Note that any of the below data is still provisional!

It’s really important in my mind to understand the numbers involved from this Summer exam for the grading of next Summers GCSE. Partly to be able to hold Ofqual to account but also for me to have a firm grip of how the awarding works in general and maybe to help with this big decision about Higher or Foundation tier. So I’ve been doing some number crunching trying to pull together results by grade by exam board and it isn’t as easy as I thought – essentially I am trying to look at the proportion of grade by tier …. Well that was my ultimate aim but the exam boards and JCQ seem to have thwarted my efforts because they all seem to produce slightly different information and so I’m just going to share where I’ve gotten to. They also don’t publish the statistics by tier of entry publically. THIS WOULD BE A MASSIVE HELP GUYS!! Going forward I think it is crucial that JCQ insist on this information too!

I started by pulling off the JCQ exam grade analysis and they produce information by age but also by total entries, but this only shows cumulative percentages, so I converted these to show % at each grade but also numbers (because of the rounding of the actually %’s the numbers will be slightly out which I can live with!). The information from them looks like the below – the important thing is the 757,000 entries :

JCQ1

Anyway I then turned to the exam board sites and all the boards publish what they are required to do (ahem … it could be more detailed if I’m honest!) :

  • AQA publish cumulative percentages (-> AQA stats ) only and total entries so again I’ve done some calculations based on their % figures which will have been rounded.

AQA

  • OCR publish some lovely detailed stuff (->OCR – June 2016 ) They show cumulative numbers and percentages, so all I’ve had to do was a bit of subtraction to get the numbers at each grade. Thanks guys xxx

OCR

EdexcelI’m seriously pondering if we are expected to just accept the published grading next year and how much information is going to be shared about the process. It had better be bloody loads of information in short words, made very simple for me to understand. No seriously I wonder if the powers that be think it’s all too much for our small brains…. and I may have said it before but I get frustrated when people try to baffle me with bullsh1t! This is the reason for me trying to pull all the stats together.

The resulted in me putting this information on a basic spreadsheet but I then found I was missing 61,000 students from the figures quoted by JCQ so I’ve been on the hunt and found most of them (Thank you for your help!. You know who you are!) I need to include those foreign countries like Wales and Northern Ireland with their WJEC and CCEA boards who had about 51,000 entries between them so I’ve still got a few thousand to find. I haven’t yet added in the information from these two boards to the below … this took my bloody ages to collate as it is and I have stuff to do for the launch of the Super 60 next week!

entries

Probably not going to make myself popular publishing this information but hey! Broad shoulders and all that … it’s in the public domain! (if this post disappears you know I’ve been asked to remove it!) and anyway, I’m not sure if any of that information is useful at this stage but it’s a starting point to making sure that the wool isn’t pulled over our eyes next Summer as to what proportion should get each new number grade.  In addition to the above not being “enough information” there are still other questions I’d like answered as to how Ofqual are going to award grades for example will Ofqual only use those aged 16 when comparing? or all ages? I am however putting in a request to JCQ for more information about the breakdown of actual “actual” figures (its a shame the exam boards are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act … now there’s a thought … **googles**) asking them to provide actual numbers by exam board, by age (basically I want year 11 and below) and post 16 separately (oh yes, including tier of entry!) Not too much to ask I don’t think and It is crucial we have as much as we can get our hands on … I also think the exam boards need to sit down nicely and agree what information in what format will be published – it would be great if it were all the same!

Looking at the JCQ information is useful as it shows the cumulative % at C and above and you can see the difference in the age groups. On the other hand it all that data may not be useful to some of you … I’ve been able to text Seager and say that the two B’s that just got reviewed upwards from C’s will tip us close to 59% B and above. Wowser! Puts us in a really good place for the new “good” pass of a 5. Now don’t get me started on that one!! Anyway ….. I’ll keep you updated and if all else fails I’ll wait until the national data set is published later in the year by the DFE. 

PS: I wonder if it is Ofqual I need to badger about publishing the grades by tier of entry for both this exam and also going forward. They obviously have a massive hand in awarding grades … hmmm