UMS explained!

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 marks

• Two-unit A-levels are out of 200 UMS marks

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!!

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%

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!

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 be

• They take into account for example how difficult it is compared to earlier versions of the Unit X exam

Are you sure you understand?

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.

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).

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.

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