رياضيات GCSE
What Is a Predicted Grade?
Your school writes it, not the exam board, and it is a forecast rather than a result. Here is the evidence behind it and how sixth forms and UCAS use it.
Predicted grade
A predicted grade is a school's judgement, made before the exams, of the grade it expects a student to achieve — produced by teachers, never by the exam board.
- يُسمّى أيضاً
- Teacher prediction
- أين يقابله الطلاب
- Year 11, for sixth-form and college applications, and again in Year 13, when predicted A level grades go into the UCAS reference before a single exam has been sat.
الإجابة باختصار
A predicted grade is the grade a student's school expects them to achieve, written by their teachers before the exams are sat. It exists because sixth-form and university applications close months before results. No exam board issues predicted grades, and none appears on a certificate.
مثال
January mock: grade 6. Predicted: grade 7.
The prediction is not the mock result, and a department that simply copies mock grades across is doing the job badly. A January mock is sat before the specification has been finished, often on a paper deliberately pitched hard, by a student who has not yet done the revision. The prediction weighs that against topic tests, past-paper trends and two years of trajectory, and forecasts what June will produce.
Who writes it and what it rests on
The subject teacher produces it, usually agreed with a head of department and sometimes checked across a school so that one generous department does not distort every application. The evidence is whatever the school actually holds: mock results, past papers worked under timed conditions, topic tests, classwork, and how the student's performance has moved over the course rather than where it stands on one day.
Three different grades get handed to students and confused constantly. The working-at grade is what they would get if the exam were tomorrow. The target grade is aspirational, frequently generated from prior attainment data. The predicted grade is a forecast for the actual exam. Only the third belongs on an application, and asking a school which of the three it has just sent you is a fair question.
Why it exists at all
Application deadlines fall before results, and that is the entire reason for the institution. A sixth form deciding in February whether to offer a place for September has nothing but the school's forecast to go on, so it makes a conditional offer: a place, provided the real grades arrive. For maths this is where predictions bite hardest, because A level Maths entry requirements are commonly set at grade 6 or 7 in GCSE Mathematics, and a prediction one grade below that can close a door before the exam is sat.
The same machinery runs at 18 through UCAS, where predicted A level grades sit in the school's reference. A conditional offer is a promise about results, not about predictions — so a prediction is a ticket to be considered, and nothing more than that.
What a predicted grade is not
It is not from the exam board. Boards mark papers and award grades; they have no view on you before you sit and no record of what your school forecast. It follows that a prediction you disagree with cannot be appealed to a board — the conversation is with the school, and it goes better with past-paper evidence than with an argument.
It is also not what happened in 2020 and 2021, when centre-assessed and teacher-assessed grades replaced exams and did appear on certificates. Those were awarded grades produced under emergency arrangements. A predicted grade is a forecast that certifies nothing.
And it is not something we can issue. We can show a family exactly what a student's timed past-paper scores say and what a realistic June looks like, and we do that in writing. Only the registered centre that enters a student produces a prediction any school or university will accept, and any tutor who offers you one is selling something worthless.
أسئلة شائعة
Who decides my predicted grade?
Your subject teacher, normally with a head of department's agreement. It is a professional judgement about your likely exam performance, not a calculation, and different schools weigh mocks, classwork and past-paper evidence differently. If you want to know how yours was reached, ask which pieces of evidence produced it.
Can I ask for a higher predicted grade?
You can ask, and it works better with evidence than with pleading. Bring timed past-paper scores, marked and dated, showing a trend the school may not have seen — work done with a tutor often falls outside what the department holds. A teacher who can see improvement they did not know about has a reason to revise the forecast; a teacher who cannot has none.
What happens if I miss my predicted grades?
Offers are conditional on your real results, so missing the prediction is only a problem if it means missing the offer's conditions. Universities can and do accept applicants who fall slightly short, at their discretion, and Clearing exists for the cases where they do not. The prediction itself has no standing once results are out.
Is a predicted grade the same as a target grade?
No. A target is aspirational and often generated from prior attainment data across a whole cohort — a statement about what a student like you tends to achieve. A prediction is a teacher's forecast for you specifically. Targets are usually the more optimistic of the two, which is exactly why they are not what gets sent to universities.
Do exam boards see predicted grades?
No. The board receives an entry — your name, subject, tier and centre — and later a set of scripts. Nothing your school forecast reaches an examiner, influences a mark, or appears anywhere on your certificate. That separation is deliberate, and it is why marking is blind to who you are and what was expected of you.
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