This year’s GCSE results have been making headlines as fewer children have achieved top grades this year than in the past two years. Does this mean exams are getting harder and what does it mean for this year’s cohort?
Firstly, we need to understand that changing grade boundaries for GCSEs and A levels is nothing new. Every year, each exam board marks all of the GCSE papers and then decides how many marks are needed to achieve each grade in each subject.
The exam boards mark the papers first and decide the grade boundaries later; they say this is to try to make sure the same quality of work achieves the same grade every year. In practice, this means that if lots and lots and lots of people achieve a high mark in one year, the grade boundaries for that year will be higher. Similarly, if more people achieve lower marks, the grade boundaries will be lower, meaning fewer marks are needed to get each grade. This doesn’t mean that the exams are getting harder, it means that exam boards want to make sure similar numbers of people achieve each grade each year.
Normally, exam boards set grade boundaries higher on years when people get more marks, meaning you’d need more marks for each grade, and they set them lower on years when people get fewer marks. This year has made headlines because the exam boards have shifted the grade boundaries slightly further than would have been expected from the marks achieved. Therefore, it looks like students have achieved lower marks when in fact the marks they achieved have been awarded lower grades that the same marks would have achieved last year.
The news has reported widely that this year, fewer young people have achieved the top grades. This means that exam boards have decided to make the grade boundaries higher than they have been in previous years, but they are not yet as high as they were in 2019.
AQA
In 2019, a student would have needed 86 marks for a grade 5 and 127 for a grade 9.
In 2022, a student getting 80 marks in their English Language exams would have got a grade 5 and they would have needed 119 to get a grade 9.
This year, the grade boundaries shifted closer to the 2019 boundaries with 81 being needed for a grade 5 and 121 for a 9.
Cambridge IGCSE First Language English
As always with IGCSE, the boundaries vary slightly depending on the combination of components a student takes. There are full breakdowns on their website but these examples are based on components 3 and 11.
This year to achieve a grade 9, students need to achieve a raw score of 125 compared to a score of 119 in 2021.
What the exam boards are saying
There is a questionable rhetoric around the reason for higher attainment between 2020 and 2022. News outlets seem unable to talk about results achieved during the pandemic without mentioning that the grades were based on teacher assessments. What is actually the case is that the raw scores were based on teacher assessments and the grade boundaries, based on those scores, were decided by the exam boards. It was exam boards who awarded a higher percentage of top grades in 2020-2022, not teachers. They are now trying to bring the grades awarded back in line with where they were in 2019.
What can we expect this year?
We expect grade boundaries to continue to rise until they reach similar levels to 2019 but this is no reason to worry. At expertenglishtuition.com, all of our year 11 students exceeded their target grades in 2022 and 2023 and we are confident that this trend will continue.
What can I do to make sure I do well?
These shifting grade boundaries can make it tricky for overstretched classroom teachers to predict grades accurately, but there are things you can do to make sure you achieve the best grade possible.
It is essential that when preparing for your GCSE or IGCSE exams, you focus on each assessment objective (AO) and look carefully at the descriptors used by your exam board. Unlike lessons in school, private tuition allows your tutor to design lessons especially for you to address any gaps in your attainment, and to break down their teaching in a way that suits just you and the ways you learn best.
If you are not learning with a private tutor, keep conversations going with your teachers about areas you’re doing well in and where you need to focus your attention next. Keep on top of your homework and, my top tip for all English students, read often from lots of different sources. A balance between novels, biographies and broadsheet newspapers is ideal. Whenever you read something, ask yourself, “What is this writer trying to make me think and how are they doing that?” This is the key to success in both language and literature - working out how writers use their work to get their ideas across to their readers.
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