Same work, same grade, any year

Two students sit the same kind of paper in two different years. One year the paper is a little harder. Is it fair if the grade needs the same raw marks both times?

No. So the awarding body does something to make it fair. This lesson shows what.

Key words

Word	What it means	Example
Raw mark	The marks you earn on a paper or project.	63 out of 90
Grade boundary	The lowest mark that earns a grade.	the lowest mark for a C
Awarding	The process that sets the grade boundaries for each series.	done after the exams
Uniform mark	A mark on a fixed scale, the same every series.	150 out of 240
Component	A main part of the qualification.	Core
Series	One time of year when assessments are offered.	summer
Unclassified	A result below the lowest grade. It is shown as U.	U

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The grades you can get

Component	What it includes	Grades
Core	Two Core exams and the Employer Set Project	A*, A, B, C, D, E or U
Occupational Specialism	The specialism project	Distinction, Merit, Pass or U

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Awarding and the uniform mark scale

After each series, the awarding body sets the grade boundaries. It looks at how hard the papers were. This keeps the standard the same over time.

For the Core, your raw marks are then changed into uniform marks. The scale is fixed. A student who does C-grade work in the project gets the same uniform mark in any series, even if the raw marks are different.

This means nobody can tell you the raw-mark boundary for a grade before the series. It is set afterwards.

The fixed uniform marks for the Core

Grade	Core exams	Employer Set Project	Core overall
Maximum	240	160	400
A*	216 to 240	144 to 160	360 to 400
A	192 to 215	128 to 143	320 to 359
B	168 to 191	112 to 127	280 to 319
C	144 to 167	96 to 111	240 to 279
D	120 to 143	80 to 95	200 to 239
E	96 to 119	64 to 79	160 to 199
U	0 to 95	0 to 63	0 to 159

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