Sentences with phrase «said grade boundaries»

The exams body admitted the exam was harder than anticipated and said grade boundaries were adjusted accordingly.

The SQA said the grade boundaries had been adjusted to take into account the unusual difficulty of the Maths exam.

The WJEC examining board worked over the weekend after Education Minister Leighton Andrews said grade boundaries had been set in a way that was unfair to candidates in Wales.

Not exact matches

The SQA said adjustments were made to the grade boundaries to make sure no candidates were affected by the errors.

A leading exam board has said all boards raised their grade boundaries for GCSE English this summer amid claims pupils have been marked too harshly.

They will say that between January and June 2012 it was decided that too many students were going to get a C grade or better in GCSE English, so a decision was taken to push up grade boundaries for the exams marked in June to bring down the numbers of good grades for the year as a whole.

Owen Hathway, policy officer with the National Union of Teachers (NUT) Cymru, said it was «simply unacceptable to move the goalposts for boundary grades half way through the process, especially having not given any prior warning to teachers and pupils».

In a statement, the AQA said: «This summer, all the exam boards raised their grade boundaries for GCSE English in order to maintain standards.

NUT general secretary Christine Blower said: «Shifting the goal posts for grades in particular the C / D boundary has had a huge impact on individual students and the future of schools.

The spokeswoman said the wider specialist options under the new syllabus would have made it very difficult to set grade boundaries.

Last week, independent school heads said an «unprecedented number» of schools had concerns about last year's iGCSE results as grade boundaries were «exceptionally out of line» with expectations.

The general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, Russell Hobby, said: «There are so many simultaneous changes to exams, grade boundaries and measures that it would be difficult to ascribe any effect to the 2010 boycott.

NUT Wales secretary David Evans said: «Between January and June, exam boards changed the grade boundaries in such a way that many pupils who would have scored a C in January, scored a D in June - for exactly the same work.

After the letters came to light on Tuesday, Edexcel said: «Where the grade boundaries were positioned for GCSE English was clearly a matter of extensive discussion this year between exam boards and the regulator.

The regulator said the January papers were marked too leniently, but stood by the new June grade boundaries.

But the WJEC had said it had complied with a requirement from exams regulators in England and Wales to make the boundary between grades C and D «more severe».

In its final report on the controversy over this summer's GCSE English exam, Ofqual says external examiners had to raise grade boundaries as a result.

Education spokesperson Angela Burns said: «It is inexplicable why the minister has singled out GCSE English language to create different grade boundaries to examinations set in other parts of the UK.»

Ofqual says that the June grade boundaries were set at the right level, but has acknowledged there was a problem with the January boundaries - and it has continued to refuse to order exam boards to regrade this year's exams.

The Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) has said it is «not afraid» to take legal action against exam boards over the grade boundary reform.

Last week Ofqual said it felt the way this year's English GCSE exams were graded was fair, despite the grade boundaries being moved significantly part - way through the year.

Earlier Clive Lewis, QC for AQA, said the board had followed official guidelines in deciding to alter the grade boundaries between the January and June papers and was satisfied that the June results were correct.

A former Ofqual board member, John Townsley, now an academy principal, said although grade boundaries were often tweaked, the regulator's action this year «goes dramatically further».

The exam board in Wales, the WJEC, is saying hang on, earlier in the summer both regulators in England and Wales told us to change grade boundaries.