Grade boundaries in AL French German and Spanish June 2023

 This post about grade boundaries is in the context of Ofqual’s decision to return to 2019 grading in 2023.

There has been discussion on social media about the grade boundaries in AL Fr, Gn and Sp, and so David Blow, ALL Fellow, who has done much statistical analysis for the ML community has prepared the description below and this spreadsheet. (Stored on my Google Drive).

There is often much confusion in the media about grade boundaries and standards and the number of grades awarded, and how “comparable outcomes” works in practice to ensure that there is consistency from one year to the next in each subject.  It should be normal for there to be variations from year to year in grade boundaries to reflect the increase or decrease in difficulty of particular exam papers depending on the precise questions which happen to have been set that year.  It is important to stress that this is nothing to do with “severe grading”.  The latter is whereby in subjects such GCSE ML, systematically, arising from a historical anomaly, students on average get half a grade lower in their GCSE ML compared with their other EBacc subjects, leading to a false perception that they are not as good at ML as other subjects.  This is explained more fully on the ALL London site here.

2023 saw the return to "normal" i.e. pre-pandemic grading at both AL and GCSE.

 Ofqual on grade boundaries

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/guide-to-as-and-a-level-results-for-england-summer-2023

Ofqual has said: “Exam boards have set grade boundaries this summer based on a combination of qualitative and quantitative evidence. As in previous years when exams took place, there has been an important role for examiner judgement in reviewing the quality of students’ work.

 Grade boundaries typically change each exam series to reflect any differences in the difficulty of the assessments. This means that some grade boundaries are lower than 2019, while others are higher. The approach to grading this summer has protection built into the grading process so, irrespective of the grade boundaries, students can be confident that the disruption they have faced has been taken into account.”

 Situation in AL Fr, Gn, Sp

In all three subjects, there was a higher percentage of "top" (A* & A) grades awarded in 2023 than 2019.  The FFT Datalab analysis

https://ffteducationdatalab.org.uk/2023/08/a-level-and-other-level-3-results-2023-the-main-trends-in-grades-and-entries/

on the second page as a graphic shows for all subjects how the percentage of top grades has varied since 2019, and how they have all returned close to 2019.

I've produced a spreadsheet where I've drawn together the relevant information from AQA, Edexcel and JCQ websites regarding the A-level exams in French, German and Spanish.  You'll see from the figures in the spreadsheet just how complex the situation is.

The spreadsheet can be downloaded here

Screenshots from each tab are pasted below the commentary for each one.

 tab - "JCQ nos" - this gives the cumulative percentages for each grade in French, German and Spanish. You can see that for all the subjects, there was a higher percentage of "top" (A* & A) grades awarded in 2023 than 2019.    Therefore if the top grade boundaries had been lower, then there would have been additional top grades which would have put Fr, Gn, Sp out of line with other subjects.

 tab - "Edexcel" - this gives the grade boundaries for Fr, Gn Sp and the notional component boundaries. You can see that although the percentages getting top grades in each subject are all just up from 2019, there are marked variations in the grade boundary movements between the subjects, with French having significant movement upwards, and German and Spanish also going up but by less.  It also highlights that it is Paper 1 in French which has seen the biggest increase.

 tab - "AQA" - this gives the grade boundaries for Fr, Gn Sp and the notional component boundaries. Note the way AQA give both raw marks and notional component scores in italics and smaller font.  In AQA, the top grade boundaries in French have risen a little and C downards have dropped; German sees a big swing in both directions, and Spanish rises for most grades.