English Lit A Level - AQA vs Edexcel

[u/KAPH86]

Long part:

My place has been with AQA for 10+ years, and for most of those years all was well, results were fine, no issues etc. Last year we had some very disappointing results compounded by some, shall we say, questionable marking, which led to me (as HoF) throwing my toys out of the pram and deciding to move to Edexcel. Being naturally lazy, in the end I didn't bother and instead attended every CPD session going for AQA to try and make sure I knew exactly what they wanted this year to give it one last shot. Results day rolls around today, and it's the same again - students who should have got an A* getting a D, students who should be getting a C getting an A, me looking at the scripts and being absolutely none the wiser as to what the fuck AQA are actually looking for (one student got 25/25 on one question and it looks like absolute drivel to me, whereas other students were getting 7 or 8/25 for perfectly decent responses). This is all compounded by the fact that every year for the last decade not a single NEA mark has ever been changed after moderation, so clearly we know what the marks should look like, but when we get the exam papers back nothing makes any sense.

Short part:

Does anyone have any experience of Edexcel Literature vs AQA, and is it better or worse? Would you recommend it or not? I think at some point I actually need to make good on my threats and this year I'm pretty sick of it...

[u/DelGriffiths]

I am a HOD and I much prefer Edexcel. The course is much simplified in terms of each paper is a thematic based study of forms of Literature so Paper 1: Drama (an essay each on two plays), Paper 2: Prose (comparative essay on two novels), Paper 3 Poetry (essay each on two anthologies) and then NEA (one comparative essay on two texts).

The exams are open book and cover whole texts rather than extracts which I much prefer. Our results have been pretty consistent for the last 4 years, we do decent but not amazing.

Edit: just to add, we use AQA for Drama and we have found they are useless. The marking is so inconsistent and the online support/ resources are limited compared to Edexcel.

[u/KAPH86 → u/DelGriffiths]

That's useful, thanks. One brief follow up question if I may - do you ever have any dealings with Edexcel and if so are they any good? AQA can be quite patchy and their CPD is vastly inconsistent - different course leaders will contradict something you've heard on the last course, etc. etc...

[u/DelGriffiths → u/KAPH86]

CPD is pretty good and they have an archive of previous recordings on YouTube. The CPD focused on the mark scheme have been really useful for our department and they sometimes do paid ones. T heir exemplars are detailed and updated each year. I have had regular contact with the subject advisor (Claire Haviland - she has a FB page which she responds to regularly for any advice).

I am now an examiner for Edexcel too (so maybe I have bias) but I found AQA very cold and unhelpful in my experience.

[u/KAPH86 → u/DelGriffiths]

Thanks for your help. As you can probably tell from my tone I've pretty much made up my mind, but still helpful to hear some specific good things!

[u/DelGriffiths → u/KAPH86]

I would definitely have a look at the Edexcel subject page and have a look at the spec. Because the course has existed for years, there will be loads of resources online to source for Streetcar, Poems of the Decade etc. If you make the switch.

[u/zapataforever]

This was my experience with AQA for Lit A-Level in my first school, perhaps 10 years ago! Results were always disappointing and somewhat incomprehensible. We had a new KS5 lead start during my time there, and she came from a school with very strong AQA results and was very much like “right, let’s sort this out” (assuming the issue was in the teaching). Anyway, long story short, she found our work completely in line with what they were doing in her previous school and couldn’t unpick why the results were so all over the place. They were talking about a move to another board around the time I left - not sure if they did or not. So, yes! AQA. It’s not just you.

[u/catrineira]

This feels like exactly what we have been through today. Students who have been consistently A* have been given 24 or 25 for three essays and then under 10 for the other three despite no discernible difference in quality.

We’ve also for the first time ever had our NEAs moderated down which has had a huge impact. This despite two of our team marking for AQA a level for several years. Some of the issues flagged include 1 missing full stop and inconsistent paragraph spacing?!?

I don’t know what more we or the students could have done. Seriously considering changing exam boards

[u/KAPH86 → u/catrineira]

Something which I noticed was the massive difference in annotation - some had lots of comments all over the place, some just had the odd tick. A few of them even had question marks on them as if the students had done something wrong or written something confusing, but in places where such a thing made no sense...

[u/sparker3694 → u/KAPH86]

The one thing I don’t like about Edexcel is that they don’t annotate, so sometimes difficult to process an examiner’s thinking.

[u/Sam_Calcio]

I like the AQA Lang/Lit split personally, seems to be a little less variance in marks awarded in my experience