Pupils can get half questions wrong and still earn ‘A’ grade

THE pass mark for an A has fallen to just 50 per cent in some exams, it has emerged under the new “tougher” GCSES.

Pupils can get half the questions wrong in a physics GCSE and still achieve an A grade with the OCR exam board, while 51 per cent is required for an A in a biology higher tier exam with AQA.

Meanwhile, students can achieve a grade C in AQA’S higher tier combined science GCSE with a mere 23 per cent, or 25 per cent if they take the equivalent Edexcel exam.

Of the 5.1 million exams sat this summer, around 90 per cent were the new, reformed GCSE, which have had coursework elements reduced or removed altogether in favour of exams, and the curricula have been beefed up to include a broader range of topics.

But Ofqual, the exams watchdog, has announced that grading will be especially lenient to compensate for the fact that exams are harder.

The regulator lowers grade boundaries to ensure that roughly the same proportion of students get top grades as in previous years.

Overall, the proportion of students who got the highest grades – either A or A* in the old system or 7, 8 or 9 in the new system – has gone up from 19.8 per cent last year to 20.3 per cent this year.

There has also been a slight increase in students achieving a good pass – grade C or 4 – from 98.5 per cent last year to 98.4 per cent this year.

Ofqual said: “Students picking up their results today can be confident [of ] grades their performance deserves. As in previous years, we have used the principle of comparable outcomes to ensure standards are maintained.”