The Student Room Group

Grade boundaries suck (why are we one of the only ones doing it (UK))

this island (the UK) and there schools are far too obsessed about "being the best school" and we are constantly competing to "get the best grades" why can they just abolish grade boundaries, abolish exam boards and abolish the leagues table

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Reply 1
Avatar for mgi
mgi
20
Original post by 1st superstar
this island (the UK) and there schools are far too obsessed about "being the best school" and we are constantly competing to "get the best grades" why can they just abolish grade boundaries, abolish exam boards and abolish the leagues table


Yes, and yet still UK schools have some of worst educated kids overall in the world! The teachers do most of the work and the thinking for the students!
Reply 2
Avatar for Notnek
Notnek
21
Original post by 1st superstar
this island (the UK) and there schools are far too obsessed about "being the best school" and we are constantly competing to "get the best grades" why can they just abolish grade boundaries, abolish exam boards and abolish the leagues table

So you want a system where a student taking an exam in e.g. 2019 gets a worst grade than they would have done in 2018 because the exam was harder?
Original post by Sir Cumference
So you want a system where a student taking an exam in e.g. 2019 gets a worst grade than they would have done in 2018 because the exam was harder?


no I want examiners to make the effort so that the tests are of the same difficulty every year
Reply 4
Avatar for TCL
TCL
18
You are right that cliff edge grade boundaries do not make sense given the level of discrepancy in marking. OFSTED have said that 2 different grades may accurately reflect a candidate's performance which is clearly ridiculous.

There have been some outrageous grade changes reported on here (even though the "review of marking" system means changes are much less likely) and most people do not have the resources to challenge their grades so nobody knows how many might be wrong.

There is a lot of trust given to the boards for setting grade boundaries and they do not necessarily appear to deserve that trust!
Reply 5
Avatar for Notnek
Notnek
21
Original post by 1st superstar
no I want examiners to make the effort so that the tests are of the same difficulty every year

That’s what they try currently but often the difficulty varies. By “make the effort”, what specifically do you mean?
Original post by Sir Cumference
So you want a system where a student taking an exam in e.g. 2019 gets a worst grade than they would have done in 2018 because the exam was harder?

e.g if you say that every year you need 68/80 on a maths higher tier paper every year to get a grade 9 it motivates exams boards to make exams to the same level of difficulty every and not use the excuse "it doesn't matter if the paper is bad/hard because the grade boundaries will be lower" or "we are allowed to go off spec because the grade boundaries will drastically decrease" it's so annoying when teachers say aim for 40/80 for a grade 7 but then you do your actual exams only to find out that that 40/80 is now only worth a grade 6/6+ and NOT a grade 7 get rid of grade boundaries and exam boards!!
Original post by 1st superstar
no I want examiners to make the effort so that the tests are of the same difficulty every year

They do make the effort to make the test of the same difficulty that's why the grade boundaries tend to stay constant. What you're saying is ridiculous because grade boundaries are there to help YOU. If everyone found the exams hard theres lower grade boundary which is GOOD.
Reply 8
Avatar for mgi
mgi
20
Original post by Sir Cumference
So you want a system where a student taking an exam in e.g. 2019 gets a worst grade than they would have done in 2018 because the exam was harder?


That is not how the system works. the exam would be harder for everyone. There is no evidence that exams have got harder. And just try to remember that UK school students don't compare well, educationally, with the rest of the world. Their literacy and numeracy levels are generally lower. Stop moaning , work harder and start respecting your teachers!
Reply 9
Avatar for Notnek
Notnek
21
Original post by mgi
That is not how the system works. the exam would be harder for everyone. There is no evidence that exams have got harder. And just try to remember that UK school students don't compare well, educationally, with the rest of the world. Their literacy and numeracy levels are generally lower. Stop moaning , work harder and start respecting your teachers!

Yes that’s not how the system works because we have variable grade boundaries. I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.
tryhards
Reply 11
Avatar for Notnek
Notnek
21
Original post by 1st superstar
e.g if you say that every year you need 68/80 on a maths higher tier paper every year to get a grade 9 it motivates exams boards to make exams to the same level of difficulty every and not use the excuse "it doesn't matter if the paper is bad/hard because the grade boundaries will be lower" or "we are allowed to go off spec because the grade boundaries will drastically decrease" it's so annoying when teachers say aim for 40/80 for a grade 7 but then you do your actual exams only to find out that that 40/80 is now only worth a grade 6/6+ and NOT a grade 7 get rid of grade boundaries and exam boards!!

There's no evidence that it's even possible for a few exam creators to make exactly the same difficulty every year if they have to use completely new questions each year. Unless they trial the exam to a sample of students but that won't be possible.

