New GCSE grading system thoughts

I'm still in Year 9, but my school starts the GCSE course a year early and we are doing nearly every subject with the new syllabus and grading system. I'm pretty sure current Year 10 have the new grades for maths and english, and current Year 9 have it for everything minus technology subjects.

Everyone in my year is pretty annoyed that they changed everything and now you can get better than an A*, making the competition more intense - especially because it's a grammar school.
This is the rough translation given by our teachers
9 - A**
8- A*
7-A
6-B
5-B/C
4-C
3-D
2-E
1-F

What does everybody else think about this?

Reply 1

B_9710

It's supposedly so that there's a bit more differentiation between grades. It's perhaps not so good if you got A* before but get grade 8 now. However it is good if you get nearly 100% as the grade 9 will really set you apart from a lot of other people.