Raw mark, percentage, notional boundary, working-at grade, target grade and question-level analysis: what each figure on the sheet actually means, and what it cannot tell you.
Book a Free ConsultationA GCSE mock feedback sheet is rarely one number. English secondaries print several figures against a single mock paper: a raw mark, a percentage, a grade boundary every exam board calls “notional” rather than official, and often a working-at grade and a target grade too. At Wye School, a Key Stage 2 average score of 100 maps to a target grade of 5, and 110 maps to a 7 — different numbers, built by different people, for different reasons.
Trying to work out what your child’s own mock sheet is actually telling you? Our expert GCSE tutors run a mock paper review: a subject specialist for the right exam board and tier works through the marked script — or the results slip, if the script is not available — against the mark scheme, and tells you exactly what cost the marks.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppThe confusion starts because the numbers do not share an author. A raw mark and the grade boundary behind it come from the exam board that set the paper. A percentage is the school’s own arithmetic on that mark. A working-at grade is a teacher’s rolling judgement, built from more than one piece of evidence. A target grade is a statistical prediction, fixed months or years before the mock was ever sat. One parent on Mumsnet put the practical effect of mixing several of these on one sheet plainly: “I took a look at the class feedback on the mocks and it was all impossible to understand.”
Wye School’s own Year 11 report shows how little the three grade-shaped numbers actually have in common, despite sitting on the same page. Its Predicted Grade is “the grade that we believe your child is currently most likely to achieve at the end of Year 11 based on their current attainment and effort both in and out of the classroom” — a forecast. Its Working-at Grade is “the grade that your child is currently working at and is awarded by mock exams and classroom assessments” — a rolling snapshot. Its Target Grade is neither: fixed from a Key Stage 2 average, unchanged by how the mock actually went. Three labels that all read as “a grade” on the page, built three different ways.
The raw mark is the plainest number on the sheet and the one schools explain least. OCR states the position for all its GCSE and A-level qualifications directly: “The mark students get on each exam paper or non-exam assessment will be the component mark. There isn’t a grade for each component – just a mark. This is sometimes called a raw mark.” That is the whole definition: marks scored out of the marks available on that specific paper, nothing more.
What it can tell you is exact and narrow — how many of the available marks your child actually got, question by question if the marked script comes home. What it cannot tell you is anything about difficulty, and it cannot be compared to a raw mark on a different paper, a different year, or even the real summer exam, without the grade boundary that goes with it. OCR explains why that boundary matters so much: “In most cases, we just add the component raw marks together to get the total mark... Each component contributes a certain percentage to the total qualification mark... We use weighting factor to make sure each component contributes the right amount.” A raw mark, on its own, means nothing — the same mark out of a smaller paper and a larger paper are different results, and only the paper’s own boundary converts either into a grade.
This is also why a mock and a real exam can show very different raw marks for a similar grade: two papers are rarely built to the same total, and a mock paper’s marks-available figure is set by whoever assembled that particular mock, not by a national standard.
The percentage looks like the most standardised number on the sheet, because it is scaled to 0–100 regardless of what the raw mark was out of. That is also what makes it misleading. A percentage is the school’s own arithmetic on the raw mark — not a figure any exam board sets or publishes. Wye School’s own reporting guide makes the mechanism explicit for its own assessments: “Students sit assessments for the middle of the year and the end of the year in each subject. This is the percentage that your child has achieved.” The school marks the paper, totals the raw marks, and divides — the exam board is not involved in that step at all.
That matters because every GCSE board publishes its own grade boundaries as raw marks, not percentages. Pearson’s notional component grade boundaries and OCR’s component figures both list a mark out of the paper’s own total, never a percentage. A percentage is therefore one arithmetic step removed from the number a board actually uses to set a grade, and it does not travel between two different papers the way its 0–100 shape suggests it should: the same percentage on a mock built from one set of questions and a mock built from a different set is not the same standard of work, even when the figure looks identical.
There is a genuine use for it, though, and it is the one our own guide to why mock grades drop in the real exam already makes in passing: within the same paper, or a very similar one, the percentage is more stable to track from one mock to the next than the grade letter is, because the letter depends entirely on which boundary the school chose to apply that time. Track the percentage on a like-for-like paper, and treat a percentage from a different paper, subject or year as its own separate figure — never a continuation of the last one.
Want a specialist to check whether your child’s own percentage is actually improving, paper for paper? Our expert GCSE tutors work from the marked script or results slip for the specific exam board and tier your child sat, not a national average.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppBecause there is no official boundary for a single component or paper — only for the whole qualification, once every student nationally has actually sat it. OCR says so directly: there “isn’t a grade for each component – just a mark,” and the component grade boundaries it publishes alongside “don’t automatically add up to the same grade at qualification level.” Pearson calls its own version “notional only,” adding that such figures “do not equate to a certificated grade.” A mock grade built from one of these figures is a useful estimate, never a certificate.
