Associate Director of Standards and Comparability at Ofqual. She previously worked for the AQA and AEB exam boards.
The new GCSE science qualifications can be taken in different ways – students can take single GCSEs in one or more of biology, chemistry and physics, or they can take a double GCSE in combined science. Students who take combined …
This summer we will see the first awards of the new A level maths qualifications. These were available for schools to teach from September 2017, so they would not normally be available to enter after only one year. When we …
If you have children taking GCSEs this year, many of their results will be reported on the new grade scale which runs from 9 (the highest grade) to 1 (the lowest grade). Here’s a brief guide to what that means.
Ahead of this summer’s exams, we’ve asked GCSE maths teachers about their tier entry choices for 2018.
Among the new GCSEs being awarded for the first time this year are French, German and Spanish. These qualifications are different from the previous versions in several ways, which I’ll discuss first. Qualification structure In line with many reformed GCSEs, …
Grade boundaries for GCSEs and A levels are never set in advance of the exams being taken, for a variety of reasons. A key one is that it is impossible to judge precisely how difficult students will find a paper compared to previous papers or sample papers.
We, like schools and colleges, are already looking ahead to this summer’s exams. This year there are more new AS and A level subjects and 9 to 1 GCSEs being awarded for the first time.
I am sure many of you reading this blog will already be focussed on next summer’s GCSE and A level exam series, and first awarding of more new qualifications. Below are a few points of potential interest related to some …
Much has been written about the ‘low’ grade boundaries in GCSE maths and how they are lower than previous years. This has been interpreted as Ofqual lowering the boundaries in the first year of a new qualification. Unfortunately, it’s really not that simple. The new maths GCSEs were designed to be different from the old A* to G GCSEs, so you really can’t compare new and old. Here’s why.
The new GCSE grade scale has been the subject of much debate in recent months. Why did we change it? That’s the question we’re being asked a lot this summer, as we await the first of the new grades. To …
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