GCSE results day scares me

It's important to remember that even though this year's exam cohort where affected by 2 lockdowns and covid-restrictions, Ofqual offered no additional support to them (when compared to the previous few years). This is obviously going to make their results seem objectively worse when comparing them to previous years. Another thing to consider is the way the grading is created. What happens is the examiners will mark the test and then the exam board will place every student in order from best score to worst. After a set percentage of students ( i think it's 6% for GCSE but i'm not sure) they will create a grade boundary. This means that if the entire cohort does terrible then the grade boundaries drop (take this year's GCSE computer science for example) and if they do well the grade boundaries increase. The same thing happens at A-level (albeit with a slightly different %) meaning that higher A-Level grades where, in part, a variation in test difficulty and varying percentages. Another thing to consider is that GCSEs don't usually couple over neatly with A-Levels ( so even though 0.1% of test takers in A-level received Grade C there won't be a 0.1% increase at GCSE this year for example).

Picking A-Levels only wasn't a bad decision if you really wanted (and still want) to do them. If you've changed your mind, it's never too late to let the sixth form/ college know so that they have ample time to accommodate your request, however it may be best to wait until Thursday before making any decisions.

I hope this helps.

This might sound a bit heartless (I’m not trying to be mean, just nervous for results) but as so many people in year 11 didn’t get good teaching due to lockdown and strikes, could that possibly cause grade boundaries to be lower as they didn’t do too well and therefore those of us who didn’t have strikes and had better online learning may have a slight advantage?

To an extent. The students who didn't revise or have access to any form of quality education during lockdowns will increase the number of test takers at the lower end of the spectrum meaning that the bottom 30% of students is going to be higher than average ( which represents grades 3 - U). This generally means that students aiming on grades 3,4,5 are more likely to be pushed up a grade (meaning there will be a little bit of inflation here). But, students that did revise during covid are statistically more likely to get higher scores. This generally means that the scores in the top 20% (of takers) are more likely to be higher. As a result, it is going to be harder to get grades 7+.

A little bit of bad maths as a side note: There are 60 different exams offered over 5 exam boards so approximately 300 exams in total. If we can expect that there will be a 300,000 less grades 8/9 in total (as suggested by some people much smarter than me) than the decrease in 8/9s per exam is approximately 1,000 entrants per exam. However, this is very much a dubious estimate for a mean due to a bunch of external factors I don't want to list here.