The government has said that many exams and assessments cannot be held fairly this year as a result of the disruption students have faced due to the pandemic.
Your teachers will instead submit grades to the exam boards, based on their assessment of what you have shown you know and can do, enabling you to progress to the next stage of your education, training, or employment.
Collect your GCSE grades from The Edge Academy on Thursday 12th August 2021 between 9am and 12pm.
How GCSEs will be awarded in summer 2021
How your grade will be determined:
·Graded by teacher judgement, with grades signed off by your subject teacher and the principal (Andrew Wakefield) before being submitted to the exam board
· It is not graded by an algorithm
· You’ll only be assessed on what you’ve been taught
· Your school will tell you the evidence they will use to determine your grade
· You will not be told what grade has been submitted for you
Evidence:
· A range of evidence can be used, such as mocks, tests and work you have already done
· Non-exam assessment (often known as coursework) should continue
· Non-exam assessment can be used as evidence even if incomplete
· Art & design grades will be based only on your portfolio
· School can use questions provided by exam boards if they choose to do so
· Your school must follow guidance when determining your grades and the exam boards will check they have done so
Appeals
If, when you receive your results, you are concerned that your grade is wrong there is an appeals process in place. Your first step should be to speak to your school for feedback and advice. You can find out more details from your school or exam board. See also, ‘What to do if you think your grade is wrong’.
Students who are entitled to reasonable adjustments
Schools have a responsibility to put in place reasonable adjustments for eligible students. If some of the evidence has been produced without a reasonable adjustment in place, your teachers should take that into account when determining your teacher-assessed grade. If you’re concerned you should raise this with your school.
Selecting the evidence used
Your school alone will decide which evidence to use to assess the standard at which you’re performing. They will try and use the same sources of evidence for everyone in your class and the evidence will be specific to the subject.
Your school will tell you which pieces of work will count towards your grade, before your grade is submitted to the exam board. You will have the opportunity to raise any genuine and valid concerns with your school or college.
It is really important that you and your parents or carers don’t try to put your teachers under pressure to submit grades higher than the evidence supports.
Principals have been asked to keep records of such cases and exam boards may treat this behaviour as malpractice.
Taking exceptional circumstances into account
If you suffered a bereavement, for example, or there were other factors outside your control that might have impacted on your performance when producing evidence, you should discuss this with your school.
Quality assurance
Your school and the exam boards will carry out checks to make sure that your school has followed the necessary guidance when submitting your grades.
Each school will have its own policy that sets out how they will determine grades this year. The exam boards will review these policies before grades are submitted.
Schools will carry out their own quality assurance of your grade. This might involve checking that grades are consistent between individual teachers or asking another teacher to give a second view on your mark for a particular assessment.
Your principal will submit a declaration to the exam board confirming they have met the requirements set by the exam boards when determining your grade.
Once the exam boards receive the teacher-assessed grades they will ask every school and college to send them samples of student work. Exam board subject experts, made up of experienced examiners, will review the evidence from a sample of centres. This random sample will cover a range of centre types and regions. The exam boards will also look at evidence from new schools or colleges that might need more support, and from schools and colleges where the results are significantly different to their historical results when compared to other centres. This includes centres where grades are much higher or much lower than in previous years.
In these sample checks, exam boards will check that the academic judgement has been reasonable when deciding grades. If the exam board is concerned this isn’t the case, they will ask the school to look into this and may ask them to resubmit grades. Exam boards will not issue results until they are satisfied with the outcome of any investigation.
What to do if you think your grade is wrong
Appeals
1. If you think your grade is wrong, you should first ask your school to check whether they made a mistake in determining or submitting the grade.
2. If they identify a mistake, your school can submit a revised grade to the exam board to consider.
3. If they don’t identify an error but you still believe that your grade is wrong, you can ask your school to submit a formal appeal to the exam board for you.
You can appeal for any of the following reasons:
· there was an error in the way the school followed or applied its procedure for determining your teacher assessed grade
· the school did not make a reasonable judgement when deciding which evidence to use to determine your teacher assessed grade
· the school did not make a reasonable judgement about your grade based on the evidence gathered
4.The exam board will consider whether your school followed its written process, and review the evidence your grade was based on.
5. The exam board will consider if your grade needs correcting. They may do this if they believe your grade is not a reasonable judgement or they find a mistake in the procedure which affected your grade. A corrected grade could be higher or lower than the grade you were given on results day.
6. The final route of appeal is Ofqual’s Exam Procedure Review Service (EPRS). You can apply to EPRS if the exam board decides that the grade you were awarded is reasonable, and your school correctly followed its procedure, but you are still concerned that there may have been an error in the procedure used by the exam board to conduct the appeal.
The EPRS can consider whether the exam board has followed its rules and procedures. It will not consider whether you got the right grade based on the evidence of your work. The exam board’s final decision on your grade will stand unless the EPRS finds that the exam board made an error in its review procedure. Even if an error is found, your grade may stay the same.