Watchdog warned new GCSE grades will mean pupils get wrong marks

THE exam watchdog warned that the new GCSE grading system will lead to more children getting the wrong marks, it has emerged.

A technical report published by Ofqual last year told of the “profound effect” that introducing more grade boundaries will have on students being awarded the correct mark.

It comes after a series of experts spoke of the “alarming” consequences of the numerical system, as they predicted that thousands of students could receive the wrong GCSE mark this week.

The disclosure that even the exam regulator has highlighted the potentially disastrous implications of the new system will come as an embarrassment for the Department for Education, which insists that the changes are part of a drive to raise school standards. Students will receive their GCSE results on Thursday for the first time under a system which uses grades nine to one, rather than from A* to G.

The grades were designed by Michael Gove when he was education secretary, as part of a package of reforms to toughen up syllabuses and to counter grade inflation at the top end, since A and A* are split between seven, eight and nine.

Pupils will be marked under the new system for English literature, English language and maths, while the rest of their subjects will be marked under the old A* to G grades. Under the new system, the grade boundaries that affect the vast majority of candidates have increased from four (A* to D) to six (nine to three).

The authors of an Ofqual report, titled Marking Consistency Metrics, noted that the probability of a student receiving the correct grade was “significantly influenced” by the location of the grade boundaries.

The report said: “Where grade boundaries are close together... the marking consistency will have a more profound impact on the probability of being awarded the definitive grade.”

The report explained that the wider the grade boundaries, the greater the probability of candidates receiving the right grade.

“This is a very important point: the design of an assessment might be as important as marking consistency in securing the ‘true’ grade for candidates,” it added. The report, which was

published last November, was written by two members of Ofqual’s strategy, risk and research directorate and an external statistician.

Experts have already told of serious misgivings about the new system. Robert Coe, a professor in Durham University’s School of Education, told The Daily Telegraph that under the new system, in some cases a child’s grade will be “not much more than chance”.

Neil Sheldon, vice-president for education and statistical literacy at the Royal Statistical Society, added that the new process “is bound to produce inaccurate results”.

However, Michelle Meadows, Ofqual’s executive director for strategy, risk and research, defended the changes, saying: “New GCSES have been designed from first principles to deliver better differentiation on the new nine to one grading scale.

“The new GCSE exams and mark schemes have been created to support the increase in the number of grades, with better spread of grade boundaries and reliable assessment.”

Meanwhile, a Shakespeare blunder which rendered an essay question impossible to answer means that grade boundaries could be changed for English literature GCSE. The exam board OCR was forced to issue an apology after its exam paper confused the two warring families in Romeo and Juliet by wrongly implying that Tybalt was not a Capulet. The question asked students: “How does Shakespeare present the ways in which Tybalt’s hatred of the Capulets influences the outcome of the play? Refer to this extract from Act 1 Scene 5 and elsewhere in the play.”

The paper was taken by 14,000 pupils, but some of them may have answered questions on Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice or Much Ado About Nothing, instead of Romeo and Juliet.

Ofqual is likely to launch an investigation into the error, which could result in OCR being fined.

Leo Shapiro, the chief executive of OCR, wrote to schools to “reassure all teachers and students that their results will be accurate and fair”.

The letter said OCR had “already adjusted the examiners’ mark scheme to reflect the different ways students answered the question”, and that setting different grade boundaries was “one of the options we will consider” following an internal investigation.

Mr Shapiro wrote: “This was an unacceptable error and we are very sorry for the impact on you and your students. As results day approaches, we know your students may start to feel anxious and we hope this letter will go some way to reassuring them.

“We know the error has affected students’ performance in a variety of ways – not just on one question but across the whole paper.”