GCSEs: How do the new 9-1 grades work? Published 22 August 2018 comments Comments Thousands of teenagers across England, Wales and Northern Ireland are receiving their GCSE results. But, in England, there have been major changes, with a new 9-1 grading system being phased in to reflect a more demanding curriculum. So what's the new grading system all about? What are the new grades? The new grading scheme is being brought in alongside a new GCSE curriculum in England. 9 is the highest grade, while 1 is the lowest, not including a U (ungraded). Three number grades, 9, 8 and 7, correspond to the old-style top grades of A* and A - this is designed to give more differentiation at the top end. The exams watchdog, Ofqual, says fewer grade 9s will be awarded than A*s and that anyone who gets a 9 will have "performed exceptionally". A 4 is broadly being compared to a C grade, although Ofqual warns against "direct comparisons and overly simplistic descriptions". It says that, broadly, the same proportion of teenagers will get a grade four and above as used to get a grade C or above. Strong pass and standard pass - what's all that about? It's confusing, but there are two pass marks - 4 is a standard pass and 5 is a strong pass. This means that a candidate who gets nine 4 grades has, technically, passed all their exams. However, with the government's school league tables detailing what percentage of pupils achieved a grade 5 or above in English and maths and in the English Baccelaureate subjects, it's hard to imagine that teachers will be content to see their pupils settle for a 4 as a pass. The reality is that schools will be pushing pupils for at least a 5 and most sixth forms will be looking for students with strong passes. Are new 9-1 GCSEs being phased in? Yes they are. Last summer, students sat the new exams in just English language, English literature and maths. This year's Year 11 students sat the 9-1 exams in: ancient languages (classical Greek, Latin) art and design biology chemistry citizenship studies combined science (double award) computer science dance drama food preparation and nutrition geography history modern foreign languages (French, German, Spanish) music physics physical education religious studies GCSE advice Next summer, 2019, will see a third wave of 9-1 exams in: ancient history astronomy business classical civilisation design and technology economics electronics engineering film studies geology media studies modern foreign languages (Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Italian, Japanese, modern Greek, modern Hebrew, Panjabi, Polish, Russian, Urdu) psychology sociology statistics The final wave of 9-1 GCSEs will be taught from this autumn, with exams in 2020, covering: ancient languages (biblical Hebrew) modern foreign languages (Gujarati, Persian, Portuguese, Turkish) So some teenagers will have a mix of GCSEs under different marking schemes? Yes, that's right. Last year's Year 11s got their English and maths results under the new numerical grading scheme, and the rest of their options were graded A*-G. This year's cohort are sitting most of their GCSEs under the new system, but they will get some results under the old system, for example if they are taking ancient history or ICT. Are there any other changes? Yes, there are changes to the way in which grades for combined science are being allocated. This qualification is worth two grades. Under the old system, candidates would be given a combined score that was effectively a single grade doubled up - so A*/A*, A/A, B/B and so on. The new system allows for a little more differentiation, so that students will be given two equal grades (for example 5/5) or adjacent grades (for example 5/4). In total, there are 17 possible grade combinations from 9/9 to 1/1. Why have the grades been changed? The new GCSE grading scheme is part of a new curriculum introduced in England's schools in 2014 by the then Education Secretary, Michael Gove. The new GCSE courses include much less coursework than before, with grades in almost all subjects depending on exams. Courses are designed to be more challenging with exams taken after two years of study, rather than in modules with exams along the way. What's happening in Wales? Change has been under way in Wales as well. The Welsh government introduced new and revised GCSEs, which have been taught in schools from September 2015. The most significant changes are in English language, Welsh language and mathematics. But, one crucial difference to England is that the letter-based grading structure A*- G is being maintained. What's happening in Northern Ireland? While pupils in England will have results graded 9-1 and pupils in Wales will have A*-G graded results, pupils in Northern Ireland will end up with a mix of A*-G and numerical grades. Approximately three-quarters of GCSEs in Northern Ireland are taken through the NI Council for Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment (CCEA) and the remaining quarter through the English- and Welsh-based exam boards AQA, OCR, Edexcel or WJEC. And what about Scotland? Scotland has its own system of public examinations: Nationals and Highers. Reporting by BBC News education reporter Katherine Sellgren Related Topics GCSEs Exams Around the BBC BBC Bitesize - Home<doc-sep>On Monday morning, what may be the most dreaded and feared set of public exams England’s teenagers have ever sat began in school assembly halls up and down the country. It is 30 years since GCSEs (General Certificate