Low English A Level Grades

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I'm on AQA, which seems to be really messing people up with English these days. I got a B at AS.

I went from down 2 grades to an E in english with aqa, everyone else who retook the exam went down to Ds and Es too, all of these people were predicted A*s/As and Bs

Reply 21

klokwork

So I was having chats with mum, and apparently the exam companies have a history of grading papers way too low, so that people will re-take, and thus the examiners make more money? Anyone else ever heard of this?

Reply 22

amineamine2

Original post by klokwork

In Eng Lit and Lang, only one person has got an A in their Jan exams so far, and usually at our school the percentage is much higher. Are any other schools experiancing oddly low gardes??

Cant tell, as in my school one person getting an A in a subject is quite a high result lol. No one in the sciences, English and a few humanities got an A in my school's AS results this year.

Reply 23

Tweek

Original post by klokwork

No but it does make sense.

Is it just a coincidence that grades are nearly always lower in January than summer? Even for people re-sitting and not taking them first time. Forces people to re sit in summer when they're more fairly marked.....

Conspiracy theories... Don't take me seriously.

Reply 24

Havanark

Original post by klokwork

In Eng Lit and Lang, only one person has got an A in their Jan exams so far, and usually at our school the percentage is much higher. Are any other scho

ols experiancing oddly low gardes??

Ooops..i just accidentally negged you :colondollar:

sorry! I meant to give it a positive rep

And my class is having the same issue.. This was the one exam i wasn't worried about..neither was our teacher so we're looking to get scripts back..remark and stuff :/

Reply 25

Havanark

Original post by Tweek

It makes sense though.. It just sucks for us -.-

Reply 26

Anniestasia

Everyone in our class did really well! Couldnt have done better actually :cool:

Reply 27

Robbie242

Same story with history, only 1 person in our entire year scored an A, majority scored C's D's and E's including my C grade at least :frown:

Reply 28

NoSpeakNewSpeak

Original post by klokwork

My teacher once said something similar. He said that less people did January exams so the examiners tended to mark harsher. Could well be to get more money. Could well be...

Reply 29

Laurajc95

I got my results for A2 LITA3 today and I have to say I'm really shocked. I got an A in the exam at AS (only dropping 1 mark) and I got an A in my coursework, and today I open my exam results to find that I got an E! I wouldn't say that I thought the exam went brilliantly but I felt a little confident about it - so an E was totally not what I was expecting.

Also, weirdly I'm not the only one in my class who has done a lot worse than expected - loads of us came out with E's and D's - when we were expected A's - I just don't understand! And there were people who were predicted far lower grades who ended coming out top of the class with B's and C's when they only achieved D's at AS.

And I managed to get an A in my English Language ENGA3 exam, another shock (though admittedly a good one) - so I'm baffled as to how my lit grade is so low. To be honest I could have understood more even if I had come out with a C or a D, but I really don't know where I went SO wrong to end up with an E. :frown:

Reply 30

Daniellejo.

We got really good grades in our school :dontknow:

. Pretty much As and Bs across the board from what I can tell, and we're an average sixth form.
I even got full UMS! :biggrin:

Woop woop. I was expecting it to go well though (admittedly not that well).

EDIT: This is A2 AQA btw.

(edited 11 years ago)

Reply 31

Sophie1994

English results were dodgy in my school too, no one got an A in their results :s-smilie:

Reply 32

MichaelB6

I registered just to post my sob story, haha. (Studying English Lit AQA A)

Last year I got high marks in my coursework (I think 71/80), but I ballsed my exam up. I knew I did the moment I came out of the halls. Sure enough, ye, got my results back and I got 73/120, ergo a C. I was pretty upset since English Lit is my favourite subject, but not surprised and just thought I'd have to put extra effort in the January resit.

I did that. I revised a good 8 hours a week at least, missed friends 18ths, destroyed my social life, all in the hope that I would get an A in the exam, since my chosen uni (Sussex) wants AAB or A*BB. Sat the exam (Struggle for Identity and Duffy poetry), and really, I thought it went pretty ok. Not amazing, but I thought I'd ATLEAST got a solid B, and I was quietly confident that I got an A. I mean, I memorized the AO's of by heart, made the correct links etc, only negative thing was I slightly rushed the Duffy section.

