Marks for top A-level grades lowered... to stop results falling!

THE number of marks required for top A-level grades is to be lowered to avert a dramatic decline in results, it was claimed yesterday.

Papers were made harder in a bid to drive up standards, with sixthform subjects almost entirely assessed using end- of- course exams this year.

But the exam regulator is to lower the threshold for the best A-level grades to stop results plummeting.

Ofqual is reportedly reducing the percentage of marks needed for good grades, to prevent the first group of teenagers to face the tougher papers from being disadvantaged.

More than 200,000 sixth-formers, who were guinea pigs for the new system, will get their results on Thursday. The first A-level grades will be given in 13 reformed subjects – art and design, biology, business, chemistry, computer science, economics, English language, English language and literature, English literature, history, physics, psychology and sociology.

Schools feared grades could be volatile as the new A-level content is harder and the amount of coursework assessment has been slashed. Teenagers could also have been hampered in their exam preparation by the lack of past papers and marking schemes.

Ofqual’s chief regulator, Sally Collier, said she had intervened with exam boards to attempt to protect pupils from the turmoil created by the harder qualifications, which are being phased in over three years.

She added that her decision to adjust grade thresholds for the 13 new A-level courses this summer would ensure similar proportions of pupils passed and achieved top grades across the country as they did last year.

Under this process, known as ‘comparable outcomes’, results are kept broadly consistent from year to year.

This means about a quarter of A-level pupils will still score A or A*, as per last summer, even though the exams are much tougher. Miss Collier told the Sunday Times: ‘If we were not using the approach we are taking … we would see a fall in results this year and possibly a significant one.

‘I want the message to be that students have done fantastically well. All our kids are brilliant.

‘In any period of reform, with teachers teaching new stuff … and fewer sample materials, you would expect grades to fall but we are protecting those students.’

An Ofqual spokesman yesterday stressed it was not fair to compare this summer’s A-level grade boundaries with last year’s because they are a different set of exams.

But Alan Smithers, education professor at Buckingham University, said: ‘ The whole point was to make the exams harder and identify the most able kids who could then thrive at top universities, not to perpetuate a broken system in which nearly all get prizes.’

Yesterday the regulator said: ‘Ofqual and the exam boards are using the same tried and trusted principle as in previous years to ensure fairness between cohorts over time, so those who are the first to take new GCSEs, AS and A-levels this summer are not disadvantaged.’

Matthew Hood, of the Institute for Teaching, said: ‘In the first year of the new GCSEs and A-levels the system is at risk of going into meltdown. Schools have no idea what grades their pupils will get, and universities are in the same position.’

Education Datalab’s Becky Allen said the turmoil will continue ‘for the next three years’.

GCSEs have also been toughened up and a grading system of one to nine is being introduced.