Year 11: the first GCSE year, and the grade called C*

Year 11 is the first of the two GCSE years. The subjects chosen in Year 10 now run for two years, and unlike Key Stage 3 some of what happens this year goes onto the certificate.

Nine grades, not eight

CCEA GCSEs are graded A*, A, B, C*, C, D, E, F and G. The C* is the one that confuses everyone. It was added for the summer of 2019 and it sits between B and C, so the scale here has nine grades where the older letter scale had eight.

If you want a translation, Queen’s University Belfast publishes the one it uses: A* to grade 9, A to grades 7 and 8, B to grade 6, C* to grade 5, and C to grade 4. That is the honest way to read a result next to a cousin’s elsewhere in the UK, and it is why a C* is worth being pleased about rather than read as a near miss.

The ceiling that is set before the exam

Several CCEA GCSEs are tiered, and the tier is not a difficulty setting. It is a cap. In GCSE maths the units a pupil is entered for decide the highest grade available. CCEA sets out four pathways: M1 with M5 tops out at D, M2 with M6 at C*, M3 with M7 at B, and only M4 with M8 can produce an A*.

This is the thing parents most often do not know, and it is decided quietly during Year 11 by the school. It is entirely reasonable to ask which units your child is entered for, by code, and what the highest grade on that pathway is. Ask in the autumn, while a move is still possible.

Units, resits and the 40 per cent rule

CCEA GCSEs are unitised. Units can be sat during the course rather than all at the end, and the marks are real. A unit may be re-sat once before the final grade is requested and the better of the two attempts normally counts. The exception is the terminal rule: at least 40 per cent of the assessment must be sat in the series where the grade is claimed, and where a unit is doing that job the more recent mark counts whether or not it is better.

In practice this means an early unit is not a rehearsal. It is a mark on the certificate with one retry attached.

What Year 11 is really for

Building the method Year 12 will run on: knowing which topics are weak by name rather than by feeling, and marking against a mark scheme instead of against effort.

What Fincho does in Year 11

The specification is tracked topic by topic, so what is covered and what is not is visible rather than remembered. Practice questions come in the CCEA style and are marked against the mark scheme point by point, which means feedback names the mark that was lost instead of giving a score. Wrong answers return a few days later with different numbers until they stick, and the unit dates the school sets go on the exam roadmap once they are added.