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Grade Boundaries

What do those numbers on the assessment criteria charts add up to in actual 1-7 grades?

Grade boundaries are the cut off points established for each mark band, ie points needed to reach a 7. The boundaries for each component at higher and standard level are set during the grade award meetings after each examination session. Each year the grade boundaries are published with exam results, occasionally they may vary by one point. In 2020 Exhibition boundaries dropped by one point.

Overall grade Boundaries in 2020

HL overall grade boundaries

Overall Grade Boundaries SL

Grade Boundaries for each component in 2020

Exhibition HL and SL

Grade	1	2	3	4	5	6	7
Mark range	0-3	4-7	8-12	13-16	17-21	22-25	26-30

Comparative Study HL

Grade	1	2	3	4	5	6	7
Mark range	0-5	6-11	12-17	18-23	24-29	30-35	36-42

Comparative Study SL

Grade	1	2	3	4	5	6	7
Mark range	0-4	5-9	10-14	15-18	19-22	23-26	27-30

Process Portfolio HL

Grade	1	2	3	4	5	6	7
Mark range	0-4	5-8	9-12	13-17	18-23	24-28	29-34

Process Portfolio SL

Grade	1	2	3	4	5	6	7
Mark range	0-3	4-7	8-11	12-16	17-22	23-27	28-34

What's the Formula?

How are the final marks obtained? Each component is marked out of total points possible CS ( 30 SL, 42 HL), PP (34) EX (30) and then converted to percentages to reach a combined overall mark as seen below

Visual Arts results around the world

Overall distribution of grades in Visual Arts 2020

As you can see from the chart below, the average score is a high 4.

Distribution of marks 1-7	%1	%2	%3	%4	%5	%6	%7
HL	0.2	5.8	22.4	31.2	27.8	10.3	2.4
SL	0.1	7.8	32.0	33.6	20.1	5.2	1.1

Predicting grades- how does it work?

Teachers submit overall predicted grades for each student before final assessment. These grade boundaries may help you in determining that but you should also refer to Group 6 Grade Descriptors.

Internal Assessment by teachers refers to the Exhibition Assessment only

Visual Arts

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