for Secondary Education) were first introduced under Margaret Thatcher, replacing O-levels and CSEs. The new exam was designed to cover a broad spectrum of ability rather than dividing pupils between high achievers, who sat O-levels, and lower-ability students, who took CSEs. Now, three decades later, following claims of grade inflation and dumbing down, GCSEs have been revised and re-formed and a brand new set of exams is being rolled out. Gone are the old-style assessments with their forgiving modules, repeat exams and coursework. In their place are Michael Gove’s super-tough, “gold-standard”, highly academic qualifications. Gove, secretary of state for education between 2010 and 2014, believed the old GCSEs’ reliance on coursework assessment was open to abuse. He argued that the content of the revised examinations should be pitched at a more sophisticated level, claiming: “By making GCSEs more demanding, more fulfilling, and more stretching we can give our young people the broad, deep and balanced education which will equip them to win in the global race.” These students are under more pressure than at any point in living memory English teacher Each GCSE has therefore been designed to be more challenging, with increased content, which is tested almost exclusively by end-of-course examinations and measured by grades that run from 9 to 1 (rather than the previous A* to G). The new 9-1 measure sets a 4 as equivalent to a C, while the top grades, A* and A, are split into three grades, 7, 8 and 9, with 9 awarded to those with marks at the top of the old A* grade. As a result, far fewer students will end up achieving the very top grade available, and many who would have been A* students under the old system will wrongly regard a 7 or 8 as a failure. The 2018 summer exam season kicked off with computer science and religious studies on Monday, followed by French and biology on Tuesday. How pupils fare will not be known until 23 August when GCSE results are published. What has become clear, however, is the distress that these new and untested exams have caused. A Guardian call-out last week asking for our readers’ views about the new GCSEs prompted more than 200 responses, an outpouring that was overwhelmingly – although not exclusively – negative. The more extreme responses included accounts of suicide attempts by two pupils at one school, breakdowns, panic attacks and anxiety levels so intense that one boy soiled himself during a mock exam. The then education secretary Michael Gove announcing the government’s planned review of the National Schools Curriculum. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA Some of the responses from pupils were alarming. “GCSEs have been a horrible experience,” says one 16-year-old. “I have suffered from panic attacks and a high increase in anxiety. It’s quite scary how as a student I find it normal to see my peers break down in lessons as they are scared of what’s going to happen to them in the future if they fail.” Another writes: “I have seen the mentally toughest people crack and it’s painful to watch. People crying over being unable to do a maths question. Is this what we want as a nation, to be put under this mental stress?” Pressure in classrooms has been intense for the past two years as teachers have grappled with the new specifications, for which they say there are inadequate resources or revision materials. The new exams have been launched at a time when budgets are shrinking, schools are in deficit and parents are increasingly being asked to fill the gaps with everything from monthly cash donations to glitter glue, pens and even toilet paper. Nonetheless, schools are doing their best, with some laying on relaxation sessions, yoga classes and resilience programmes to support worried pupils. “For the first time in 10 years of teaching, I have no idea what to expect come results day,” says one bemused history teacher from Worcestershire. Chances are that the final headline results may not be dramatically different from previously as the exam boards will peg this year’s outcomes to previous years so as not to disadvantage the latest cohort. The grade boundaries could prove telling, however. When the new mathematics and English GCSE courses were tested for the first time last summer – ahead of the main wave of re-formed GCSEs – it emerged that scores in one maths exam were so low that the pass mark was set at just 18%. This year, a further 20 new exams are being rolled out, including sciences, modern languages, history and geography, with more to follow next summer. Phil Beadle, an award-winning teacher and education consultant, says this year was bound to be stressful but that things will improve. “People are stressed because, with the exception of in English and maths, no one really knows exactly what an 8 or a 9 looks like. Your first run through of a new syllabus is rather less skilled than your fifth.” But this is of little comfort to schools where study leave has been cancelled this summer because staff have been unable to cover the volume of work required by the new qualifications; students are being taught the curriculum to the very last minute. What’s more, because assessment is now virtually all exam-based, students may be sitting up to 28 exams in the space of two or three weeks, some of them spending a little short of 40 hours lined up in rows in exam halls, folded over constricted desks. “I have 10 different subjects and 28 – yes, 28 exams,” says one 16-year-old from Greater Manchester. “They