Arriving at a predicted grade

For a teacher new to the IB programme it can be quite daunting to arrive at a predicted grade. Even some experienced teachers sometimes still find it difficult. Once you do have experience though you should be able to predict the grade for most students quite accurately with the remainder accurate to plus or minus one grade although there will always be the odd student who confounds all predictions. This page only really concerns the IB predicted grade. In fact you are likely to have to make another predicted grade much earlier when the student applies to university. This is referred to on the page on teacher recommendations. In both cases you will need to base your predicted grade on a combination of evidence from written work – particularly test results, your knowledge of the student’s way of working and the expectation of the IB. During the first year of teaching I place the emphasis very much on getting the student to understand the topics I am covering.  I spend much less time on examination technique as I firmly believe that the key to doing well is through understanding rather than by rote learning and endless examination preparation. However, I do give tests at the end of each topic and use past IB questions to get them used to the standard. I also keep a record of the marks. If you then give the same or a similar test in future years to a new group of students you can compare the marks they get on a particular test with the final grade students who took the test before then went on to achieve. At the end of the first year I do set an internal examination on the work so far covered and try to make it as much like an IB exam as possible. This gives them practice at IB examination procedures and technique and again gives you some solid evidence upon which to base the grade. You can also use homework and practical write-ups and how they respond during class discussions to gain information but this is probably slightly less useful although it gives you a feel of how the student is progressing. This is probably all you will have in terms of marks for the university prediction since that is usually required quite early in the second year. 

For the IB prediction however most teachers will have given their students a mock examination very near the end of the course just before the predictions are due. It makes sense to use a previous paper as then you can use the published markscheme. Of course your marking will not be to exactly the same standard as the external examiners but it should not be too different. You will also have the student’s final IA mark. Make sure you scale the marks according to the weighting of each paper then compare the student’s total mark with the published grade boundaries for that examination session. These can be found in the Chief Examiner's subject report in the resources section on My IB.  It is also useful to look at the grade descriptors and you have to make a judgement as to whether the student will improve upon their mock examination result when it comes to taking the final exam a few weeks later. You need to know how much effort they put in revising (UK) or reviewing (US) for the mock examination. Some students are conscientious throughout the course and their standard is likely to remain quite steady, others involve themselves in many other areas of school life (as a good student should do) and once they settle down to work hard in the remaining few weeks may well improve considerably. Keep a record of all the predicted grades and compare them with the actual grades awarded to the students. Gradually over the years you will get a good feel for it and should end up being very accurate. Certain schools are renowned for their good predictions and these are used as checks during the grade awarding procedure.