Ready for results?

Wednesday 30 June 2021

Results 2021

The May 2021 results will be released to students in under a week, on 6th July 2021.  

In another unusual year, find below an outline of what the release of results and subsequent enquiry upon results services (EUR) mean for the two different routes schools took in May 2021. 

For both routes, as in 2020, departments 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 support professional development and teaching for future cohorts). While examiner comments are limited, it can be useful to find out if your school typically over-marks or under-marks within each criterion. 

EUR Category 3 Remoderation is not available as all work was marked, and no work was sampled and moderated. 

Exam route

For exam route schools, you're back to business-as-usual... except that all coursework has been externally marked and for the absence of Paper 2. Predicted grades won't feature in any post-results enquiry.

EUR Category 1 Remarks can be requested if the student consents (they need to be aware that grades can go up, down or stay the same). As the student's teacher you can 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 and Paper 1 scores achieved were what you anticipated and by checking how close the total is to the boundaries. 

Non-exam route

Exams did not take place in a large number of schools. In these non-exam route schools, a predicted grade took the place of examination components. All coursework has been externally marked.

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

  • 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 student's teacher you can 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 score achieved was what you anticipated and by checking how close the total is to the boundaries.
  • If the predicted grade appears to be less than your proposal, check with your Coordinator in case an administrative error may have occured. These can be corrected free-of-charge via the Coordinator and IB Support.
  • 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.
  • 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 more broadly did not follow correct procedures. Whether or not the school agrees with the enquiry, a written statement, a mark book and three pieces of evidence (not incuding the IA) should be sent to the IB for their consideration.

This last option for students might sound troubling.  However, the burden on the student to overturn the teacher (and 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 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. 

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 through the exceptions process and so there may be some predicted grades that were always destined to be too low for the individual candidates. There is also, once more, a great weight placed on the IA (which could have been quite different in quality to a student's exams) in checking (from the IB perspective) whether predicted grades were likely to be accurate. 

We wish you the very smoothest of results days, with the outcomes that your students deserve, and a restful, enjoyable summer vacation.