Pamoja Education currently only offers the DP Online. It appreciates that schools for reasons of their own reporting schedules or school grading systems may want either a grade conversion (from the IB 1-7 grading system to a letter grade, for instance) or a predicted IB grade at points in the course.
Schools need to be aware of a number of factors however in making requests either for predicted grades or grade conversions and should also be aware of what is already offered by pamoja education in this area.
Predicted Grades
Timing and validity: schools should be aware that predicted Grades can only be valid if supported by significant evidence of student performance and while term grades are given from Term 2 a grade claiming to predict an IB score is unlikely to have much validity before the end of the first year. Schools can of course assume that the Term Grade given is a realistic summation of the student’s work up to that point and that if all things remained equal and they continued to perform at this level it could be suggested that they would achieve a grade at this level in the IB examination.
Projected Grades for University application
A projected grade for university admissions is often required by DP Coordinators / SBCs in order for schools and students to complete university applications. Some university systems require that schools provide a cumulative predicted grade (/45). Others require individual subject predicted grades (/7). This information is often required as many as six months prior to submission of the official IB predicted grade.
When asked to provide a student’s projected grade for university admission, Pamoja Education teachers should:
- Only respond to requests from DP Coordinators or SBCs. Any independent request from a student should be directed to the SBC for confirmation.
- Provide the SBC / DP Coordinator with a projection of the grade that the candidate is expected to achieve in the subject, based on all the evidence of the candidate’s work to date.
- Communicate to the SBC / DP Coordinator that
- This is a projected grade for the purpose of university admissions only.
- This is not the official IB Predicted Grade which will be submitted in mid-March.
- This projection is based upon:
- the teacher’s knowledge of IB standards
- the evidence of the candidate’s current achievement and potential improvement based on their work to date
- the teacher’s assumption that the student will complete the course at their current level of academic commitment and course engagement
IB Predicted Grades
These are given with the IA marks via IBIS and are used by the IB to act as a trigger for further investigation of the assessment of the student’s work where, if there is a divergence of more than two grades from the predicted grade and other circumstances apply, the student’s work will be remarked at Grade Award. It is not Pamoja Education Policy to give these predicted grades to student though schools are welcome to so if they wish.
Grade Conversion
The Grade book includes a % total of all the student’s marks for summative assessments. As zeroes are not given for unsubmitted, late or incomplete work, the Grade book entry is simply left blank. In order to calculate the current grade schools need to ensure the percentage score reflects all the assessments given during the assessment period.
Where students have failed to submit an assessment this will give a misleading percentage score and before a predicted grade is given the percentage score needs to be modified where a missed assessment will be counted as zero and the total number averaged. This final percentage can be compared with the current IB subject grade boundaries to give a best fit grade for the student.