Overall IB grade boundary flexibility

[Claudiosee]

Hello dear Forum,

I currently have my exams and have already completed several of them, some of which have caused me to wonder about the IB Grade boundaries flexibility.

However, in order to not break any possible 24 hour rule, I will not mention any specific subject or papers.

My question is the following:

Since past paper's Grade boundaries of specific subjects do vary, but generally tend to be on a somewhat similar level, could it be possible, in the case of an extremely simple/had exam, that the Grade boundaries turn out to be very different higher/lower from what they generally are?

I am obviously aware that in theory this is possible, however I am asking if anyone knows if this does happen, and (if it does), how frequent it can be.

Thank you for any responses.

P.S. Please inform me if this Topic breaks the 24h rule, in which case I will immediately remove it.

[IBN95]

ib grade boundaries do not change significantly from year to year, however they can increase or decrease by as much as 2% from year to year, not more.

[Claudiosee]

ib grade boundaries do not change significantly from year to year, however they can increase or decrease by as much as 2% from year to year, not more.

I have just received the information (from my teacher of the subject i was worried about) that she has once witnessed a very significant drop in grade boundary for a 7 in a specific paper. For the sake of the 24h rule i wont give exact figures, but i'll say as much that this value was 13% below the usual. I am aware that such boundaries are usually compensated for by the boundaries of other accompanied papers, however I was merely concerned about specific papers.

However, this does seem to be an anomaly, hence I take your answer as the response to my inquiry about the frequency of said anomalies.

Thank you and best regards.

[flinquinnster]

As you say, we can't really discuss specific subjects and grade boundaries for this exam session right now because of IB regulations. However, I'm fairly sure that grade boundaries can go up or down by more than 2% - usually they don't, but they might. For example, I've seen Maths HL go from 71% to 80% for a 7, depending on the years.

[need_ee_help]

ib grade boundaries do not change significantly from year to year, however they can increase or decrease by as much as 2% from year to year, not more.

This is true for many subjects however Maths and Sciences often change dramatically. For example in 2010 the maths studies level for a 6 was 67, and in 2010 it was 70. I've heard of Sciences having an even greater change, sometimes as much as by 4 or 5%

[braindead]

I think it generally depends on which subject you're referring to - for instance, I know that History boundaries don't change dramatically, whereas the Sciences see bigger gaps between years of boundaries... let's hope every subject drops by like 50% so we all get 7s and IB students take over the world.