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Getting added percent on GCSE's for various reasons
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Hey people, just wanted to know ur thought on something!
I should think most of you know that, certainly with AQA, you can get 2% added onto your grade for having a headache. You can have 5% added on if your pet dies on the day of an exam, or 10% if a member of your family dies.
So, it can happen - having marks added on I mean. I'm not sure if I think that's right or not, but even so...
My french teacher, who was lovely, died of cancer during this year. She was obivously off work six months previously, and my stupid school couldn't organise a different teacher. We had, for sixth months, a series of supply teachers (i.e. a different one each day), most of who, could not speak french. We eventually got a permenant supply for the 2 months before the exam - and she was shocked at how crap we were! I was predicted an A* in French - I'm good at French. But obivously not having a teahcer for so long hindered progress!
I know if I'm trlu good at french I should do well anyway, and adding percentage onto your exam prob won't put you up a grade, and even if it did, it's not because you're good at the subject.
But what are everyone's thoughts?
Interested to hear your responses!
I should think most of you know that, certainly with AQA, you can get 2% added onto your grade for having a headache. You can have 5% added on if your pet dies on the day of an exam, or 10% if a member of your family dies.
So, it can happen - having marks added on I mean. I'm not sure if I think that's right or not, but even so...
My french teacher, who was lovely, died of cancer during this year. She was obivously off work six months previously, and my stupid school couldn't organise a different teacher. We had, for sixth months, a series of supply teachers (i.e. a different one each day), most of who, could not speak french. We eventually got a permenant supply for the 2 months before the exam - and she was shocked at how crap we were! I was predicted an A* in French - I'm good at French. But obivously not having a teahcer for so long hindered progress!
I know if I'm trlu good at french I should do well anyway, and adding percentage onto your exam prob won't put you up a grade, and even if it did, it's not because you're good at the subject.
But what are everyone's thoughts?
Interested to hear your responses!
Post edited by JustV on
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In general though, I think diffferent people handle things differently. I don't know to what extent my dad dying had on my exam results, because as a way of coping I made extra effort to focus on school and such. But I know some people fall to pieces completely and stop going to school altogether. Because people can have such varying reactions, I don't know whether 'blanket' mark appendages are necessarily the right way to go about things. But I don't know the actual figures or anything, so there we go.
Fortunately, since it's GCSE, it really won't matter much for you (apart from your pride) how you fare in french. Though having a string of supply teachers can be one of the most damaging things to someone's education. Good luck for next week!
I need to get an A in french to get into the sixth form I want to go to, so it does matter a bit - but, as you say, the main damage will be to my pride!
im sorry bout your dad aswell. hope that you things get better for you,
Good luck with your results everyone!
funny you say that...we were thinking of getting a goldfish and killing it and say we're traumatised.
That's crap.
And for various reasons, I was off school alot during my GCSEs and never had any marks added. And had to go back after about 3 weeks to catch up on everything and struggled with it so I did much worse than predicted for all GCSEs apart from 2...
i have ever sympathy for someone who, say, loses a close family member mid-exam period (not even going to dignify the headache or gerbil dying with a response) but the solution isn't to add marks on. what if they still did the exam to the best of their ability? then they'd have a grade they don't deserve, that is a false indicator of their ability.
a better idea would be to have a reserve paper for the exam (different questions) and then if people have a serious trauma or something that might affect their ability to do the paper properly, let them take it at a designated date in the future when they have their head back together and are feeling more settled.
That would actually be a much worse idea, in just about every way possible.
The idea of "added marks" isn't actually true I don't believe. They take into account the results you were getting in coursework and school assessments when they give out enhancements because of illness or personal difficulties. They don't just blindly add marks to the exam paper.
because...?
i can't see how that can be any worse than an examiner blindly guessing how seriously x y or z happening to a candidate might have affected their mark.
for example: little eve might be a bit upset that her granny died the day before her exam, but her gran's been ill for a long time, and she never really saw her often, so although she felt a bit tearful and worried about how she'd do, in the end she managed to do the exam to the best of her ability.
on the other hand, little adam has a huge soft spot for his gran, who he practically lived with, and she died suddenly the day before, so adam is in pieces, and doesn't even remember how to spell his name, much less the geographical makeup of cheshire.
the same examiner marks them both, and ups eve's mark as much as adam's. is this a fair way of doing it?
in my day/area, if something serious happened to you, instead of making you do the exam and guessing how well you might have done had it not have happened, you did the exam if you were able, and the examiner was sent copies of your mock exams and samples of coursework from throughout the year, so they could see what kind of student you normally were, and predict the mark you probably would have got from that.
however, now that there are a lot more students claiming special circumstances (in my experience - might not be true) it would be a whole lot of extra work for the examiners, so might not be a fab idea.
I cant understand things like a headache or pet dies, how can this be proved.
Bring in a dead hamster?
Logistics and extra pressure.
Logistics, especially.
Which AFAIK is what still happens.
And its also what I said should happen.
When the fire alarm went off in our exam, we were told "you are not to leave the exam room under any circumstances."
Not only did we have to sit and wonder if we were about to burn to death, we had our (very annoying) fire siren going off for about twenty minutes of the exam!
God i hated school. Good old college