OCR RS

I did AQA RS (was in y13 this year) and i know somewhat how you feel. Like i would get a lot of Bs, some As and then some Cs but most of my essays i felt like i was writing them all to the same standard so i never really knew exactly what was going wrong in the ones where i got a C.

My best advice would just be to persevere and carry on doing what you’re doing. That’s really annoying that you’re teachers aren’t being any help, is that mostly due to having to speak to them online or would things not be any different even if you were at school rn?

I got an A at AS level, bc my school sit the actual exams, and my worst rough patch with RE was actually pretty recently like january - march, it wasn’t going amazing. Like i was doing fine with one teacher ( mostly As and a few Bs) and getting Cs all the time with the other, and even an E on one of my mock essays. And it was really really frustrating bc it just felt like it had gotten so much harder in year 13 and i was struggling to know how to actually improve, honestly my whole class was the same as well. But at the same time i think i just kept telling myself that i would get there in the end, obviously corona hit not long after😂.
But yeah basically what i’m trying to say is, don’t let getting Cs put you off, you’re obviously capable if you were getting A/Bs earlier in the year and you may just be having a rough patch with your essays for some reason that i’m sure will pass soon.

Maybe try getting out your old essays and seeing if you can see any differences between them and the ones you’re writing now? Like i say though i wouldn’t blame you if you couldn’t notice anything bc i’ve been the same with RE. And continue to try and get advice from your teachers even if they’re being useless, i hope they’ll be better for you sept when you’re back at school.

Thank you so much for your kind words and advice! We did “assessments” instead of mocks last week and we were allowed to use whatever resources we wanted and it wasn’t in exam conditions. One of the questions was the same as one we got in around October and I got a B on it. So I used that for my mock essay but included more analysis and acted on the feedback but got it back as a C. Her advice to improve was ‘keep going as you are’. I asked if I could resit the paper but she said ‘getting a grade C now is okay’ and that she can ‘see real progress’. I don’t understand that as my grades are getting a lot worse ahah. I’m hoping to get my ethics essay back soon so hopefully that would be better. Thank you so much!

No problem! Yeah i can imagine that’s really frustrating then, like trying to improve on an old essay and getting marked down instead. It’s honestly hard to get your head around at times😂 I think as well with subjects like RS you do have to remember that it can be subjective, like as in one of my teachers was definitely a more harsh marker than the other. I think from one of my teachers it took my until about march in y12 to get an actual A on an essay ( only had a few A/Bs before this) and even then i wasn’t getting an A every time, and then with my other teacher i’d been getting them almost all year. And i mean i know you can’t exactly rely on that but if she’s saying that she thinks you’re doing well then maybe she is just marking harshly and you don’t have much to worry about. It is annoying though that she wouldn’t let you redo it, like as much as a C isn’t a bad grade, you obviously want higher and she could let you redo it even if that doesn’t get put down as your mark like on the ‘system’ or whatever.

Also i don’t know if you find a certain topic harder or what but we got told that usually (for AQA at least) people do worst on ethics and better in philosophy/christianity. Which at first i felt like i didn’t agree with because i really didn’t like christianity in year 12, but then i got the best mark in my christianity paper at AS so i guess you really can’t predict it sometimes😂 So if you were struggling in a certain area then that wouldn’t be unusual. Anyway, i’m sure you’ll get there in the end so just keep going and keep trying to improve as much as you can, as hard and frustrating it may be at times

Thank you so much! I am tempted to get an external teacher to mark my essay just to know where I’m at and get some more clear feedback as my teachers really aren’t providing that. My main concern is not getting into uni in case my essay grades pull it down. In GCSE RS I was predicted a 6 but got an 8 in the actual exam. But at the moment my last alevel grade prediction was a B and I’m so worried this will be pulled down and I wont get into uni.

That would be quite interesting if you could do that, and see if you would be given the same grade and any what feedback you would get. What grade do you need for uni, do you know roughly yet what you might need at least? I wouldn’t worry too much about predictions, if you’re school is anything like mine you could basically ask for any prediction within reason (our teachers didn’t even give our ucas predicted grades, the kind of mentor person who did all the ucas stuff just asked what grades we needed for our top uni and put them down, knew people who got CCC at AS level and she was happy to predict them AAA). I was worried about ucas predictions stopping me getting an offer bc i needed an A* prediction in one subject and i wasn’t sure if they would predict this but it was totally fine and i was worrying for no reason. In terms of worrying about actually getting the grade to get in after you’ve got the offer, it is really scary ofcourse but i guess there’s nothing you can do about it really, apart from trying your best. If you are really worried about not getting the grade you need i would say the best thing you can do is just to make sure you’ve got an insurance with lower grades, that you would at least be somewhat happy to go to and then if you didn’t get the grades you needed for your firm choice you would still have a place at another great uni. Like i say though i’m sure everything will work out if you keep going!

I need at the very least a B, as I’m getting two A’s in my assessments in my other subjects. It’s great to know they can predict higher grades for UCAS, thank you so much for the reassurance. I guess my biggest worry would then be like you said attaining them in my actual exams. Thank you!

I’m sure you’ll be fine with getting a B then if you’re working at a C now and have been working at higher before and are wanting to improve. I can tell you want that A though 😉 Yeah honestly dw about predictions, you’ll be fine. Good luck!!