How a school actually picks which boundary to apply — a past real year, the previous year’s figure, or something else — is its own decision, and our separate guide to why mock grades drop in the real exam covers four named schools’ different methods in full. A specialist review of the actual paper against the mark scheme, which is what our GCSE mock paper review does, is usually more useful than the boundary question on its own.
A working-at grade is not an exam board figure at all — it is a teacher’s rolling judgement, refreshed as new evidence comes in, and two schools’ own published policies describe the mechanics almost identically despite being hundreds of miles apart. Wye School, in Kent, defines it as “the grade that your child is currently working at and is awarded by mock exams and classroom assessments.” Nether Stowe School, in Staffordshire, goes further on how that judgement is actually formed: “A WAG will always be informed by a teacher’s professional judgement and the available data... staff will look to holistically place students into a grade using the criteria from the exam board... the grade arrived at will be weighted heavily on the data gathered during the school’s assessment weeks.”
What that can tell you is a genuinely useful, rounded view — not one paper on one day, but a teacher’s read across several pieces of evidence, checked against the exam board’s own grading criteria. What it cannot tell you is that it is an exam-board figure: it carries no boundary and no mark scheme a parent can check, and — on Nether Stowe’s own wording — it is informed by mocks rather than identical to a single mock grade. Nether Stowe also distinguishes the two internal assessment types that feed the same working-at grade differently: “Milestones are larger assessments that are graded... Progress Checks are smaller assessments that are ungraded.” A working-at grade can move between report cycles for reasons that have nothing to do with a single mock paper at all.
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Wondering whether a working-at grade is actually keeping up with your child’s real ability? Our expert GCSE tutors read the same evidence the school used — the marked papers and assessment weeks — and tell you specifically where the marks are being lost.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppNo, and the distinction is simple even though the two numbers often sit side by side. A target grade is fixed early, from prior attainment — at Wye School, from a Key Stage 2 average score, where 100 maps to an expected grade 5 and 110 maps to a 7 — and it does not move when a mock goes badly or well. A working-at grade moves constantly, because it is built from the most recent evidence a teacher has. A child can be below target and still be working at a rising grade in the very same report.
Which of the two a sixth form or a UCAS form actually wants is a different question again, covered in full in our guide to target, mock and predicted grades. And for where the target number itself was actually built — the statistical model behind it, and what a school is and is not required to disclose — our guide to the autumn parents’ evening covers the mechanics in full.
A question-level analysis breaks a mock result down by individual question, rather than stopping at the overall mark, and asking for one is already an informal habit on parent forums — usually without anyone explaining what it actually is. On Mumsnet, one reply to a parent worried about a poor English mock was blunt: “Ask the teachers to give you a clear question level analysis about which questions dropped and why.” A working MFL teacher, writing about her own post-mock routine, describes exactly that process from the other side: “Effective analysis for me starts with Question Level Analysis (QLA)... If you use Edexcel, their ResultsPlus platform offers a feature called the ‘Mock Analysis Service’ to assist you with this.” Pearson’s own Mocks Service FAQ page confirms the board runs exactly that kind of tool, with results and scripts accessible through the same ResultsPlus login.
What a QLA can tell you is which specific questions cost the marks, not just which paper. What it cannot tell you, according to the researchers who have actually tested the method, is as reliable as it looks. Nuffield-funded research reported in Schools Week found that “last year, half of teachers in a Teacher Tapp poll reported they were entering data for Question Level Analysis” — but that the underlying figures were “fraught with difficulties. Individual questions differ in several ways, making it difficult to know what exactly to take from a single correct or incorrect response,” with correlations between sub-domain scores sitting “above 0.99” in the Key Stage 2 maths data the researchers actually tested. They stated their own extrapolation plainly rather than claiming it as a proven GCSE finding: “We believe the same is likely true for many other assessments schools use, including those from commercial providers and QLA of GCSEs.” A QLA is worth asking for — it is more specific than a grade — but the pattern it shows in a single mock is a lead to investigate, not a verdict to act on alone.
