Letting teachers decide A-level results made grade inflation inevitable
SIR – My son is bright, did no work for his GCSES and sailed through. When he adopted the same approach for his A-levels, years before the pandemic, I expressed my concerns to his form tutor, who told me I was worrying unnecessarily – he would do fine.
I was then proved right and his form tutor wrong. You are bound to get grade inflation when results depend on teacher assessment. Clive Williams
Upper Basildon, Berkshire
SIR – Simon Lebus (report, August 10), the interim chief regulator at Ofqual, may well be right when he says that teacher assessment gives a “more accurate and substantial reflection of what their students are capable of achieving”. (Was he saying that, I wonder, when he was chief executive of an exam board?)
The results in 2020 and 2021 make it very clear, however, that teachers’ grades require standardisation in order to avoid a descent into meaninglessness through inflation. I feel sure that an algorithm could be devised to do that. Neil Sheldon
Former chief examiner Cheadle Hulme, Cheshire
SIR – Why bother holding the Olympic Games when medals could have been awarded by the coaches? Martyn Pitt
Hardwicke, Gloucestershire
SIR – As W S Gilbert put it in The Gondoliers: “When everyone is somebody, then no one’s anybody.” Peter Newbury
Melbourne, Derbyshire SIR – To encourage more realistic exam grades, scrap school league tables. Roy Todd
Former headmaster, The Duchess’s High School
Alnwick, Northumberland
SIR – My granddaughter worked hard for her A-levels. She had exams and did extra work that her teachers submitted to the assessors to support predicted grades. I think it most unfair if she is now told she does not deserve them. Judy Adamson
Driffield, East Yorkshire
SIR – Gavin Williamson, the Education Secretary, says A-level pupils “deserve to be rewarded” with high grades after a year of disruption. But not everyone got an A. Presumably the B and C grades went to children who had suffered less disruption.
Which means the more schooling you get, the worse you do. Cynthia Harrod-eagles
Northwood, Middlesex
SIR – I am a university lecturer. The essence of success in an exam is to answer the question put. Yesterday I listened to the worst education secretary in half a century interviewed on Today. He failed to answer any of the questions addressed to him. I therefore fail the Education Secretary. Richard R Dolphin
West Hatch, Somerset