Centre-Assessed Grades Strategy
Information for Students and Parents - Maiden Erlegh School, Maiden Erlegh in Reading, Maiden Erlegh Chiltern Edge and Hamilton School.
As you will be aware, Ofqual released information about how grades should be allocated to candidates this summer. As a Trust, we developed a process and set of principles which guided subject and school leaders across the Trust. This centrally coordinated process ensured that the system was fair to all students.
A key principle of our process was that subject leaders and standards leaders worked across the Trust to moderate judgements about Centre Assessed Grades and Overall Marks.
Some definitions:
Centre Assessed Grade – The professional and holistically evidence-based* determination of the grade a student would have got had they finished the course.
Overall Mark – A numerical interpretation to assist in determining both Centre Assessed Grade and inform the students’ unique subject ranking
*NB It is important that a range of evidence is used and not just “test” scores. Typically we would expect subjects to consider their DCP predicted grades, the Pre-Public Examination outcome and other formatively assessed tasks.
The Process for deciding Centre Assessed Grades and the student’s unique subject ranking
The process involved various stages of decision making and evidence gathering and moderation including:
- Subject leaders collated information about which objective evidence could be used in the process.
- Discussion with standards leaders and/or senior leaders over evidence base and mark calculation decisions to ensure fair and robust process.
- Subject teachers reviewed their predicted fine grades and ensured all relevant evidence was correct.
- Subjects calculated the overall mark for each student from the evidence base and carefully checked the calculations.
- Recommendation of grades (and ranking students within grades) by subject teachers and leaders based on agreement regarding evidence and calculations with senior leaders.
- Moderation of grades by senior leaders using national distributions and understanding of past centre performance.
- Submission of Centre Assessed Grades and ranking to Examination Boards.
- Explanation of process with Governors and Trustees.
What happened following the submission of Centre Assessed Grades
To make sure that grades are fair between schools and colleges, exam boards put all centre assessment grades through a process of standardisation using a model developed with Ofqual. This Calculated Grade arrived at by a standardisation process and may have raised or lowered the Centre assessed Grade submitted by schools. At the final stages this process was amended such that the Final Grade awarded to students is now the higher of the Centre Assessed Grade or the Calculated Grade.
The grades awarded to students will have equal status to the grades awarded in other years and on the results slips and certificates, grades will be reported in the same way as in previous years.
