FURY GROWS AS A-LEVEL STUDENTS FACE ANXIOUS WAIT OVER APPEALS
THE UK Government faces mounting fury over 11th-hour changes to A-levels as it emerged students will not be able to appeal until at least next week.
Ministers have refused
BY PIPPA CRERAR to apologise for throwing the system in England into confusion by letting students use results from their mock exams.
Under the changes, disappointed students will be able to appeal their grades – out today – using their mock results if they are higher. But the change happened without consulting universities – and the exams regulator Ofqual,
which decides whether mock exams were valid, has said it isn’t ready.
Ofqual said: “We are working urgently to operationalise this as fairly as possible and to determine what standards of evidence will be required for the appeal. We will provide more detail early next week.”
The decision plunges thousands of students into an angst-ridden weekend as they wait to see if they’ll be able to go to university.
Late on Tuesday, the UK Government announced a “triple lock” that will let GCSE and A-level students claim their mock results if they are better. The changes came after exams were cancelled due to coronavirus – forcing exam boards to rely on teachers’ predicted grades.
Geoff Barton, leader of the ASCL head teachers’ union, attacked the lastminute changes as “panicked and chaotic”.
Schools minister Nick Gibb denied there was confusion over the changes – but spluttered when asked whether he would give the Government an A-minus for its handling of the exams affair. A sheepish Gibb replied: “Well, I would be somewhere in that vicinity.”