked up Progress 8 and it looks very sensible.

Son got his yesterday.
Difficulty for teachers had of course been that they have not taught kids to do this exam before so a lot of guesswork on their part.
However we knew what the numbers meant in relation to the grades from the start 2 years ago. A 4 was always equivalent to a c and a 9 to an A*. The difference is there are 6 grades between 4 and 9 (inclusive) compared to 4 between C and A*. So a 9 is harder to get than an A*, 8 is roughly an old A*, 7 is roughly an A, but C/B is 4/5/6 so 6 is a good B, 4 is just a C and 5 is a good C or an old B. Allows them to differentiate better between the grades that majority get I would imagine.
Below the pass/fail line where there were 4 grades G to D there are now just 3 as it's less important to know how bad somebody failed I guess.
It seems to have worked out in my son's case as he fits all the same grade equivalents whether numbers or letters for all 10 exams, with only a spread of 2 different grades.
I'm sure we all get used to it and in 15 years be moaning when politicians meddle again as it was a perfectly good system etc.

and in 15 years

You're optimistic! I've been teaching less than that and the maths GCSE has changed three times (that I can remember) already 😉