Predicted Grades and Mock Results

Hi, I have a couple of questions that are pretty hard to explain straight from scratch, so I'm going to explain some context to my query in the hope that what I would like to know will make more sense.

In November and December, I did my mock exams. My teachers told me that they were just to see how we were doing, what we needed to revise, and what we were good at as a whole year group. So, I revised as much as I though necessary for them; I focused on the subjects I was weaker at and had less intention of revising for the real exams so as to get some early practice in and span the revision over a longer period of time, and the subjects I was better at I didn't revise so much which, in hindsight , probably wasn't the best course of action.

I did my exams and got the following grades:

Art: A
English language:A
English literature:A
French:A
Geography:A*
History:B
Maths:B
RE:A*
Biology:A*
Chemistry:B
Physics:C

I was extremely happy with these mock results seeing as I still had around 5 months more of revision. However, my happiness soon ended when I discovered that our mock results were our new predicted grade.

In fact, I freaked out A LOT. See, I really wanted to take chemistry, maths, biology and history at A-level at a grammar school near me and to do this, you need a certain score based on your predicted grades. Here's where it gets complicated: before having done my mocks, I had 64 points based on my predicted grades and afterwards, I had 56, only 2 above the boundary to get in. As well as this, my predicted grades the 4 subjects I want to take dramatically decreased, from A*AAA to A*BBB.

In some cases, such as physics, my predicted grade fell 4 grades because of my mock exam, which was half of our entire course. In physics lessons this year I have never gotten lower than an A*, and I know that mocks are a good indicator of how we will do in the summer, but I feel it's really unfair to base them entirely on the mock exams, and not on our class work and past papers we do in lessons.

Also, my history grade dropped from an A* to a B. The mock paper we did we had never practiced before as it was the historical source investigations one which was only introduced last year. We had never been given a practice at it, yet this has dropped my predicted grade down to a B?

I have to send this report to the grammar school I want to go to, and feel so worried about what they are going to think of me when they receive it. I've had to change my A-level options just because of how much the mocks have affected my entry potential.

This has happened to everyone in my year, and a ton of people can no longer apply because they don't meet the entry requirements, even though they get A's and A*'s on tests. Before we did the mocks we were never told how much of an impact they would have on our chances of applying to better sixth forms, we just thought they highlighted what we needed to improve. So my questions are as follows;

Does every school change each predicted grade in every subject to what you got in your mock exams?

Do you think this is fair?

Do you think it will affect my chances of getting into the grammar school?

Thank you for reading my essay (:

Reply 1

jamierogers21

I got my mock grades and my predicted results back last week and the mocks affected my predicted but they weren't based solely on that. You could always try speaking to somebody at the grammar school about your situation because it certainly isn't fair.