AQA - seriously anomalous results

Hi - has anyone else had some seriously out of kilter results in English Language or English Literature A2s from AQA? My son was confidently predicted A or A* in his final exams and graded at a D for both. He wasn't alone - speaking to the examinations officer and touching base with some of the other students yesterday, the overall results in both his English Literature and English Language classes at Guildford County School were stunningly bad. Thank God my boy's AS levels and coursework were really strong so he got Bs overall and is into York. But it just doesn't make sense. He consistently got As and A*s in all the practice papers he did in the last couple of months as well as in his mocks. He worked really hard and, while really stressed by the exams, felt he had done all his teachers had trained him to do and the school has a good rep for English. Among his peers, pupils who NEVER graded below A* were given Cs and worse. I would be interested to know if anyone else has noticed anything similar. S

Reply 1

Sharif Chowdhury

9

Not sure about A2 but at AS pretty much everyone in the English Literature group in my school got E-U in their exam. It's ridiculous.

Reply 2

sarahthesuperior

OP

Hi - has anyone else had some seriously out of kilter results in English Language or English Literature A2s from AQA? My son was confidently predicted A or A* in his final exams and graded at a D for both. He wasn't alone - speaking to the examinations officer and touching base with some of the other students yesterday, the overall results in both his English Literature and English Language classes at Guildford County School were stunningly bad. Thank God my boy's AS levels and coursework were really strong so he got Bs overall and is into York. But it just doesn't make sense. He consistently got As and A*s in all the practice papers he did in the last couple of months as well as in his mocks. He worked really hard and, while really stressed by the exams, felt he had done all his teachers had trained him to do and the school has a good rep for English. Among his peers, pupils who NEVER graded below A* were given Cs and worse. I would be interested to know if anyone else has noticed anything similar. Is anyone else acting to see what is going on? I have paid for an urgent remark and to get copies of his papers. S

Reply 3

lula_fifi

My friend in got a D in her English Language for A2, even though she's been working at a higher grade than that all year. It's the same for me, I got my AS results back and it said I had gotten an E in my English Literature exam, despite my being an A/B grade.

Reply 4

danman71

In my school we entered 17 students for AS Lit and achieved 17 U grades in the Unit 1 exam. Coursework was fine. We're with AQA and this has never happened before. In fact some of the students took the exam a year ago as a warm-up having finished their GCSEs early and did better than this year. I can't see any reason for it on first inspection (obviously we will be requesting the papers back and a re-mark) other than that AQA are making it harder for students to achieve good grades at A Level in Literature. Time will tell...

Reply 5

Rosasaurr

14

Me!

I got an A at AS last year, and for the whole of this year my grade in my class assessments has never been below a C grade.

By the end of this year, my exam answers were at a high B/low A. And I was predicted an A.

Final exam, I wrote one of the best answers I've ever done for the first half of the exam paper. So I was pretty confident about getting a B/A.

My coursework was a high B but my exam was a low D :s-smilie:

thankfully it averaged out at a B for the whole A Level and I got into uni, but I did find it a bit odd.

Btw I did AQA English Language B :s-smilie:

Reply 6

frustratedparent

This has happened to my daughter too. Having been an A student throughout she only just got a D on 1 paper. Luckily she still got a B overall and got into Bristol but she was expecting an A*. Her teacher does not understand what could have happened either and my daughter was not the only one.
Infact some of the less able students were surprised at how high their marks were. All very odd and I find it hard to believe that you can have this much variation.
We have had it remarked, which put it up 5 marks but as the second marker does not see a "clean paper" it is unlikely for there to be much willingness to show too much discepancy between markers. What would that say about the consistency of marking?!
Thankfully my younger daughter is not taking this subject as I have lost confidence in it and frankly so have the teachers.
Shame , I loved studying English Literature and so did my daughter

Reply 7

WildThornberry

8

Loads of people failed in English lit AS at my college. Like getting 78/80 in the coursework and a C in the exam... So many people got C's and D's overall when expecting A's and B's. Luckily mine went fine for some reason

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Reply 8

EconFan_73

3

Has anybody else has a priority re-mark and if so what was the outcome? I know this may seem very trivial to some of you compared to the importance of your A Levels, but it had been exactly the same with English Lit GCSE with AQA and I was wondering whether or not it's worth paying the extortionate prices required for a remark.

I was working at an A/A* all year for English Lit, including all controlled assessments and previous exams, and then I was so delighted after my final exam as I thought I had done really well, certainly enough to achieve the A I would have been happy with, if not A*. But then when I got the result back it was a low C, which meant I got a B overall, only 2 UMS off an A.

You probably think who cares, but this was the only one of my 14 GCSEs in which I didn't achieve at least an A (9A*s), so it really was disappointing in that it was a stain on an otherwise strong all round set of results. So if I got it remarked and it went up by just a single mark or 2, it would take me up to the clean sweep and eliminate the B grade. Do you think it's worth it or not, bearing in mind I'm hoping to apply to the very top universities?

Cheers for any help/advice you can give me in advance! :smile: