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Crazy undermarking in old AQA practicals? (Physics, Chemistry, Biology, units 3/6)

My mark for unit 6 in Physics was 18/60, so if you take out the 9 PSA that's 9 in the entire paper. If you take out the 7 or 8 marks from the actual experiment, that's 1 or 2 marks on the paper.

It's completely out of line with all the past papers I did, my AS grade and how comfortable I was with the exam, y'know 'cause safe to say I got more than 0 on those haha. Either my tutor ****ed up or this is nationwide thing. Anyone else?
Original post by Neverdie
My mark for unit 6 in Physics was 18/60, so if you take out the 9 PSA that's 9 in the entire paper. If you take out the 7 or 8 marks from the actual experiment, that's 1 or 2 marks on the paper.

It's completely out of line with all the past papers I did, my AS grade and how comfortable I was with the exam, y'know 'cause safe to say I got more than 0 on those haha. Either my tutor ****ed up or this is nationwide thing. Anyone else?



It's a nationwide thing. The system of practicals is essentially broken. Teachers can tell students the answers before the test, and then the teachers are the ones marking them! This leads to very high marks nationwide, and hence an under scaling on UMS. Your school would also be required to send a random selection of practical exams in to the exam board. If they think your teacher's marking has been particularly generous, they will scale down everybody's results in that class.

There are so many factors that may cause this, and you may have ended up with a pretty decent raw mark!
Reply 2
Original post by Nirgilis
It's a nationwide thing. The system of practicals is essentially broken. Teachers can tell students the answers before the test, and then the teachers are the ones marking them! This leads to very high marks nationwide, and hence an under scaling on UMS. Your school would also be required to send a random selection of practical exams in to the exam board. If they think your teacher's marking has been particularly generous, they will scale down everybody's results in that class.

There are so many factors that may cause this, and you may have ended up with a pretty decent raw mark!


I'm aware of the failings of practicals in general, but that doesn't explain my situation. Please see the post.
Original post by Neverdie
I'm aware of the failings of practicals in general, but that doesn't explain my situation. Please see the post.


It does explain the situation. Say you ended up getting 25 out of 40 in terms of raw marks, then your coursework was moderated down, so you lost a couple of marks, and then you were down-scaled when converting to UMS, you could easily end up with 18/60 UMS.

If you believe it's wrong, talk to the exams officer at school :yep:
Reply 4
Original post by Nirgilis
It does explain the situation. Say you ended up getting 25 out of 40 in terms of raw marks, then your coursework was moderated down, so you lost a couple of marks, and then you were down-scaled when converting to UMS, you could easily end up with 18/60 UMS.

If you believe it's wrong, talk to the exams officer at school :yep:


Oh so that's UMS, it was nearly the same as the marks so thought it was the marks.

Well using the calculator, 10 marks is the difference between A* and E. 4 marks the difference between A and C. Haha what a **** up.
Original post by Neverdie
Oh so that's UMS, it was nearly the same as the marks so thought it was the marks.

Well using the calculator, 10 marks is the difference between A* and E. 4 marks the difference between A and C. Haha what a **** up.


Tell me about it :console: . I'm really sorry it happened. I know several people who thought they had A's in their coursework actually end up with E's due to this massive muck-bucket of a system :sigh:
Reply 6
Original post by Nirgilis
Tell me about it :console: . I'm really sorry it happened. I know several people who thought they had A's in their coursework actually end up with E's due to this massive muck-bucket of a system :sigh:


I suppose the grades themselves don't matter for the unit, but it's just so strange to have no problems with it, get 45 in AS and then 18 or whatever in this one. I'll have to do some calculatoring of the marks to see if it's even worth finishing.
Reply 7
Original post by Neverdie
I suppose the grades themselves don't matter for the unit, but it's just so strange to have no problems with it, get 45 in AS and then 18 or whatever in this one. I'll have to do some calculatoring of the marks to see if it's even worth finishing.


I only just got round to looking it up, and in Unit 6 at least, 2 marks separated every grade (A to B, B to C etc.) What a farce! It's so bad I can only laugh rather than cry. I had no chance.

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