Yes I agree this is annoying but it will get less annoying as there is more data and you can see what the average grade boundaries are. Is this annoyance a big enough deal to consider getting rid of grade boundaries? I'd need to see evidence that students not knowing what grade they're at throughout the year causes worse performing students. It could even be the opposite - if a students knows that they need e.g. 70% to get an A then maybe they won't try as hard to improve? Who knows.
tryhards
Original post by .unknown
They do make the effort to make the test of the same difficulty that's why the grade boundaries tend to stay constant. What you're saying is ridiculous because grade boundaries are there to help YOU. If everyone found the exams hard theres lower grade boundary which is GOOD.

honey what?? they are absolutely not make the effort went it comes top exams in general e.g
the paper 1 AQA combined trilogy chemistry paper 1 2018 was a P.O.S compared to the 2019 paper 1 AQA combined trilogy chemistry paper 1 (the 2019 was a piece of cake for me :tongue:)

OCR last year made a big mistake for their English lit paper

the paper 1 AQA combined trilogy biology paper 1 2019 went off-spec by asking about when asking "beta blocker" was like TH this is not in the spec I literately left that 6 marker blank when i saw it and genuinely thought that "I didn't do enough revision" turns out i was partially wrong

why did around 6% of students achieved i grade 9 for OCR English when only around 2% achieved the same grade if they did AQA or Edexcel GCSE English (BIG hint and one of the many reasons why exams board need to go. OR make it so that schools are only allowed to do one exam board (e.g if the school picks AQA then they should do AQA for ALL of their subjects so no "let's do AQA for french and Edexcel for maths")). Have at least all schools within same county do the same exams boards for each subject e.g have every secondary in Cambridgeshire do Edexcel maths etc far less of a pain when parents want to move their kid to another school etc
Reply 14
Avatar for mgi
mgi
20
Original post by Sir Cumference
There's no evidence that it's even possible for a few exam creators to make exactly the same difficulty every year if they have to use completely new questions each year. Unless they trial the exam to a sample of students but that won't be possible.

Yes I agree this is annoying but it will get less annoying as there is more data and you can see what the average grade boundaries are. Is this annoyance a big enough deal to consider getting rid of grade boundaries? I'd need to see evidence that students not knowing what grade they're at throughout the year causes worse performing students. It could even be the opposite - if a students knows that they need e.g. 70% to get an A then maybe they won't try as hard to improve? Who knows.


Uk school students are too soft. And where in the world are there exam systems without grade boundaries? The OP is just moaning but didnt name any countries that dont have grade boundaries! I think KS3 school exams should be made harder though because too many kids are chilling out at GCSE!
Original post by mgi
countries that dont have grade boundaries!

France, America
This is just absurd. Even universities scale results if a paper was found unexpectedly hard. It is impossible to predict with 100% accuracy how students will find a question. You see on examiner reports that some question were anticipated to be easy, but candidates struggled and some questions that were intended to be quite challenging but that candidates found straightforward. They will always aim to make exams comparable difficulty but they'll never be of the same difficulty. Small changes in grade boundaries ensure that people are not disadvantaged for having sat a harder paper.

Original post by 1st superstar
France, America

Might be misunderstanding the American system, but my impression is that they do not have centrally set exams until university admissions exams eg. SATs, etc. I'm pretty sure even SATs are done relatively. So different high schools would have different policies.
Reply 17
Avatar for TCL
TCL
18
I don't think this is just about moderation, it is also about whether grade boundaries make sense - should 84% be viewed as more similar to 74% or 85%? Just because it falls the wrong side of the boundary, it is treated the same as a score significantly less instead of one which is a small amount more.

It is also hitting gap year applicants to university. 8 at GCSE is actually much more like an A than an A*, loads of gap year applicants have As which would have been 8s, but they are being treated differently.

Grades are a very clumsy way of scoring achievement.
I wonder if there is a better system than reporting grades, though? We all want consistency over successive exam series, between exam boards, and even across different subjects.

What I mean is, if I am an employer or a higher education admissions tutor, I need to be able to quickly evaluate how someone with an OCR Music A-level sat in June 2018 compares with someone with an Eduqas English Literature A-level sat in June 2019.
Original post by TCL
I don't think this is just about moderation, it is also about whether grade boundaries make sense - should 84% be viewed as more similar to 74% or 85%? Just because it falls the wrong side of the boundary, it is treated the same as a score significantly less instead of one which is a small amount more.

It is also hitting gap year applicants to university. 8 at GCSE is actually much more like an A than an A*, loads of gap year applicants have As which would have been 8s, but they are being treated differently.

Grades are a very clumsy way of scoring achievement.

true they should either:
a. keep the grade boundaries the same every year
b. do it based on percentage and mark and not grade (so no "you got an A" be more like "you got 85%" or you got 34/50)

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