Cheated out of the grade she deserved

10:00am Wednesday 5th September 2012 in Letters

THERE has been widespread controversy regarding the English GCSE results and some headteachers are quite incensed about the alleged manipulated marking.
My daughter has received her English results and was pleased to get an A grade. This excellent result was mainly due to an inspiring English teacher at Cheney School, a Ms Corinna Swift.
However, there is a caveat to this happy tale. My daughter’s coursework was all graded at A* level and the only reason her final result was an A rather than an A* was that, inexplicably, her poetry exam was graded as a paltry C.
Even before the furore erupted, my daughter was muttering that “something fishy is going on here.” She felt certain that her poetry would be the best result as she had annotated every single poem and was very confident that she had achieved at least an A in this paper. She also writes excellent poems.
I believe that examiners have deliberately marked down the poetry paper in order to deprive my daughter of her much coveted A* grade. This was cynically done to fulfil a government directive that fewer A* grades be awarded this summer to curb grade inflation.
So my daughter has fallen victim to a political experiment because of Michael Gove’s pompous assertions that GCSEs are too easy and need to be marked more stiffly. He is vainly deluding himself that O levels were harder than GCSEs in order to massage his inflated ego.

He would like to consider himself to be so much brighter and more diligent than today’s studious generation. The GCSE exams are certainly not easier in any way from O levels.
I have looked at the papers and they are, if anything, harder than my O level exams. The marking yardstick was changed from the January exam date, whereby my daughter would have secured her A* grade. We have demanded a remark of the poetry paper by AQA because of the manipulated marking and I urge any other parents to do the same if they feel suspicious.
SUSAN THOMAS, Magdalen Road, Oxford

• Email
• Print this page
• Comment(1)

Comments (1)

Sort comments by

12:30pm Wed 5 Sep 12

the wizard says...

Sorry to read your story and hear of your dismay, but be warned this is yet another dirty tricks by H M Gov to manipulate the public that they will have their way and "O" levels will return. That long, long, long belief by the likes of Double-Dip Dave and his cronies, and beware Grammar Schools will be making a come back as well, as those most vaulted of Tory institutions will re-appear at the profound cost of the working classes, promoting a bigger rift and divide in society. The next step will be graduation to Uni being made progressively harder, and then only from Grammar Schools, in their new form.
This is just the beginning, the thin end of a long wedge. Cam will only deny it but the signs of this are all there, and to deny it, is folly and short sighted. This lot are all for themselves, hence despite all the promises the Financial Institutions which placed us where we are have been allowed to continue almost unabated and the rich just continue to grow richer.