Results Day for May 2021 centres is just one working week away - on Monday 5th July 2021.

As with previous years, you might like to consider purchasing a Category 2A Return of Materials for the IA to find out the breakdown of marks for all candidates (which might also support professional development and teaching for future cohorts). While examiner comments are often limited, it can be useful to find out if your school typically over-marks or under-marks within each assessment criterion. You can also use these samples with the May 2022 and May 2023 cohorts.

EUR Category 3 Re-moderation is not available in Business Management as no work was sampled or moderated. However, this option remains in place for the TOK Presentation (which some of you may teach).

Note: students will have access to their results via IBIS from 12PM GMT on Tuesday 6th July 2021.

For exam route schools, you are almost back to business-as-usual... except that all coursework components (internal assessments) have been externally marked for May 2021 and for the absence of Section C in both Paper 1 (HL) and Paper 2 (the CUEGIS essay). Predicted grades will not feature in the overall assessment.

An enquiry upon results (EUR) Category 1 remark can be requested if the student consents (but remember that they need to be reminded that their grades can go up, down, or stay the same). As the teacher, you will have a key role to play in deciding whether this is likely to be in the student's best interest - by considering whether the IA, Paper 1, and Paper 2 scores achieved were what you anticipated and by checking how close the total is to the grade boundaries. You should wait to receive the component scores from your DP Coordinator before any decision is made.

There is a lot of information available on the IB website Understanding assessment during COVID-19, including six short videos that outline IB procedures regarding the examinations. The videos may be useful for communication with parents and students.

Exams did not take place in a large number of countries this year. In these non-exam route schools, a Predicted Grade took the place of examination components. All coursework components (internal assessments) have been externally marked, as was the case in May 2020 and November 2020.

This makes the post-results process a little more tricky to navigate (especially as it is new, even to your DP Coordinator):

1. EUR Category 1 remarks can be requested for the IA if the student consents (they need to be aware that grades can go up, down or stay the same). As the teacher, you have a key role in deciding whether this is likely to be in the student's best interest - check with your colleagues and DP Coordinator if you need further support before making a decision.
2. If the predicted grade appears to be less than your proposal, check with your DP Coordinator in case an administrative error may have occurred. These can be corrected free-of-charge via your Coordinator and IB Support from the regional IB office.
3. Increased predicted grades could be the result of an 'IA uplift', where the IA results have indicated to the IB that your cohort is better than usual (in the recent past).
4. A Student-initiated Predicted Grade Enquiry (SiPGE) can be launched by students on the basis that the teacher judgement could not reasonably have been formed from the evidence used or because the department/school may not have followed all the correct procedures (e.g. using slightly different evidence if the student experienced adverse circumstances at the time the assessment work was completed). Whether or not the school agrees with the enquiry, a written statement, a mark book and three pieces of evidence (not including the IA) should be sent to the IB for their consideration.

This last option for students sounds quite alarming at first glance - what if every student wants to simply 'have a go' at increasing all six of their subject predicted grades? However, the burden on the student to overturn the teacher's (and DP Coordinator's) decision is enormously high. Even in the unlikely event that extra pieces of timed, supervised, or authenticated evidence (from near the end of the Business Management course) come to light that you did not consider, the student would still need to demonstrate that you could not reasonably have come to the grade that you did. How do you prepare for a SiPGE? Talk to your DP Coordinator and/or Head of School, and perhaps collate evidence from internal exams, in-class assessments, the Extended Essay etc. If you are still in school, do this now if possible rather than later during the summer vacation.

The potentially more concerning aspect of this IB policy is that it fails to acknowledge that some schools may not have challenged (or been unsuccessful in challenging) the initial distribution of grades through the exceptions process and so there may be some Predicted Grades that were always destined to be too low for the individual candidates.

As with the May and November 2020 exams, there is again a greater weight placed on the IA (35% instead of 25%). This could have been quite different in quality when compared to the candidate's responses in the external exams, so this also plays a significant role in determining the final overall grade for the subject.

The IB recently released further information for candidates about the SiPGE service, which you can read about here.