Students to get summer exam grades early to aid appeals
ALEVEL and GCSE students will receive grades determined by their teachers earlier in August to give them more time to appeal, the Education Secretary has announced.
All pupils in England will be allowed to appeal their grades at no additional cost, and they will be offered the opportunity to sit exams in the autumn if they are still unhappy with their results.
Exam boards will provide teachers with optional assessment questions for students to answer to help schools decide what grades to award, after this summer’s exams were cancelled due to the pandemic.
These assessments are not expected to be carried out in exam conditions and teachers will have the flexibility to choose how long students have to complete the task, and where it will be carried out.
The final decision comes after the Association of School and College Leaders said students should not be expected to sit compulsory “miniexams” to help teachers with their grading judgements, amid Covid-19 disruption.
Education Secretary Gavin Williamson had previously suggested students could be asked to sit externally-set papers to help teachers with grading.
The Department for Education and England’s exams regulator, Ofqual, have also confirmed that teachers will be able to draw on a range of evidence when determining grades – including mock exams, course work or other work completed as part of a pupil’s course, such as essays or in-class tests.
Pupils will only be assessed on what they have been taught, after months of school and college closures during the pandemic.
Schools and colleges will submit their grades to exam boards by June 18 to maximise teaching time, and students will receive grades in early August, once quality assurance checks have been completed by the exam boards.
Normally, students receive their results in mid to late August, but A-level students will receive their results on August 10 and GCSE pupils will receive theirs two days later, on August 12.
It is hoped that bringing ‘results day’ forward will ensure pupils have enough time to log appeals, so A-level students do not miss out on their preferred university places for the autumn.
The grading of students became a fiasco last summer, when exams were cancelled amid school closures.
Thousands of A-level students had their results downgraded from school estimates by a controversial algorithm, before Ofqual announced a U-turn which allowed them to use teachers’ predictions.
This year, the regulator will not use an algorithm to standardise teachers’ estimated grades.