A-level predicted grades

So I'm in year 12 and I've been really stressing out about predicted grades. How do they work and when are they actually important ? I didn't do as well as I wanted in my recent mocks and I'm scared about how much it affects them. Do teachers take the average of all your grades or is it just whatever they decide. Also is it bad to be getting Bs now if you're aiming for predicted grades of A* A A.

Normally schools would use the actual paper set from the previous year as the mock examination, this is why examination boards do not release them publicly for at least a year. They would then mark and grade as per the markers guide that goes with it, so the actual grade that you would get would depend on how last years students did in the exam. At A-level there are multiple papers per topic, and the way that the grades are weighted across each paper would be set out in the marking guide. If you can find guides from previous years then that should give you an idea how the marks from each paper count towards the final grade. As for what you should be getting now, I don't know - some students are good at cruising through interim tests and nailing it on the day and others aren't, only you know what you can achieve.

This really troubles me - students will only be half way or a little more through the A level syllabus in those schools that hold mocks in May/June and if they are using last year's papers it seems hardly fair to base predictions on those. Or do you mean they use the previous year's A/S levels? I am told not many schools are offering A/S any more.

Normally schools would use the actual paper set from the previous year as the mock examination, this is why examination boards do not release them publicly for at least a year. They would then mark and grade as per the markers guide that goes with it, so the actual grade that you would get would depend on how last years students did in the exam.

NO, most schools don't do that because idiots release the papers. We use secure papers and also grades throughout the year.

I wish you were correct but my kids went to two different schools and that's exactly what both of them did... In fact my daughter did so well in one of her mocks last year that she went through a very difficult period of being accused of having accessed the previous years unreleased paper in some way which she had not done. Then my sons grade was grossly unfair as due to covid they were way behind in the curriculum when they set the paper at the end of 2020 (and strictly applied the associated marking scheme without allowing for all the educational turmoil), but then the 2021 actual exams were scrapped so his predicted grade flipped into his actual grade and he was very badly let down with no recourse. So unfortunately it would have been far better for us if the past papers hadn't been used this way in either case but they did..

So I'm in year 12 and I've been really stressing out about predicted grades. How do they work and when are they actually important ? I didn't do as well as I wanted in my recent mocks and I'm scared about how much it affects them. Do teachers take the average of all your grades or is it just whatever they decide. Also is it bad to be getting Bs now if you're aiming for predicted grades of A* A A.

I wish you were correct but my kids went to two different schools and that's exactly what both of them did... In fact my daughter did so well in one of her mocks last year that she went through a very difficult period of being accused of having accessed the previous years unreleased paper in some way which she had not done. Then my sons grade was grossly unfair as due to covid they were way behind in the curriculum when they set the paper at the end of 2020 (and strictly applied the associated marking scheme without allowing for all the educational turmoil), but then the 2021 actual exams were scrapped so his predicted grade flipped into his actual grade and he was very badly let down with no recourse. So unfortunately it would have been far better for us if the past papers hadn't been used this way in either case but they did..