Major policy U-turns mean that pupils throughout the UK will now have their grades awarded based on the recommendations of their teachers. The moves come after an outpouring of anger over the decision to use an algorithm to determine grades that led to almost 40% of predicted results being downgraded.
As part of the original process, teachers in England were asked to put together a set of predicted grades that were fed into the Ofqual system to produce the much-maligned algorithmic results sent out last week.
The Department for Education said they took into account the “full range of available evidence when they graded students – including non-exam assessment; the results of any homework assignments or mock exams; and any other existing records of student performance over the course of study”. Officials in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland used similar systems.
It was the downgrading of so many of those “centre-assessed grades” by a system that took more account of a school’s past results that caused the furore. Ministers have now said they will revert to using them.
Officials have said exam boards will issue new grades to pupils in England as soon as possible, though they were unable to put a firm date on it. For AS and A-level students, Ofqual said students should speak to their school, college or exam board to find out their grade. The body said updated data will be sent to Ucas before the end of the week.
For GCSE students in England, schools can tell pupils their centre-assessed grades on Thursday but official notification will be delayed until next week to allow for rare cases where the Ofqual moderated grades were higher than the teachers’ grades.
In Northern Ireland, the devolved education minister, Peter Weir, said the council for the curriculum, examinations and assessment is working to release the revised results as quickly as possible. The administration in Wales has not yet given timeframes.
In Scotland, schools were told new grades will be provided by 21 August. They will then tell pupils and fresh exam certificates will be issued soon afterwards.
Pupils in England will be asked to go back to the university they applied to and discuss the issue with them – and the DfE has said it expects the institutions to be flexible in their approaches.
A spokesman confirmed the recently announced plan to cap the number of students English universities can recruit is to be removed to allow extra capacity to deal with the changes. The government is also dropping a controversial policy limiting the number of English students who can go to institutions in other UK nations.
Universities UK, the representative body for universities, said the decision to revert will “cause challenges at this late stage in the admissions process – capacity, staffing, placements and facilities – particularly with the social distance measures in place”.
Its chief executive, Alistair Jarvis, said: “The government will need to step up and support universities through the challenges created by this late policy change.”
Ofqual announced on Monday that students in England would be able to keep whichever grade is higher, meaning some pupils will stick with their original one. That is the same in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Will the systems differ around the UK?In a word, no. After the Scottish government’s own U-turn last week, Wales, Northern Ireland and England followed on Monday. Each has said centre-assessed grades will now be used for post-16 examinations cancelled because of the coronavirus pandemic.
