I’ve spoken to students, teachers & parents from East Devon in recent days. Every conversation and email made it abundantly clear to me that Ofqual’s algorithm wasn’t fit for purpose and I've been in touch with Ministers to share my concerns.
The right decision has now been made and ensures students receive their centre assessment for this summer – that is, the grade their school or college estimated was the grade they would most likely have achieved in their exam – or the moderated grade, whichever is higher.
A Level students told me they'd been arbitrarily penalised by a standardisation model when they never had the chance to sit exams due to the pandemic. Ofqual failed to explain in forensic and transparent detail how they’d assigned grades from one school to another. This left teachers, parents and students equally baffled when results were published last Thursday.
The picture only became clearer over the weekend. While some schools in East Devon seemingly fared better than others, individual problems were universal.
And, crucially, I still couldn’t get hold of clarity on the practicalities of the appeals process other than an outline of what schools could realistically appeal on behalf of their students. It wasn’t good enough when university, college, apprenticeship and employment places were at stake.
I’m speaking to Ministers from the Department for Education again this evening. It was always the intention to design a system that allowed young people to move on successfully to the next stage of their lives. I hope we can guarantee this now.
Please read more here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/statement-from-roger-taylor-chair-ofqual