The Student Room Group

C1 Edexcel grade boundaries

There appears to be a lot of confusion about grade boundaries for various exams. I just read the C1 aftermath thread and noticed that people try to guess the boundaries. Although it may seem to some people easy to guess the boundary for an A, it isnt. I can assure you that you will be wrong.

How does the exam board work out boundaries?

Say for example x people sat todays C1 paper. The board knows even before the exam is sat how many people will get a grade A (well it has an idea). The board decides that out of all the people that sit the exam, it wants about 23% of them to get a grade A. Using a normal distribution, the board calculates the mean and standard deviation of all the marks and through the method of standardisation, calculates the raw boundary for a grade A. If the paper is 'easy' then the mean will be higher, resulting in a higher grade A boundary.
So for all those people who try to guess the boundary, its not a good idea.
For one of my A level exams, when i walked out of the exam people said it was fine - this worried me as i needed the boundary to be low. It was in fact 36/75 for a Grade A - so sometimes, you just don't know.
Anyway I hope some of you now understand how boundaries are calculated :smile:
Reply 1
Was the exam for maths. You're right its impossible to guess really, teachers say 80% is an A, but its never how they do it! 36/75 for an A thats cool, i bet it was an hard paper, i think core 1 OCR was quite hard!
Reply 2
dont know if this really goes in this thread but....

why are the different examining bodies e.g. AQA, EDEXCEL, OCR .....

whats the differance between them?
Reply 3
There all businesses hence thats why theres more than 1 board. Also some boards have there own patches. AQA = places based around Manchester
Edexcel = Places based around London, same for OCR
Reply 4
Its actually because they used to be university-run (i believe) OCR- was oxbridge, Edexcel was university of london and i believe AQA was Manchester... although i cant be completely sure.

faa
Reply 5
interesting....they make a lot of money do exam boards.
Edexcel charge something like £40 for a priority remark...where does the money go? The examiner will get about £6 and i cant imagine postage is that much :confused:
Reply 6
manps
interesting....they make a lot of money do exam boards.
Edexcel charge something like £40 for a priority remark...where does the money go? The examiner will get about £6 and i cant imagine postage is that much :confused:

If I recall correctly, bizarre as it seems, Edexcel are making a loss not a profit.
Reply 7
Chris87
If I recall correctly, bizarre as it seems, Edexcel are making a loss not a profit.


usually you would if you couldnt be bothered to mark exams right the first time LOL
Reply 8
Chris87
If I recall correctly, bizarre as it seems, Edexcel are making a loss not a profit.


What makes you think that?
Reply 9
manps
What makes you think that?

Saw some announcement on their site somewhere once saying they made a huge loss one year. Can't remember where it was though.