At the time of writing, as far as schools in the North Hemisphere are concerned, the examination process is finished. Congratulations to you and your students, you got there! Wednesday 21st May was the last written paper and after that, all that there is left to do is wait.  The official results are published to students on Sunday 6th July.

If you want to remind parents or students about the process there is a good summary of the process for the release of information on the TES web page.  

As far as teachers are concerned, the biggest concern is often whether or not their marks for the Internal assessment will be moderated or not.  If you want more detail about the difference between marking (what happens to the students' scripts and their Extended Essay) and moderation (what happens to the IA marks submitted by the school) please have a look at the recently published “Everything in moderation...” page.  It would be great to receive your questions and comments on this page either here or directly on the page. 

It is also perhaps worth remembering that when the grades are published, the IB grades are criterion based. This means that, unlike some examinations systems (e.g. norm referenced systems), the top grades are not just awarded to a fixed unchanging percentage each year.  The grade boundaries are set for each subject, each level and each examination session to ensure that the examinations set do indeed  fairly test the candidates' abilities (against these published criteria). Candidates need to demonstrate particular attributes in order to gain their final grades.  

The full list of grade descriptors are available on the PRC.  They are the same for all group 4 subjects and the description consist of two paragraphs for each level.  The first paragraph is about the knowledge, application and skills that the candidate should be able to demonstrate.  The second paragraph talks about the practical and investigative skills that that they need. 

Having said this, the 1 or 2 word summary descriptions are very helpful when thinking about whether the grade is fair.  These are:

7 - Excellent

6 - Very Good

5 - Good

4 - Satisfactory (in the sense of good enough)

3 - Mediocre

2 - Poor

1 - Very Poor. 

Fingers crossed that your students get what they deserve!