Universities facing an ‘impossible task’

Universities are facing the “near impossible” task of deciding which students to offer a place to, vicechancellors said, as they warned that predicted A-level grades were wrong “four out of five times”. The decision to cancel A-levels and GCSES is a “mistake” and puts students in an unfair position, according to Prof Anthony Seldon, the vice-chancellor of Buckingham University and a former headmaster of Wellington College.

UNIVERSITIES face the “near impossible” task of deciding which students to offer a place to, vice-chancellors said, as they warned that predicted A-level grades were wrong “four out of five times”.

The decision to cancel A-levels and GCSES is a “mistake” and puts students in an unfair position, according to Prof Anthony Seldon, the vice-chancellor of Buckingham University and a former headmaster of Wellington College.

Gavin Williamson, the Education Secretary, insisted that no child would be “unfairly penalised” as a result and that they would be awarded the grades they “need and deserve”.

But, vice-chancellors warned last night that axing A-levels would throw the admissions system into chaos.

Prof Seldon said: “Have the implications of this really been thought through fully, or is an overstretched government taking decisions of massive proportions on the wing?”

A Conservative Party source said the most likely outcome was that teachers would be asked to come up with a grade based on mock exam results, coursework and data collected by schools on each child. “You would expect that the final grade won’t be too far off their predicted grade, but teachers will be able to factor in their knowledge of whether a child has, for example, been working really hard after getting a disappointing result in their mocks,” they added.

Prof Sir Steve Smith, the University of Exeter vice-chancellor, said that relying on predicted grades rather than actual exam marks created “winners and losers”.

The “biggest single problem” was that grades were often over-predicted by schools, meaning universities make more offers than they have places.

Universities are understood to be preparing to expand the number of students they admit this year, with an inevitable shortfall in international students easing pressure on places. A University of Oxford admissions source agreed that predicted grades were “not deemed to be very useful”.

“It is said the independent schools tend to over-predict to make the feepaying parents happy and the state schools might under-predict,” he said.

“For us, we are in the happy position that we have interviewed, we know them a bit better and we may just have to live by that. But for other universities it is much more problematic, all they have is the paper candidate.”

A 2016 study found that just one in six (16 per cent) university applicants achieved the exam grade points that they were predicted to achieve by teachers or lecturers, based on their best three A-level results.

The study, by University College London’s Institute of Education, found that students are likely to receive more generous estimates on their performance. Overall, 75 per cent of applicants were over-predicted – meaning their results were predicted to be higher than they actually achieved.

Mary Curnock Cook, the former Ucas chief, previously suggested that teachers intentionally bumped up students’ predicted A-level grades to help them win places at top universities.

Prof Paul Boyle, the vice-chancellor at Swansea University, urged ministers to “put some thought into this”.

“We are going to have to think carefully about all the implications of this,” he said. “How we will manage the large number of students we have made offers to? This is such a radical change compared to what we are used to.”

Clare Marchant, the Ucas chief executive, said that “flexibility” in admissions would be “enhanced and extended to deal with the outbreak”.

Schools were ordered to shut today for all but the most vulnerable and the children of “key workers”, including NHS workers and the police.

Last night, ministers were accused of leaving schools in the dark by failing to inform them exactly which professions will be classed as key workers and how the system will work.

“Schools have been plunged into chaos and confusion as they try to answer such basic questions as, who are the key workers, how do we identify their children, what evidence is it reasonable to request from parents and what happens if other children turn up for school,” said Chris Keates, acting general secretary of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers.

A list of key workers was expected to be published yesterday, but Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, delayed the publication and is due to make the announcement today.

He said on the BBC’S Question Time that the list of key workers “will include not only NHS staff but also social care and those who are working on the supply of medical devices”.

The Daily Telegraph understands that school places will operate on a priority system. Children who have both parents classed as key workers or those from a single-parent family where their one parent is a key worker will be at the top of the list. Lower down will be children who have one parent classed as a key worker, and another parent who could look after them.

‘Is an overstretched government taking decisions of massive proportions on the wing?’