A-level and GCSE students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland will have downgraded results restored to teacher-assessed grades after the government performed a humiliating U-turn and abandoned the controversial moderated system used to determine this year’s results.
Following a public and political outcry, England’s exams regulator Ofqual announced on Monday that all pupils will receive the higher grade of either the moderated system or teachers’ estimates of how they would have performed if they had sat the exams, which were cancelled because of the coronavirus crisis.
The decision marks a dramatic backtracking: last week prime minister Boris Johnson defended the contentious arrangements, saying there had been a “robust” and "dependable" marking system.
Wales and Northern Ireland made similar announcements on Monday afternoon. Scotland, which announced its results at the start of the month, performed a U-turn over its qualifications two weeks ago.
The government also lifted the cap on the number of students universities can accept for each course because many institutions will now have to take more than they had planned because of grade inflation.
Gavin Williamson, the education secretary, said he was “sorry for the distress” caused to students across England.
Announcing the changes, he said that “the process of allocating grades has resulted in more significant inconsistencies than can be resolved through an appeals process”.
“We now believe it is better to offer young people and parents certainty by moving to teacher-assessed grades for both A and AS level and GCSE results,” Mr Williamson added. “I am sorry for the distress this has caused young people and their parents but hope this announcement will now provide the certainty and reassurance they deserve.”
Roger Taylor, Ofqual chair, said the regulator was “extremely sorry” for the uncertainty and anxiety faced by students. “There was no easy solution to the problem of awarding exam results when no exams have taken place,” he said.
“Ofqual was asked by the secretary of state to develop a system for awarding calculated grades, which maintained standards and ensured that grades were awarded broadly in line with previous years.
“While the approach we adopted attempted to achieve these goals, we also appreciate that it has also caused real anguish and damaged public confidence.”
With exams cancelled this year because of the pandemic, pupils were awarded grades based on teacher assessments that were moderated by an algorithm. This took into account factors such as a school’s past performance.
But the system provoked uproar when A-level results were released last week, revealing that almost 40 per cent of school-assessed grades in England had been adjusted downwards, with disadvantaged students apparently more likely to have had their grades lowered.
Much of the imbalance was down to a feature of the algorithm that meant it gave greater weight to teacher predictions in small class sizes. Independent schools, where small cohorts are common, saw top grades rise 4.7 percentage points while at larger further education and sixth-form colleges they rose only 0.3 per cent.
A system of calculated grades was plunged into further uncertainty late on Saturday when regulator Ofqual recalled an appeals process, announcing it would be reviewed with details published “in due course”.
On Monday, large swaths of Tory MPs and serving government ministers joined calls for a rethink as anger grew over the algorithm used to determine grades.
"A lot of grief could have been avoided if this decision had been made last week", said Tim Loughton, a Tory MP and former children's minister.
School leaders who had called for centre-assessed grades as the “least worst option” after days of chaos, responded with relief to the announcement.
“School leaders and teachers worked with professionalism and integrity to submit these grades for all of their students,” said Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers.
“Having taken so long to make a decision, this was the only option that government had left to deal with the unfairness.”
But the about-turn means more students will have grades that meet the conditions of their first choice university than there are places for. Alistair Jarvis, the chief executive of Universities UK, which represents 137 institutions, said this would cause a major headache for universities.
“This will cause challenges at this late stage in the admissions process — capacity, staffing, placements and facilities — particularly with the social distance measures in place,” he said.
Mr Williamson said universities would not be fined for going above previous limits to help accommodate students affected by the exam grading decision.
"They won't be fined and we're removing those caps on every single university in the United Kingdom, so that they have the ability to expand the number of places."
Labour leader Keir Starmer described the “screeching U-turn” as a “victory” for thousands of students and described the Conservatives’ handling of the crisis as a “complete fiasco”.
“Incompetence has become this government’s watchword, whether that is on schools, testing or care homes,” he said. “Boris Johnson’s failure to lead is holding Britain back.”
Peter Weir, Northern Ireland’s education minister, said the region’s approach was similar to that being taken by examination boards throughout the UK.
“Concerns remain over the impact of changes to the qualifications system throughout the United Kingdom and any potential solution offered has its flaws,” he said.
“However, my prime concern is to ensure that young people in Northern Ireland are in no way disadvantaged in comparison to their peers elsewhere.”
Additional reporting by Arthur Beesley in Dublin
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2020-08-17 16:12:00Z
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