are a minimum of 75 minutes. Maths now has three papers, six science papers for dual award. Oh, and three geography papers. It is ridiculous.” The NSPCC reported this week that the number of referrals by schools in England seeking mental health treatment for pupils has risen by more than a third in the past three years. A Gloucestershire teenager told the Guardian she believes about 50% of her year group are suffering from mental health problems. “I know that everyone struggles with the exams and the importance of them,” she says, “however, the new courses have amplified the pressure and surely they shouldn’t be causing my fellow students to have suicidal thoughts.” Schools are also coming under pressure to perform well in league tables. A student from Dorset describes the countdown to exams in his school, with posters showing the number of days left and notices warning that if you get grades 1-4 you’re likely to end up cleaning or working in a shop, whereas if you get 8s and 9s you’ll be off to university to enjoy “a great lifestyle”. “I have seen near enough all my friends cry over our exams, worry (to the point of having a panic attack!) about not having done enough revision and failing,” writes one GCSE student who contacted the Guardian, adding: “In fact, I don’t think a single one of my friends currently are happy.” I have never, in over 20 years of teaching, seen pupils suffer so much anxiety and other symptoms of poor mental health English teacher This may have been true of many teenagers faced with make-or-break exams over the years. But teachers who responded to our call-out told the same unhappy story and expressed alarm at the increase in mental health problems among their students. A 26-year-old English teacher says he has watched his year 11s go through anguish. Like most of his colleagues, he has laid on countless revision sessions during lunchtimes and holidays to try to get his students through. “In one week recently, there were two suicide attempts by students. This is in a high-achieving school in a middle-class area, so I am sure problems must be heightened for already disadvantaged students, too.”<doc-sep>Our Saturday morning email features the very best news and exclusive content from our team of reporters Invalid Email Something went wrong, please try again later. Sign me up! Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Pupils are driving themselves to distraction preparing for the hardest GCSE and A-level exams ever seen. Teenagers have been raging across social media about the stress and difficulty of facing their exams after changes were brought in. The tough new tests are being taken by about 750,000 pupils. They are having to rise to unprecedented challenges in the first year that reforms have brought more difficult papers in most subjects. They are being graded on a new scale - with scores from 9 to 1 replacing the old A* to G grades in most GCSEs. The changes were brought in by Michael Gove when he was education secretary. The Government said the aim was to improve standards, bring England into line with top-performing systems in the Far East and help top universities identify the most promising potential students. The Sunday Times reports that this weekend, the education expert Alan Smithers warned: • About 1,000 16-year-olds will score the new top grade of 9 in all their GCSEs, compared with tens of thousands who scored eight or more A* grades last year. Andrew Halls, headmaster of King’s College School, in Wimbledon, southwest London, where 50% of 16-year-olds scored 10 A*s in their GCSEs last year, said he had already written to parents to warn them not to expect “full houses of grade 9s”. • Private schools are likely to widen their lead over state schools because many have refused to test the new GCSEs and are instead entering pupils for the International GCSE, an older exam many believe to be easier. (Image: Pixabay) Head teachers and parents warned this weekend that many teenagers were struggling to cope. The Sunday Times phoned several schools to find out how pupils were faring and found that teachers were deploying a variety of new strategies to help their charges succeed. Some schools are running revision classes at 7.30am before the exams start. Others are sending teachers to anxious pupils’ houses to make sure they turn up. At The Malling School, in Kent, head teacher Carl Roberts said one pupil had broken his glasses on purpose in an attempt to avoid sitting the tests. One bright pupil broke down in tears in a GCSE exam and another had a panic attack. “Why are we insisting that all pupils, from grammar schools through to special needs pupils, have to sit the same GCSEs?” asked one teacher. “I act as a scribe to some of the pupils and it’s so sad to see them look beaten before they even enter the room. It’s obvious some of them have quite simply given up,” said another. The trickiest problems find their way onto the internet, such as a biology GCSE question about why carrots do not increase in mass when they are boiled. Cornwall Live head of content Jeff Reines has a son who has just completed his AS-level exams - midway through the two year A-level regime - and said: "He came home quite shaken from some of them. He siad there was stuff he didn't recognise. It was a tough time for himn but a good lesson in what he wiill be facing next year. "I know other parents of children taking GCSEs who said they have lost weight from the stress and overwhelming time put into revising, which shouldn't