Recently my year 11 students got their final coursework marks back from the exam board. Overall they did brilliantly and I was really impressed and proud of their efforts. What bothered me though was how some of the girls points were awarded.
For those who are not teachers and reading this essentially I mark their projects out of 64. This is a raw mark which is submitted to the exam board. Based on national data, the prevailing wind direction and the state of the Australian stock exchange this raw mark is then converted into a UMS points score out of 120. It is a scale designed to achieve the best possible spread of students across the grades. I really do not understand it.
Now if a student gets full marks for the raw mark their mark is converted into 120 UMS points. If a student gets 63 out of 64 their UMS points are 108. However if a student got 62 our of 64 their UMS mark is 104. This means that dropping a mark from 64 to 53 leads to a loss of 12 UMS points whereas a single mark drop from 63 to 62 leads to a loss of only 4 UMS points – three times less than the drop from full marks to 63. Now this seems particularly rough for the student when these UMS points are added together with other UMS points from other unots to get their GCSE grade. Obviously that 12 UMS drop is there to try and distinguish between absolute top level students and students lower down but if the difference in raw mark terms is only one mark – what actual difference is there? Even those students who were two raw marks off full marks – that equates to a total drop of 16 UMS points. Considering that UMS grade boundaries are typically 40 points and you can see that dropping just two marks on your coursework at the top end of the spectrum will lead to nearly half a grade lost overall.
It’s not fair on the students and it is one of the reasons why I’ve dumped the GCSE course at our school. We are now doing OCR nationals which I think is far better. Instead of students having to write personal interpretations and responses to obscure marking criteria they are instead asked to meet different skill levels. These skill levels are assessed at pass, merit or distinction and although the evidencing is tough on both students and the teacher I feel it is far better at providing a differentiation between students at a distinction level and a merit level or between a merit and a pass.
As for my current year 11′s I think they are brilliant – I just wish the exam board could see that without having to penalise them unnecessarily for being just a mark or two off the top.