But nope, got my results today. 82/120. C, near a B, but still not an A over all. Not gunna lie, devastated. Utterly devastated. I just don't understand how in this exam, where I *knew* I did x10 better than my ballsed up exam last year, I got a grand total of 9 marks more? :/

I really think the marking is botched. It's even worse since this was my last chance; the syllabus has changed, and this was quite literally my last chance of getting an A without re-doing another year at college. Just so... devastated. Another year of my life wasted and I just don't understand why. >.>

Definitely recalling my paper and asking for it be remarked. I've never trusted AQA much anyway, when ever I read about them, they're always commented for their hit and miss marking. They're either too generous or too cruel. >.>

edit:

predicted an A* for the record. Looks like that won't happen... haha.

(edited 11 years ago)

Reply 33

Shiori_Azuma

I re-took Lit A 1B in January after getting a decent B in June. This time I managed to get a very low C, if I'm understanding the UMS and grade boundaries right. Another girl resitting got an E (think she got a D last time) and I've not spoken to the other two yet. Bit annoying but at least I've still got an overall B for AS. Managed to get an A on my A2 coursework though so not all bad news :tongue:

.

I think I'm going to request for my script back to see where I went wrong this time and resit in the summer as the exam is supposedly a few weeks before my A2s start. Third time's the charm! :huff:

Reply 34

MichaelB6

I think I'm going to request for my script back to see where I went wrong this time and resit in the summer as the exam is supposedly a few weeks before my A2s start. Third time's the charm!

I think loads of people are doing that.

Although I just found out that my friend (who usually gets Cs/Ds in all her courses, but she happily admits she's awful at English) who also retook the AQA Lit A AS exam in January, got a B (she got a U last year)

Stung a little. I'm really happy for her, but at the same time... a C grade student, who did no revision or preparation (and ironically used my notes for some last minute revision), has got higher than me? :/

I'm just hoping this can be explained once I get my paper back. If I actually did badly, I'd feel a lot better about it than I do now.

Reply 35

Massives

Got a highish B last year in the exam (wrote about the same book in both questions cause I'm dumb), and nearly full marks on coursework.

Predicted an A overall and came out of the exam in January thinking 'this couldn't have gone better', 'I must've have gotten at least a B', 'I'm glad I probably won't have to resit it'.

Results came back a 'D', 2 marks off a 'C'. Overall my college did really badly in Eng Lit, and they constantly cry about AQA marking harshly and inconsistently, though two people got 120/120 UMS.

The same thing happened last year though in terms of unexpected grades, 4 people got 120/120 at AS and we got their papers back and looked at them; couldn't find a difference between what they wrote and a C grade paper. It seems there's just a huge difference between how each examiner marks, which is unfortunate.

Gonna get my script back and I have to resit...

Reply 36

dopenojoke

I feel for the people here who got such low grades in English Lit too,
I thought this time I would have done so well but turns out it was the opposite.

I am begging that they're going to be more lenient in the summer.

Reply 37

Hilly1

Yeah I got an E in LITB3 after getting C's in the original..

I got a B in Lang though, while getting E's and U's in mock papers.. odd.

Reply 38

dopenojoke

Original post by Hilly1

Yeah I got an E in LITB3 after getting C's in the original..

I got a B in Lang though, while getting E's and U's in mock papers.. odd.

Same!! I got a B in Lang & E in Lit too haha.

i think there's something fishy going on with the Lit results... Almost everyone here are getting really low grades for Lit.

Reply 39

Wormbook

It's hit my school too, the AQA LITB3 papers were awful. Out of those taking it (about 35 of us) there were no As and only three Bs, the majority being Ds and Es. Bear in mind that most people are predicted A*/A!

I got a low C myself when I'm predicted a solid A, and English Literature is the course I've applied for at uni.

What has s really confused me though is that I retook the AS LITB1 paper in January and came out of that with 120/120, and I worked less for that than I did for LITB3! What has happened?!