Estimating grades for the new English specifications
We recognise that being able to provide grades to students is a fundamental element of their role and an important way to monitor and recognise students' achievements. We are now developing resources that will provide a greater level of support by making clearer links between marks and grades. In the meantime, this is the current situation.
The unit boundaries for our specifications are determined by an awarding committee, which is a requirement of our regulator. Their Code of Practice requires us to inspect candidates' work and to take account of statistical and technical evidence before these boundaries can be set. As this is the first full year of the new GCSE specifications for English, this cannot happen until after the examinations have taken place, so before then it is impossible to predict what the unit boundaries will be.
While this means that we are lacking a direct benchmark for the first year, there are some simple ways to address this, which rely on teachers' experience and professional judgement. The overall standard of GCSEs has not changed with the introduction of the new specifications, so students are likely to gain similar subject grades as students of comparable ability have in previous years.
Grade boundaries for controlled assessment units
For controlled assessment units, we advise centres to adopt the following procedure.
- Mark the work according to the assessment criteria, discounting any expectations about a student's grade.
- Assign estimated grades based on the grade descriptions in the specification and on knowledge of students' achievements in previous years in comparable specifications.
If students are informed of their internally-assessed marks, it is important to make it clear that these marks are still subject to moderation by AQA.
When a specification has been in operation for some time, grade boundaries for internally assessed units often stay the same from year to year, though there are occasions when adjustments are made, such as to maintain an appropriate balance between external and internal units. Such adjustments are always in the interest of fairness to candidates and do not indicate a change to the subject standard.
Grade boundaries vs. Uniform Mark Scale (UMS)
The grade boundaries discussed above relate to raw marks, which are the original marks awarded when a paper is assessed (or the marks after moderation, in the case of internally assessed units).
These raw mark grade boundaries should not be confused with the uniform mark grade boundaries published in the specifications. The uniform mark scale (UMS) is used to ensure that unit results from different series have the same value when contributing to an overall grade, irrespective of the difficulty of the paper.
