Maximising Achievement with Y13 in the final 15 weeks before the 2023 examinations in England

6th January 2023

A companion piece to our Alps webinar. 

At Alps, we are aware you are facing significant challenges in 2022-23.

  • Y13 students took no GCSE examinations in 2020.
  • They are going to be assessed by examinations in 2023.
  • Since the Autumn of 2021 Ofqual have confirmed ‘a return to pre-pandemic grading in 2023.’
  • That will require a significant drop in grades nationally, especially at A*-B+ (roughly 11% at A*-B & A*-A).

  • Schools and colleges are teaching the full content of qualifications to students.
  • There will be no advance information of exam content for students.
  • Replicating the same grades you achieved in 2022 may be challenging in 2023.

We are here to support you with our Five Top Tips and Connect: 

  1. Make sure sustaining / improving performance at A*-B+ is a priority in your school and college.
  2. Use Connect to ensure you are on top of the subjects, sets, student groups and students who need support to achieve their Post-18 goals.
  3. Focus on raising outcomes by concentrating on improving the performance of targeted underachieving students in specific subjects. Pay most attention to your largest cohort subjects that will have the biggest impact on this cohort’s outcomes and destinations, your Average Grade and your Alps VA.
  4. Ask HODs to run department meetings based on:
    • Past papers and mark schemes
    • Command words
    • 2022 Examiner reports – identifying those ‘silver bullets’ that will improve grades
    • Share this invaluable information with your students.
  1. Ensure Mock exams are marked to identify individual and collective learning gaps (skills / knowledge) so that these can be addressed, re-assessed, and closed before the summer.

In Connect:

  1. Discuss with Heads of Department and teachers which students on their course have the greatest potential to improve their mock / predicted grades. Use the ‘What-if’ tool in Connect to demonstrate the impact on subject VA of those students achieving a higher grade.
  2. Use our comparison and filter tools to understand how the student groups in each subject or set are predicted to perform in terms of disadvantage, gender, ethnicity, and PA.
  3. Grades in 2020 and 2021 went up far more at the higher-grade thresholds so must drop sharply in 2023. We recommend a sharp focus on the predicted grades of students with higher GCSE PA. Use our PA comparison tool to check this out.
  4. Use our Monitoring Accuracy tools to identify:
    • which subjects predicted most accurately in 2022
    • which subjects are predicting outcomes most different to previous monitoring grade-point or are predicting much higher outcomes / higher VA than in 2022?
  5. Identify students who are underachieving in two or more subjects for holistic intervention?

Register for our free webinar on 16th January – BOOK HERE

If you need support from Alps do not hesitate to be in touch at [email protected]

Need more information?

If you would like any further information, please contact one of our expert advisers.

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