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Can someone help explain A Level grade boundaries for me?

Hi

When looking at the grade boundaries OCR have set out for biology I see that with raw marks you usually get something around 42/60 and 60/100 for an A grade but with the UMS marks they are always at 80% for an A grade.

So do I need 80% for an A or will the lower raw mark scores get me an A grade?

Example: http://www.ocr.org.uk/Images/246983-unit-level-raw-mark-and-ums-grade-boundaries-june-2015-now-includes-gcse.pdf

Thanks.
Reply 1
Avatar for mikeymk
mikeymk
2
By what I can remember, the amount of UMS you need to get for a certain grade stays the same every year, but how many marks the UMS represent change, so 80% in terms of UMS for A could be 50% of the raw marks one year and could be 90% the next (okay, maybe not that drastic but you get my point) Hope that helps :smile:
Reply 2
Avatar for Alpexx99
Alpexx99
OP
So you're saying if the raw marks for an A grade are 60/100 I only need 60% of the mark on the paper for an A?

That seems really low.
Original post by Alpexx99
So you're saying if the raw marks for an A grade are 60/100 I only need 60% of the mark on the paper for an A?

That seems really low.

depends on the sub though biology is usualy pretty low because its generally hard and very easy to lose marks so grade boundaries tend to b lower (although lowest ive seen is 68%) but yeah ums is based on something different because you can get 100 ums without getting 100% actual marks
Reply 4
Avatar for mikeymk
mikeymk
2
Original post by Alpexx99
So you're saying if the raw marks for an A grade are 60/100 I only need 60% of the mark on the paper for an A?

That seems really low.


If that was what the grade boundaries were for that paper, yeah, in terms of UMS, that would be 80%, it may seem low, but for it to be 60%, the paper must have been really hard and everyone didn't do to well on, if it was a really easy paper and everyone did really well, then for an A you may need 85%, it goes off the performance of everyone.
The physics A Level papers use to always have low grade boundaries as the papers were so hard, I remember 56/100 on one paper being an A, the only problem was 54- B and 52-C and so every mark really mattered.
Am I wrong in thinking GCSE and depends on the cohorts performance?

Edit: I've just realised this thread is probably inactive as it is 5 years old 😂
(edited 2 years ago)

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