Choosing the ‘right’ tier for GCSE Maths

By Robin Harris
Published 06 February 2023

We know how difficult it is to make the decision on which tier to enter a student for their GCSE Maths, especially when they’re borderline. You want to be sure you’re getting it right for your students. Robin Harris, from our Maths Curriculum team, recognised this challenge and set about developing a tool to help.

Recently one head of maths asked me whether I would recommend using a combination of tiers for mock exams for borderline students. This got me reflecting on how difficult it must be for teachers to decide on which tier to enter borderline students,and was there anything we could do to help."

Thinking it through logically, if you take questions from past performance data that showed the biggest performance difference from grade 4 to 5, this could provide valuable information to help you make the right decision for your students in terms of tiering. When I looked at performance data from previous summer series, there are some topics that stand out as differentiators between grades 4 and 5, such as surface area and volume, standard form and error intervals.

However, spending more time on these topics, at the expense of others which are likely to have a greater focus in the exams, may not make sense. There’s no denying that some questions have proven to be very good differentiators between grade 4 and grade 5 students, and it’s these questions that form the basis of our new tiering papers. Nevertheless, some of these topics are relatively small. My advice is not to use this resource in isolation – it’s only intended as an extra check for borderline students.

Using the Question Level Analysis and Performance Data spreadsheets (QLAPD), I identified questions where the difference in performance between students who achieved grade 4, and those who achieved grade 5 is significantly greater than the average difference.”

The average difference in question facility for students who gained grade 4 and those who gained grade 5 is 14% on Foundation tier and on Higher tier it’s 11%. Whereas the average difference for the questions in this resource is more than 20%. (Facility is the mean marks achieved on a question as a percentage of the maximum available.)

The questions were then put into short tests which can be taken during a lesson. These were accompanied by the performance data, complete with an indicative score for students who achieved grades 4 and 5 at the top of columns S and R respectively. Only students who are approaching the indicative score for grade 5 should be considered for Higher tier.

Our position is that it shouldn’t matter which tier a ‘grade 4 or 5 student’ enters as they should achieve the same grade on either. There’s a greater risk for ‘grade 4 students’ entering the Higher tier of having a bad day and failing to achieve a grade at all, since the grade 3-4 boundary is narrow (half the grade 4-5 boundary). On the other hand ‘grade 5 students’ have a chance of gaining a grade 6 if they’re entered for Higher tier, which they wouldn’t have at Foundation tier. Of course, the most important factor in the decision will be your knowledge of the students you teach. How they’ll be affected by the very different exam experience of the two tiers is an essential consideration.

We know that some schools take the view to enter more students for Higher tier with, reportedly, some success. Whatever your approach we hope this tiering papers proves useful.