Examination Grades

[quizbag]

Once again the grading of exam marks into As & Bs etc raises its ugly head. Why don't they just award the pupil the marks they get - 85% or 20% instead of changing them to grades which is often done just to massage the results as the level for an A can be 75% one year but 60% the next if the cohort of pupils is less able. Quite often it is only one mark that decides between an A or a B but that one mark can make all the difference to getting a university place. Surely a total of points earned out of the total awarded would be fairer.

[thugulike]

Quizbag, I used to be an examiner for one of the big exam boards. The scripts are marked and then a decision is made as to how many will fall into each grade. I laugh each year as they announce in the press that there are more grade As that year. I suspect it has to do with government policy. You could have an A one year and a C the following year with the same paper.

[factor-fiction]

>You could have an A one year and a C the following year with the same paper.
I agree that raw marks are converted into a UMS mark and then boundaries are set, but I wouldn't agree that a C one year could be an A the next on the same paper.
For a start there are two tiers of paper- Foundation and Higher - and on the first the highest grade possible is C whereas an A can only be achieved on the Higher paper.
Certainly as far as Maths is concerned there is a big difference between a C and an A. My Year 11 students have taken about 10 past papers over the last 2 months and their marks are very consistent indeed from paper to paper, showing a modest improvement of up to one grade.