GCSE remark advice

Poppy9

silvercar wrote: »

We put in for a priority remark because initially DS1 was rejected because of dropping by one grade below his offer. By the time the remark came back 4 days later, he had managed to convince the uni department to accept him.

We then had to persuade the accommodation office that his place was his original place, not one through clearing ( which is where the place went that he managed to scrape back) in order to get his first choice accommodation! By then we had the remark, so could say he met the offer, so it had to be the original place, though technically it wasn't. All because the marking system is slapdash.

I heard of some who the uni still refused to accept after remak as their places were then full.

One of DD friends missed his place at same uni as DD (different course) as he missed getting 3 A by 3 marks so had AAB. He had to go elsewhere via clearing.

DD was lucky as there must have been sufficent firmers who missed their grade so she was in. I do think it was her choice of A levels that made the difference as she was required to have 2 As in sciences and the third subject was not specified but she dropped her Spanish and kept Physics as her third so she was offering 3 science subjects.

pollypenny

The marking system is not 'slapdash '. However, it is susceptible to human error.

There are 'border lining ' meetings, where a marker offers a paper for second opinions, and all markets have samples of their papers remarked for standardisation .

Having said that, there is one particular exam board with which we had loads of trouble.

the_pink_panther_2

I'd ask the school how many marks she could drop before being B grade and use that to help decide.

Don't think it helps school's statistics really if the grade were an A* rather than an A, it's really the C/D grade boundary that makes a difference to their important statistics.

It's really how you and your daughter feel about it; if you don't remark, you'll never know. If you do and it doesn't go up, at least you'll have peace of mind, which is what you'd have paid for. Psychologically it may hep your daughter knowing it's an A*, even if it doesn't affect her uni place.

GwylimT

If a French GCSE is important to her future educational choices then re-mark, if not don't bother. Our school have recently changed the exam board they use, basically what was happening with us is that students who sat their English Literature exam in the January and had a coursework deadline in December were receiving very low grades compared to their actual ability. When they re-sat in June and re-submitted the same piece of coursework they were getting far higher grades, not just a few extra marks, but many were climbing two grades.

Unfortunately coursework is very difficult to mark as while there is of course a mark scheme as with an exam there is a little more opinion in the work, so it isn't quite as clear cut.

We have had a few at school this year who were 1 mark from a B in Maths, most of them are going for a remark, yes it could go down, but they will still have a B in that case, but equally if they go up by just one mark they have their A.