How are grade boundaries set?
Once students have completed their exams and non-examined assessment or N-E-A, and all
of the assessments have been marked, we decide the grade boundaries for the qualification.
This process is known as awarding.
Grade boundaries indicate the minimum mark required to get each grade, for example a
Grade 4 boundary of 34 would mean you need 34 marks to get a Grade 4.
Why is it necessary to set the grade boundaries for each qualification each year?
Awarding organisations, like Pearson, work hard to set exam papers and NEA tasks with
the same level of difficulty each year. But in reality, exam papers and NEA tasks may
turn out to be slightly harder, or slightly easier, than previous assessments because
of the different subject matter and different questions that are asked from year to year.
It would be unfair for students in a particular year to get a lower grade just because they
completed harder exams or to get higher grades because their NEA tasks were easier. So we
set new grade boundaries each exam series. This is why grade boundaries can be different
each year, for each qualification.
This system ensures a level playing field. It should be no easier or harder to get a
Grade 4, for example, this year from last year.
Who sets grade boundaries?
A team of senior examiners, who are subject experts, oversee the awarding process for
each qualification including: Someone who is accountable for the entire
qualification, such as the Chair of Examiners Someone who is responsible for a number of
different papers, such as the Chief Examiner People who are responsible for specific papers
such as Principal Examiners.
There are also internal Pearson staff including: Awarding Officers who work with the experts
to review the evidence which informs where grade boundaries are set.
A Responsible Officer at each awarding organisation is ultimately accountable for all final grade
boundary decisions.
The whole process is monitored by Ofqual, the qualifications regulator.
What actually happens?
There are 3 main steps in the process.
Step 1 The Pre-award meeting Before the pre-award meeting, all marking
is completed with rigorous quality checks in place to ensure that each mark has been
awarded consistently and all marks are in the system which provides robust statistical
evidence about all the students who sat the exams and Principal Examiners tell us where
they think the grade boundaries should fall. They give us a range of marks and a report
to justify their decisions based on: Feedback from their examiners about student
performance on the paper and each individual question within it
Question papers from previous years Areview of work produced by students in previous
exam sessions Statistics which can tell us, for example,
the average mark from each exam.
All of this evidence is discussed and a decision is made on the range of marks that will determine
what student work will be looked at during the awarding meeting.
Step 2 The Awarding meeting The awarding committee meets to review all
available evidence and finalise the recommended boundary marks for each key grade. This will
include all of the things mentioned in step one plus looking at student work around the
specific grade boundaries. After the awarding meeting, the awarding officer
will document the grade boundary recommendations in the awarding file. This file is passed
through three internal quality checks to make sure all the evidence had been appropriately
considered.
Step 3 The Awarding sign off The Standards team check all of the decisions
and there is enough evidence to justify the grade boundary recommendations. It is then
signed off by Pearson's Responsible Officer.
Once the grade boundaries have been signed off, they are entered into our computer system
so that a student's mark can be translated into their final grade.
Why go to these lengths? Because grades matter!
This process means that a student who performed to the same level should get the same grade,
whether they sat the exams this year or last year and regardless of the exam board they
sat it with.
If you are interested in finding more about the awarding process for the different qualifications
here are some useful links:
quals.pearson.com/understanding9-1 quals.pearson.com/9-1FAQs