be something that happens to 16-year-olds. "Others said they don't see their child at all. They're just holed up in their rooms with their books. They come out to collect their dinner and go back behind the closed door to keep hitting the books. "It doesn't seem particularly healthy. "My daughter is meant to start her GCSEs next year, in Year 10, but they started teaching to the exams about halfway through Year 9 because of how much they've changed and how difficult they've become." The entrepreneur and Dragons’ Den judge Peter Jones, whose daughter Natalia is taking the new exams, said they were far too academic for many teenagers, who need different skills to succeed in the modern workplace. “I have watched the higher levels of stress Natalia has experienced compared with her two older siblings who took the older exams,” said Jones, who has campaigned for years for a GCSE in enterprise. “She has worked incredibly hard and has got through but it is taking up almost every waking hour.” The Department for Education told the Sunday Times: “We trust schools not to put undue pressure on young people when administering exams.”<doc-sep>
YouTuber Jade Bowler, who shares revision tips with her 190,000 followers, posted a video of herself sobbing after being faced with a 42-page paper Parents have slammed the 'disgusting' pressure faced by pupils who have been left in tears after sitting tougher GCSE's and A-levels. Teenagers have had panic attacks, been sick or collapsed exhausted at their desks following the biggest exam shake-up in a generation. Teachers say pupils have been left feeling demoralised after being unable to finish papers and failing to understand all the questions. Reforms mean that around 750,000 teenagers are sitting tougher GCSEs and A-levels this summer, with some completing more than 30 papers. New GCSEs will be graded 1 to 9, with 9 being the top grade, to allow more differentiation between the highest performing pupils. The changes were triggered by former education secretary Michael Gove following research showing British pupils were falling behind peers in other countries. Employers have long complained that youngsters do not leave school with the right skills and campaigners have pointed to a 'dumbing down' of the curriculum under the previous Labour government. YouTube star Jade Bowler shared her anguish with the world after running out of time in her A-level biology exam But students have criticised the exams on social media, with many saying they left them in tears. YouTube star Jade Bowler, who shares revision tips with her 190,000 followers, posted a video of herself sobbing after being faced with a 42-page paper. 'I have never in my entire life done as badly as I did in that exam,' the 18-year-old said. She added: 'I didn't answer about four questions. I'm not going to try to hide how appalling I found that. I just ran out of time.' Parents have also complained saying their children have been left in tears over the exams Another pupil, Emma Wickham, tweeted: 'Don't think I've ever cried so much about school till A-levels!! Stressed is not even the word, someone put me out of my misery.' Kirsty Scott said her history exam 'was genuinely the hardest one I've sat so far'. Another teen agreed, adding that she had emailed her teacher after being thrown by the questions. One told how she was being pushed to the brink of a mental breakdown over the exams. Students have taken to Twitter to reveal how stressful they found the exams, with some claiming they almost had a 'mental breakdown' 'Chlo' wrote: 'Exams are really getting the better of me almost had a mental breakdown over chromatography saying I'd forgot to revise it and took me 10 mins to remember that's chemistry..' Another said: 'I could cry right now I am absolutely not okay.' When and why changes to GCSE's and A-levels were introduced Michael Gove announced sweeping reforms to the structure, style and content of GCSE's and A-levels when he was Education Secretary in 2013. The core changes included making the exams more challenging, providing more essay style questions, making them harder to resit, and removing coursework for the majority of subjects. He told MPs at the time: 'By making GCSEs more demanding, more fulfilling, and more stretching we can give our young people the broad, deep and balanced education which will equip them to win in the global race.' The changes to AS and A-levels were first taught in schools from September 2015, with the first results for AS lvels in 2015 and for A-lvels in 2017. More subjects are being added for next year. New style GCSE's were first taught in English language, English literature and maths from September 2015, with the first results issued in August 2017. More subjects have been added for this year and next. There is also a new GCSE grading system, with grading moving to a 9-1 scale instead of the A* to G. Advertisement Parents also complained, with one tweeting: 'Not sure who the new science and maths GCSEs are designed for Michael Gove but I had a daughter in tears last night saying, 'I've worked so hard but don't feel like it's paying off as the exams are so difficult...' This from a confident, able student!' Louise Wearden wrote: 'Tonight my beautiful, bright 16-year-old daughter cried so hard in fear of her GCSE maths paper & English lit paper 2! 'The new exams are so tough & pressure too much!' Mother Alison Barnett told Mailonline: 'My son is 17 and was the first year of doing the GCSE new system. 'It was hard going.