How to improve my Art A Level grade?

I’m currently in year 12 studying A Level Art, Craft and Design (AQA). I just got my first predicted grade which was a C.
I’m planning to apply to an Art/fashion college and I would have a much higher chance of being accepted with a grade of at least a B or above. However I’m not really sure how to push up my grade?
I did Art GCSE and although I didn’t put as much effort in at the beginning, once I realised I wanted to pursue the subject at A Level, I worked harder on my art and made the effort, but grade didn’t really change?
Please help I’m so stuck and the advice my teachers give is really vague 😭

Well, i don’t do art craft and design, but i do fine art which is similar enough. Got a 9 at gcse and predicted an a*
I’m not an art moderator or teacher obviously but i’ll say what i know. If you’re art work is good, and when I say good, I mean people genuinely look at you’re work and they’re in awe- including your teachers- then you can get an a* with minimal work. Stronger pieces means less annotation and work essentially. This is my approach personally^^
And it works the other way too, if you know you’re art isn’t as strong, then it simply means more work for an a or a*. It’s definitely not impossible. You have 2 routes.
You could a) work on improving artistic technique which means spending more time to get to that level of art where people are genuinely impressed. You’re in year 12 so i’d suggest this. It just means cutting down time for other subjects to work on art. It also means by year 13 your work will be veryyy decent and way less annotations.
Or you could b) basically cheat the system and get a/a* with mid level art. I have a friend whose work isn’t strong, but she knows this and she makes up for it by doing a ton of work in her sketchbook. I mean it’s jam packed and barely closes. She’s not necessarily strong in any medium, so she experiments with all of them. Literally every one. Even film production. You could take this route but it means preparing to dedicate a lot of time making random pieces and annotating them heavily.
General advice is keep experimenting with every medium, because you might just find one that you’re surprisingly good at. Back in year 10 I had another friend who just seemed to be bad at everything and she was seriously failing, then one day she found clay, and long story short, she got a 9. I use a bit of everything, but I know that when it comes to making work I know will get an a*, i’m immediately using ordinary graphite pencils.
A lot of teachers are bias, there’s obviously AO’s that you need to meet but i’ve overheard my alevel teachers literally say to each other whilst marking year 9 work ‘well you like this one but i don’t so let’s give them a solid 6’. In this case it’s kinda annoying to get a good grade, but you can get on art teachers nice sides which I wouldn’t recommend unless it’s like a last alternative. You need to be in the art rooms/studious 24/7 so they can see your enthusiasm and will to get a better grade. Don’t necessarily do everything they say in terms of recommending you artists etc, but listen to their advice somewhat so they’ll think ‘wow they’ve really listened to what I’ve said and it’s evident in their work’ Your grade will jump up.
It’s a lot, but i hope it’s helpful. art alevel can be rlly tedious but an a* is defo possible. You’re still in year 12 so don’t sweat it. This is general advice btw so if you want something more specific lmk

I’m currently in year 12 studying A Level Art, Craft and Design (AQA). I just got my first predicted grade which was a C.
I’m planning to apply to an Art/fashion college and I would have a much higher chance of being accepted with a grade of at least a B or above. However I’m not really sure how to push up my grade?
I did Art GCSE and although I didn’t put as much effort in at the beginning, once I realised I wanted to pursue the subject at A Level, I worked harder on my art and made the effort, but grade didn’t really change?
Please help I’m so stuck and the advice my teachers give is really vague 😭

I studied Fine Art at A-Level. If it helps I was given a C for my Y12 Mocks but then got an A (one mark off an A* annoyingly) as a final grade. My teachers were also really vague when I would ask grade-related questions.
I haven't seen your work so I can't be sure what the specific issue is, but here are my three pointers:
(1) Sometimes you just really have to churn out art at a crazy pace and keep going back and improving old works. I studied History and Economics and Art was by far the most taxing in workload, unfortunately.
(2) Make sure your work has analysis behind it. You need to be able to justify every choice you make with some writing where you analyse existing artists/art movements and then try and replicate them yourself. Make sure you present these essays so they look nice in the book. If you can, go to exhibitions and stick the pamphlets/postcards in the book. Sometimes teachers suggest boring/uninspired artists to look into, but exhibitions can be a good way to find strong links between artists. Then hopefully the curator of the exhibition has done most of the work for you in terms of analysis (but don't plagiarise!)
(1) Sometimes, the specific art syle you use just doesn't match the grading criteria. You could put loads of time and effort in, put lots of thought and art history-style analysis behind it but sometimes the style is too abstract or pattern-based or whatever to prove to examiners what your art skill is. E.g. something that proves you can blend with a painbrush rather than restrict yourself to a pattern-style which looks flatter. For your next project, try a different direction.