It’s grades crunch time
Next Thursday thousands of students will be handed A-level grades they haven’t sat exams for. What are the options if they are not happy with their results? Kate Townshend reports
2020 is the year that nobody could have foretold, so it seems somewhat ironic that one of the impacts of Covid-19 will be grades for A-level and GCSE students that come from predictions, rather than those generated by exams – a huge change that could lead to chaos and uncertainty for thousands. How will you ever know your real grades if you have been denied the chance to sit for them?
If you thrive under the pressure of formal tests, or had been counting on an 11th hour push on revision, you will probably question whether your marks will truly reflect your ability. Come results day, if you’re not happy with your assessed grades, there will be some big decisions to make: Should you appeal? Should you take your exams in autumn – and in that case, spend the rest of the year waiting around at home? Or should you get on with things at your second-choice university?
These are all very real dilemmas. “The thought of a brand new system with no real guarantee of accurately predicting our grades is very daunting,” says A-level student Esme Harding, whose place to study biomedical sciences at Cardiff is dependent on her results. “I understand that the situation we have experienced is unlike any other, but students still feel an incredible amount of stress and uncertainty towards results day.”
Students like
Esme will be graded by their schools partly using evidence including book work and mock exam results.
Ofqual, which regulates exams and qualifications in
England, is keen to stress that the grades given will reflect “the results students would most likely have achieved had exams gone ahead”. Despite this, some pupils are still concerned.
“When it came to mock exams we had no idea those would be the last exams we’d do,” says A-level student Oliver Brown, who has an AAA offer from Exeter College, Oxford. “I really didn’t work very hard for mine but if I’d known how important they’d turn out to be, necessity would have caused me to work harder.”
Within each grade, schools are also being asked to rank their students in order of performance, which means ordering every student predicted to get a particular grade from most certain to least. These grades, plus data from the school’s historical performance, will be sent to the exam board, which will run them through a standardisation model designed by Ofqual to produce the final grades.
But Oliver is concerned that in solving one problem, it may create another. “It’s a difficult situation – but I worry that the solution could disadvantage students from backgrounds like mine – outliers at a school that averages Cs,” he says. His concern is that, because of his school’s traditional performance, its marks may be more likely to be moved down – and for the brightest students, there’s only one direction for their grades to go.
There are also challenges for groups of pupils – specifically BAME and students from disadvantaged backgrounds and those with special educational needs and disabilities, who may be subject to unconscious bias when their performance is ranked. In July, the Commons Education Committee confirmed there was abundant academic evidence of bias. Michelle Meadows, Ofqual’s deputy chief regulator, told the committee: “For the most able students [with an ethnic minority background], there tends to be underprediction of the grades that students go on to get.
“At lower levels of ability, you get the reverse effect where there is some over-prediction.”
So if you are unhappy with your grades, what can you do? The bad news is that appeals or re-marks won’t be an option for most pupils. In fact, the only clear grounds for appeal seem to be administrative errors. If you think a mistake of this nature has been made, you can ask your school, in its capacity as a centre, to appeal to the awarding body – but if you simply disagree with your teacher’s judgment there are few options. As Ofqual explains: “Students won’t be able to appeal against their centre’s judgment, because there is no one better placed to make it. If a student believes the centre did not act with care or integrity they should raise that with their school or college or, if they have evidence of serious malpractice, directly with the exam board.” Even if your school agrees to an appeal, there are no clear answers about how long the process might take – because Ofqual and the exam boards cannot yet estimate how many such appeals there might be.
The good news is that if you are dissatisfied with your marks, you will be able to sit exams in October. Those who do will not have to worry about getting lower than their predicted marks as the highest grade of the two will be their final result. According to Universities UK, if you decide to take your exams, in most cases it will be too late to start a university course in 2020/21 (unless your course starts in January).
Universities themselves also might offer hope for students who feel they’ve lost out with their given grades. Oliver’s mum, Paula, is clear that, if things don’t go their way, they still have some faith in the university system to untangle the situation: “We are hoping that because Oxford test their own candidates, there will be some flexibility if Oliver doesn’t get the grades he needs. To be honest, I would rather my son got no grades rather than made up ones!” Paula is right that it’s worth speaking to any institution from whom you have an offer – to see if your given grades might be acceptable or if your place can be deferred to allow you to sit exams.
“We have been talking to university representatives and to Ucas,” says Ofqual. “We are reassured to hear that they believe that institutions will be flexible, but we recognise this might only be possible in a minority of cases.” It’s a position explicitly echoed by the Department for Education. It says: “Given the exceptional circumstances, the Government encourages all providers to offer as much flexibility as possible for all students.”
Of course these many ifs and buts will leave lots of students still feeling rather anxious about the situation. Unfortunately, it seems as if, until results day, nobody can know for sure how well this year’s system has really worked.