GCSE Results Day Lancashire: what to expect and what are the next steps

While the wait for A Level students is now over, GCSE candidates still have their results day ahead of them.

It is a nerve wrecking day for both pupils, parents/guardians and teachers alike so below we have outlined everything you need to know before the big day to help you prepare.

When is GCSE Results Day?

This year’s GCSE results day will be on Thursday, August 22.

What can you expect on the day?

Unless you specially arranged to receive your results by post or your school has told you otherwise, your results should be available to pick up from your school or college sometime in the morning.

You will need to check with your school what time it opens as each school may be different.

Results will be given to you in a sealed envelope and it is up to you whether to open it at school or at home.

What grades can you get on your GCSEs and what do they mean?

GCSEs used to be graded using a letter system but now all final results come in the form of a number grade: nine being the highest and one the lowest.

Fewer students are typically awarded 9s than the old A* top mark as the new grading system works out to be more detailed so as to better reflect the breadth of the student’s knowledge, according to Ofqual.

The new grading system does not exactly correlate with letter grades from the old one, but a 4 is considered a ‘standard pass’ equivalent to the old C grade, while a score of 7 or up roughly aligns with getting an A grade.

It is worth noting that if you don’t receive at least a passing grade of 4 in their Maths and English exams, then you will need to continue studying those subjects until you either pass a resit exam, or turn 18.

How to find out what the 2024 grade boundaries were

Grade boundaries, which are the exact amount of marks needed to achieve each individual number grade, are set by each individual exam board, so they can vary slightly. In England, your exam board will usually be AQA, OCR, Pearson Edexcel, WJEC or CCEA.

They are decided on by a panel of experts after all of the papers for a particular subject have been graded, taking into account how difficult students found the exam so as to keep grades consistent across different years.

A full list of the 2024 grade boundaries will be released by each exam board on results day. To find out exactly what they were, you should check in on your exam board’s website where most have a dedicated webpage.

Looking at last year’s grade boundaries, students who received a 9 frequently scored more than 80% of all possible marks in their exam whilst a lower passing grade of 4 required 30-40% of possible marks for many subjects.

How was my exam marked?

Ofqual, the government’s qualifications regulator, says that once GCSE exams finished on June 19 this year, they were securely packed up and sent off to whichever exam board the school or college uses for marking.

As such, how exactly your exam paper was marked during the weeks-long grading process can vary depending on the board responsible for marking it. It may have been looked over by one person or several, uploaded online and marked digitally, or sent to them in person. If your exam involved a performance or other type of assessment, this may even have been graded by your teacher - with their grades sent over to the exam board.

All grading still needs to be in line with Ofqual’s official standards, and will have been quality checked. The board also has senior examiners review samples of marking by each examiner throughout. If any examiner are found not to be marking correctly, they can't continue - and their scripts will be given to another examiner.

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Can I appeal my results?

You can challenge a grade or the result of a qualification if you think there’s been a mistake.

First you should contact your school/collage and they can request that the exam board reviews the marking of your exam entry.

Your grade could go up or down and you may have to pay a fee if you ask for a review and your grade is not changed as a result.

If you still think there’s a mistake, you can ask your school or college to appeal the result. The exam board will then look at your work again and decide if your mark or grade needs correcting.

If you think the exam board did not handle your appeal properly, you can request a review from Ofqual.

What to do if you’re a parent worried about supporting your child?

Results day can be a tense and emotionally fraught time so the government has issued some advice for parents and carers supporting students as they wait to receive their exams results.

You can check this advice out online here.