What are Alevels worth Most Alevels are made up of four units with a grand total of 400 UMS marks available Sixunit Alevels are out of 600 UMS marks T wounit Alevels are out of ID: 278204
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Slide1
UMS explained!Slide2
What are A-levels worth?
Most A-levels
are made up of
four units, with a grand total of 400 UMS marks available. Six-unit A-levels are out of 600 UMS marksTwo-unit A-levels are out of 200 UMS marksSlide3
The best way to understand UMS is with an example!
Let's imagine a four-unit A-level, with the first unit (we'll call it Unit X) worth 30% of the qualification.
There are 400 UMS marks for the whole qualification (because it's a four-unit A-level),
So Unit X will be worth a maximum of 120 UMS marks (30% of 400).
Don’t progress to the next slide if you don’t understand this!!Slide4
For ALL A-levels…
Grade boundaries for UMS
marks are
fixed so that:A = 80% of the maximum UMSB = 70%C = 60%D = 50%E = 40%Slide5
Lets continue with our example!
For
Unit X
, this means that our UMS grade boundaries are:A = 96 (80% of 120)B = 84 (70% of 120)C = 72 (60% of 120)D = 60 (50% of 120)E = 48 (40% of 120)
UNDERSTOOD? If not go back two slides and start again!Slide6
Let's say the Unit X exam is out of 80 marks.
These are called
raw marks
. Once the exam has been taken by everyone, a committee at the exam board gathers to decide what the grade boundaries for this particular paper should beThey take into account for example how difficult it is compared to earlier versions of the Unit X exam
Are you sure you understand? Slide7
Unit X
For this exam, let's say the committee decides that the grade A boundary is 60 out of 80 and the grade E boundary is 36 out of 80 (remember, these are
raw marks
). The other grade boundaries are spread evenly between these two points.Slide8
We now convert the raw marks
to
UMS marks
, because we know where the equivalent grade boundaries lie…If you took the exam and got 60/80, this would give you 96 UMS, because 60 happens to be the raw mark grade A boundary set by the committee, and 96 is the uniform mark grade A boundary for this unit.If you got 55/80, you would get 86 UMS (grade B).If you got 45/80, you would get 66 UMS (grade D).Slide9
Conclusions…
Because the raw marks are converted to UMS marks, it means different students' grades can be compared side by side, with a particular UMS (and ultimately grade) representing the
same level of achievement
no matter when the unit was taken.Slide10
UMS conversion for different exam boards…
http://www.aqa.org.uk/exams-administration/about-results/uniform-mark-scale/convert-marks-to-ums
http://www.edexcel.com/i-am-a/student/results/Pages/Convert-your-marks.aspx http://www.ocr.org.uk/Images/128199-a2-units-showing-90-percent-conversion-points-january-2013.pdf