GCSE Enlgish Language Retake- Edexcel

Hi,
My brother just received his results for his english language retake.
In August he was 3 marks off a C so retook the 'writer's voice' exam.

He just got the mark back and although his UMS in this exam was higher he is now 25 marks off a C. The grade for the paper is listed as a U. I thought that they would always take the highest grade if you retook meaning that you could never be in a worse position after the retake. He seems to have dropped to only just being a D.

Looking at it on the edexcel page, the UMS grade boundaries for a C seem to have increased from 150 to 180 marks. I thought UMS boundaries remained the same and that paper's raw marks were scaled to fit this.

The other thing is that looking at the results it is not clear whether his speaking and listening tasks which he did last year have been counted.

I was wondering whether anyone else is having this problem as I do not really understand what has happened. Does anyone know what is going on? Have I misunderstood how the system works? And if people are having the same issue, what are they doing about it?

Thanks

Reply 1

studentmolls

Although I am not 100% sure what happened with your brothers marks, what I do know is that the english language is changing all the time. My school don't know whether our Speaking and Listening grades will count yet, which would make the exam a higher percentage of the grade...

i blame michael gove

Reply 2

Alexa27

We've been told by the exam board that it has 'always been' that if you retake, and get lower that that mark counts at GCSE... I don't remember that ever being the case.