Dear Parents/Carers,
As you will be aware, this year students will be awarded grades for their qualifications which are ‘Teacher Assessed Grades’ (TAGs). These grades will be an objective judgement by teachers about the knowledge, skills and abilities of each student in relation to the subject content that they have been taught. Schools have until Friday 18th June to make the decisions about each of these grades, for both Year 11 and Sixth Form students. The grades need to be based on physical evidence – from work that students have completed. The evidence used can be from any point over the course of study. We have a broad base of evidence to decide students’ grades including evidence from the assessments that students are currently undertaking. Subject teachers will be sharing the range of evidence being used to form the grade judgments with students over the next few weeks.
The key points of what the Government has published on its plans for awarding grades are discussed in the video presentation attached, please click on the link to access this. Please note that the results days are earlier than normal this year. For students in Year 11 the results will be released on Tuesday 10th August and for Year 13 students Thursday 12th August.
Teachers will tell students which pieces of work will be used as evidence to inform overall grades. Students will have the opportunity to raise any concerns about the evidence being used, for example, if the evidence was affected by personal circumstances, such as illness. Teachers will make the final judgement based on the evidence to support the teacher assessed grade as this needs to be consistent with all students and so there will be little variation amongst the evidence used with each student. Teachers will not be able to inform students of the grade they have submitted to the exam board or any results from assessments currently being taken as stated by the regulations released from JCQ. Please also be aware that parents are not able to request grade details from teachers or place any undue pressure or altering teacher judgments as stated by JCQ.
Finally, every learner will be able to instruct the centre which determined their Teacher Assessed Grade to conduct a centre review and to submit an appeal to the awarding organisation on behalf of the learner. In the application for appeal it will be necessary to explain the grounds for appeal which may include an appeal due to an administrative error. More information about the appeals process appears in the attached video explaining the Teacher Assessed Grade process.
If you have any questions or queries regarding the Teacher Assessed Grade process please don’t hesitate to contact me.
Yours sincerely,
Mr C Simmons
Assistant Principal
