Can you get a B on the AQA English foundation paper?

Yes - the overall grade can still be a B.

 

Really? I have a few students who scored 83/83 on F paper, and then are low band 4 ... They can get a B? Without sitting Higher? You sure?!?

 

You are talking AQA, nellskip? Just checking, as the paper is out of 80, not 83.
This time around, you would have needed 131 raw marks to get an overall B: so if you add up the CA and speaking marks and add that to whatever raw marks the candidate got in the exam, you should be able to tell if they would get a B overall.
They definitely allow this, as apart form the exam, the entries are not tiered. There is another thread on the go at the moment where someone actually quotes what the exam people told them when they queried this.

 

Hi anteater yes to AQA, and I'm sure some of them got 83!!! Thank you though, that helps a lot!

 

Plus, just add all the scores up irrespective of %? And if it equals 131 it's a B? What's a C then?!?

 

I was told on about three different occasions that this is not true - that whatever they get on CAs and in the exam, the highest a foundation entered student can obtain is a C.

 

Just had a look at our results for the Foundation paper, and see where you are getting the 83 from. 83 is the UMS mark, not the raw mark, but would mean they got 80 out of 80 raw marks.
You can download spreadsheets from AQA to convert the raw scores to UMS. The amount of UMS marks you need for particular grades are on page 23 of the spec.
By my reckoning, which may be wrong, this time around you would have needed 131 raw marks overall (having taken the higher paper in the exam) to get a B, and 135 overall (if you took the Foundation paper in the exam).
So, if you have a kid who got 80 in the foundation exam, they would need a combined raw score of at least 55 marks on their written CAs (out of 80) and the S and L (out of 45) to get an overall B. Very achievable.

 

This may of course be correct - please, AQA, make things clear! - but it does contradict what we were told when we phoned up and asked the same question, We asked this because we were entering some kids whose original over-ambitious target grade was a B, and wanted to be able to justify their Foundation tier entry to parents. As Unit 2 and Unit 3 are not tiered, I suppose there isn't really such a thing as a student who is entered for the Foundation tier over the whole qualification.

 

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This is what I understand to be the case; the only unit that is tiered is
unit 1. You have to submit the student overall for either Foundation (max C
grade) or Higher regardless of whether they sat the Foundation paper for unit 1
– what’s more important are the overall marks.


Btw anteater, how have you worked out that to get a B students need 131/ 135
marks?

 

By using the spreadsheets on the AQA site. There is one for the CAs, one for S and L, and one for the exam. You put in the raw marks and it converts them to UMS and then to a grade.
Admittedly, there isn't one for all three added together for a final total, but the UMS are a static total in the spec, so I took one of the existing spreadsheets, put the UMS in, and worked out from the grade boundaries what would be the requirement this time around.
I reckon you need 174 raw marks out of 205 to get A*, 155 for A, 131 for B, 109 for C, 87 for D (if you took the higher paper in the exam).
If you took the foundation exam, you need 135 for B, 11 for C, and 87 for D
When we phoned them, they said the CA/S and L boundaries could change for the June exam! I don't see how they can do this, though. It is the same cohort of kids doing the same tasks as the ones who entered their CAs in Jan - it makes sense that the exam boundaries can change, but not the CAs between Jan and June. I hope they are bluffing, as at the moment I've got some kids sitting on a C or a B by 1 mark...

 

Did you do your calcuations based on the Jan exam anteater? I did mine based on June 2011 and came up with slightly different figures; A* = 177; A = 158; B = 135; C = 111; D = 87. I didn't convert back to UMS though. I just added up the AQAs raw-score numbers required to reach each grade on each of the three units to get a raw-mark total. eg. A grade for Unit 1 was 57 + Unit 2 was 37 + Unit 3 was 64 = 158.
We did the exam last year but didn't submit the C/As so, like you, have only been able to guesstimate whether a student needs to redo any assignments and/or the exam in order to reach a specific grade when added to their unit 1 mark.

 

After I posted this I contacted AQA to verify and this is the response:
I've checked the UMS boundaries for English 4702 and the maximum you get is 83 UMS
on ENG1F. That means you can only get a C on that paper. However, if the candidate
got at least 43 UMS on ENG02 or 85 UMS on ENL03 they could then get a B grade
overall or even higher depending on how well they do.
So it seems that yes they can!

 

Yes, used the Jan exam - so the Unit 1 exam results are "real" for us, and we've re-entered a lot of kids. But I'm worried about the ones who are now going round thinking they have already got a B or a C, and therefore won't have another go at the exam to boost their score. It only needs the CA or S and L grade boundary to creep up by a few marks to what it was last June... (but I keep asking, and no one from AQA will explain, how CAN it change for the CAs and S and L from Jan to June?)

 

I think it can change because this is what raw scores vs. UMS is about - adjusting the boundaries so that they have a fairly constant percentage of students achieving A* / A / B etc. each year. As we get better at teaching the CAs, so in theory the boundaries will change; after all, each child is effectively competing against all the others in this system. Same with the exams - we get better at teaching it, the students get higher marks, so the boundaries go up. It is also supposed to compensate for "easier" papers vs. more difficult ones in different series.
I understand that whichever series your students entered the exam, the boundaries for that <u>paper</u> is then applied to their exam mark, but that's pretty irrelevant if you didn't submit the CAs at the same time, as the total they get will then be affected by the grade boundaries from the series in which all three units get added up.
I have the same problem with "borderline" students, (like you, we haven't submitted CAs yet). Do we get them to re-do some C/As (nightmare of organisation, additonal teaching, time to do under controlled conditions etc.) and/or do we get them to resit the exam but knowing that actually, they may already have reached the grade, but we just can't be sure...?
Who's for going back to terminal-exams only....?!!

 

Is this actually a stated policy, or is it just what we are assuming?

Definitely. I wish they would hurry up and do it, and save us all the bother of turning to IGCSE!

 

When you say spreadsheets do you mean the grade boundaries pdf?

Do you have a direct link?
Thanks

 

This is correct. At foundation level for GCSE English awarded through AQA, a student can obtain a C as the highest grade if it is a stand alone GCSE.

 

Actually, completely disregard my last post. I too called AQA and yes, if a pupil performs to C grade in the exam paper and obtains B grade marks for ENG02 AND ENG03 then their overall grade could be a B.
Thanks to the OP for posing this question.