None of them, individually, because none of them was built for that job. The raw mark measures one paper. The percentage is the school’s own arithmetic on that mark, comparable only within the same or a very similar paper. The notional boundary that turns either into a grade is explicitly not an official one, at any board. The working-at grade is a teacher’s rolling judgement across several pieces of evidence, not a single sitting. The target grade is a fixed prediction from years earlier that does not move regardless of how the mock went. The question-level analysis, where a school produces one, shows which questions cost the marks — and, on the best evidence available, should be read as a lead rather than a verdict.
| What's on the sheet | Who actually sets it | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Raw mark | Exam board (the paper itself) | Marks scored out of marks available on this paper only |
| Percentage | The school (arithmetic on the raw mark) | Stable only when compared paper-for-paper with a like-for-like mock |
| Notional/component boundary | Exam board, marked "illustrative" or "notional" | An estimate, never a certificated grade |
| Working-at grade | A teacher's rolling judgement | Current evidence across mocks and classwork, refreshed each report |
| Target grade | A statistical prediction (e.g. from Key Stage 2 data) | A fixed expectation that does not move with a single mock |
| Question-level analysis (QLA) | A teacher, or a board tool such as ResultsPlus, where one is produced | Which questions cost the marks — a lead, not a verdict |
Read together rather than picked apart, the six numbers still do something useful: they show whether a result is a content gap, a technique gap, or a single bad day — which a single grade letter cannot show on its own.
Once you know which of the six numbers you are looking at, the most useful next step is usually the one none of them can do on its own: reading the actual marked script, question by question, against the mark scheme. That is what a subject specialist does in our GCSE mock paper review — working from whatever you have, script or results slip, for the exam board and tier your child actually sat, and producing a ranked, written list of what cost the marks, alongside an honest view of whether the problem is technique, timing or content.
Got a question-level breakdown and not sure what to do with it? Our expert GCSE tutors turn a QLA or a marked script into a specific, ranked plan — which topics need reteaching and which need only exam technique.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppA raw mark is simply the marks a student scored out of the marks available on that specific paper — OCR’s own guidance states plainly that “there isn’t a grade for each component – just a mark. This is sometimes called a raw mark.” It carries no information about difficulty on its own, and it cannot be compared to a raw mark on a different paper, a different exam board, or a different year without the grade boundary that goes with it. A raw mark means nothing on its own until you know the marks available on that paper, and two papers are rarely built to the same total.
No. The percentage is arithmetic the school does itself — the raw mark expressed out of 100 — while every GCSE board publishes its own grade boundaries as raw marks, not percentages. Wye School’s own reporting guide describes the mechanism directly: assessments are marked and “this is the percentage that your child has achieved.” A percentage from one paper is only safely comparable to a percentage from a very similar paper; treat a percentage from a different subject, year or exam board as a separate figure rather than a continuation of the last one.
A notional (or “illustrative”) grade boundary is a component-level figure a board publishes alongside the real qualification boundary, but does not certify. Pearson states its own version is “notional only, and do not equate to a certificated grade.” OCR’s component boundaries “don’t automatically add up to the same grade at qualification level.” Schools use these figures to grade mock papers, because no official boundary exists for a single component or paper — only for the whole qualification, once every student nationally has actually sat it.
No. A target grade is fixed early from prior attainment — at Wye School, from a Key Stage 2 average score, where 100 maps to an expected grade 5 — and does not move when a mock goes well or badly. A working-at grade is a teacher’s rolling judgement, refreshed from mock exams and classroom assessments, and can move between every report. A child can sit below target and still be working at a rising grade in the same report, because the two numbers answer different questions.
They are closely related but not identical, and schools do not always use the terms the same way. Wye School defines Predicted Grade as “the grade that we believe your child is currently most likely to achieve... based on their current attainment and effort,” while its Working-at Grade is “awarded by mock exams and classroom assessments.” Both are teacher judgements built from evidence, unlike a target grade, but a school’s working-at grade is usually the narrower, assessment-based figure that feeds into the broader predicted grade a sixth form or UCAS actually sees.
Yes — it is already a common informal recommendation on parent forums. One Mumsnet reply to a parent worried about a mock result put it directly: “Ask the teachers to give you a clear question level analysis about which questions dropped and why.” Not every school produces one as standard, and Nuffield-funded research reported in Schools Week found the underlying question-level data can be “fraught with difficulties” and noisy, so treat a QLA as a lead worth investigating rather than a definitive verdict on a single mock.
It is a board-run tool, not just a teacher’s own spreadsheet. A working MFL teacher describes it directly: “If you use Edexcel, their ResultsPlus platform offers a feature called the ‘Mock Analysis Service’” to help build a question-level breakdown. Pearson’s own Mocks Service FAQ page confirms the board supports results access and script viewing for individual candidates through the same ResultsPlus login, so a school using Edexcel has an official route to this kind of analysis beyond building one by hand.
The two largest boards checked directly both do. Pearson publishes a “Notional Component Grade Boundaries” document each series and states plainly that the figures “do not equate to a certificated grade.” OCR publishes its own component boundaries too, noting they “don’t automatically add up to the same grade at qualification level.” The practice is the same across GCSE boards more broadly, and the figure is always a supporting estimate for mock use, never an official qualification result.
A mock feedback sheet shows six different numbers built by six different processes. Our GCSE mock paper review sends a subject specialist through the actual script, question by question, so you know exactly what cost the marks.
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