EXAM AGONY
A-level misery for 300,000 English pupils as 39% of grades set by teachers ‘will be downgraded’
UP to 300,000 A-level pupils in England face results misery as 39 per cent of grades set by teachers “will be downgraded”, it's reported.
Exams were cancelled this year due to the coronavirus pandemic with the exam regulator Ofqual instead bringing in a statistical model to assess a student.
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The method looks at each pupil's previous exam results and their school's recent exam history to devise a grade.
The results are due to be published next week.
Fears have been raised that the regulator will downgrade results after Ofqual rejected 124,000 grade recommendations for students in Scotland earlier this week - a quarter of all entries.
Under the new regulations a school in England can only register a complaint about the grades if it thinks there has been a statistical anomaly compared with grades in previous years.
Pupils in England cannot appeal the decision on an individual basis, while students in Scotland can.
GCSEs are also expected to be downgraded at a similar rate, meaning more than two million grades set by teachers could be adjusted.
Those pupils most likely to receive a lower grade than expected appear to be students bordering a B or C grade or a C and D grade, according to research carried out by .
Teacher assessments will only be used to help set A-level grades on courses with five or fewer candidates.
On larger courses, grades will be awarded only based on Ofqual's algorithm.
Students in England can resit their exams in the autumn.
Protests over the grading system have already taken place in Scotland with students demonstrating outside the Scottish Qualifications Authority office.
March organiser Erin Bleakley said she wanted the protest to show how pupils from poor area have been hardest hit.
The 17-year-old, who was at St Andrew's High School in Carntyne, told the : “We deserve the same life chances as young people in affluent areas.
“How can anyone expect to close the attainment gap when your hard work can be wiped out based on your postcode?”
An Ofqual spokesperson said the authority expects “the majority of grades students receive will be the same as their centre assessment grades”.
“For A-level, three years of historical results inform the standardisation of grades. You can think of this as an averaging across the years of data.”
The Royal Statistical Society has called for the UK Statistics Authority to carry out an urgent review of the statistical procedures used in England and Scotland.
An educational expert has previously warned that students faced a “life sentence” due to them not being allowed to appeal their grades.
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Dr Martin Stephen, the former High Master of St Paul's Boys' School, said the current results system was tantamount to "imposing a life sentence on children, with no effective right of appeal".
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Ian Power, the general secretary of the Headmasters and Headmistresses Conference (HMC), which represents a number of prestigious schools including Eton, Harrow and Winchester, warned that allowing students the right to appeal against their grades this summer was a matter of "natural justice".
He warned exam boards could face a number of legal challenges unless the rules are changed.
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Education Secretary Gavin Williamson says there will not be exams this academic year
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