Exam body in warning of lower grades

EXAM results will be lower this year in most schools and colleges, the body responsible for qualifications in Wales has warned.

How much lower grades will be compared to last summer depends on how students performed in the first GCSE, AS and A-levels sat for three years, as well as changes in results during that time.

Jo Richards, director of regulations for Qualifications Wales said comparisons should be made with 2019 results, the last year papers were sat.

Record GCSE, A and AS-level results were posted in 2020 and 2021 when they were awarded on teacher-assessed grades after exams were cancelled during the pandemic – the aim this year is to achieve results around midway between the last sat exams and last summer’s results.

This year’s grading is being arrived at by subject level, not at a school or college level, which means different levels of change in results will be seen relative to 2021 and 2019, Ms Richards said.

Content was reduced this year to take account of another year of pandemic disruption with tens of thousands of pupils sent to work remotely again and many without subject teachers for weeks on end. After two years of what has been seen as “grade inflation” under teacher assessment, the aim this year is to re-balance the system. But Qualifications Wales said while results will be higher than 2019 and lower than 2021, they won’t sit exactly midway between the two.

Ms Richards said reliance on past papers to assess results when exams were cancelled had “made grading less fair and may have widened gaps between learners from advantaged and disadvantaged backgrounds”.

A study based on pre-pandemic exam results, published earlier this week, shows the poorest pupils in Wales are “significantly” behind their better off peers and there has been almost no improvement in this disadvantage over the last decade.

A recent report published by Qualifications Wales, based on interviews with school and college staff about how they assessed students’ GCSE, AS and A-level results when exams were cancelled found that more than half who responded had used the adapted past papers or assessment tasks provided by WJEC (or other awarding bodies) to make grading decisions for summer 2021.

Just under a third (32%) used exam papers or assessments from previous years and made their own adaptations to them, while a similar proportion (31%) used past papers without adaptations.

Around a quarter (27%) used the assessment tasks provided by the awarding bodies after further adapting them for their own learners.

“The report showed that school and college staff felt that reliance on past papers made grading less fair and may have widened gaps between learners from advantaged and disadvantaged backgrounds. The staff also noted that many learners were behind and lacked maturity as they’d missed large chunks of their education,” Ms Richards said.

After two years of disruption for learners, this year has been the first time since 2019 that externally assessed exams have been held in schools and colleges.