If lots of students did really badly in their gcses will the exam board(s) lower the grade boundaries?

Answer 1

YES

Answer 2

the way it works is- the A* grade goes to the top percent of marks- for example the top 10% of students all get an A*. so if the last person in that 10% got 90 say, then the boundary is 90 for a A*. However, if it is really difficult and not many people got very high marks, then the last person in that 10% might have got 70. Therefore, the boundary for a A* is 70! Thats roughly the way it works. There is no exact grade boundary because it changes every year- it just so happens that it's normally around the same mark, give and take a few!! i hope you understand cause it's quite confusing!!!

Answer 3

Yes they do and the reason is because they assume that if many students fail or do badly in a certain exam then said exam was difficult and so the grade boundaries get lowered. It can be helpful in some cases =)

Answer 4

I think the boards have lowered the grade boundaries just in case. That would certainly explain how the number of people passing the exams keeps rising while the lecturers at Universities find that the incoming students know less.

Answer 5

From what i was told from my teacher in History if lots of students do badly in their exams then the exam board may consider lowering the boundary of grades because the exam may have been harder than previous years it all depends on the number of students doing badly and how hard or easy the examiners feel the exam was.

Answer 6

The exam board would probably consider all the possibilities for the poor performance before actually lowering the passing score. Perhaps there was a scoring error, or even a group of bad questions. If a large group does very badly, the exam board would consider adjusting the exam to make it easier to achieve the passing score. The exam board may also question the education that the poor scorers received.

Answer 7

Before the exam questions are fixed, they are trialled in schools to see how students cope with them (usually the year before the question will be used in the real exam). Then the marking scheme is developed based on these answers, to take into account the various ways that students have approached the question. This gives many different ways of getting marks for a question.

Surprisingly, with so many students taking each exam, the range of marks is pretty consistent from one year to the next.

The guidance given by exam boards to teachers also helps them make sure that their students are properly prepared to jump through the right hoops. That's why it's so important to listen to the advice that teachers give.

Answer 8

They shouldn't.
Accountancy set a pass mark, they also set an expected pass % if more people make the pass mark than the expected % they up the pass mark untill it is less, they never lower the pass mark that way you only get well qualified accountants.

Answer 9

Surely the grade boundaries can't get any lower.

Answer 10

yes because if lots of students did not 'pass' noone would enter for their exams and they would go out of business

Answer 11

yep thats the way it works i think its kinda unfair though, there should be a set grade