GCSE results: 600 schools complain over 'harsh' grading

One-in-five schools fear that English GCSE results have been deliberately downgraded amid an escalating row over making in this summer’s exams.

Figures show that more than 600 secondary schools have submitted evidence to head teachers’ leaders claiming that pupils were “harshly treated” by examiners.

The disclosure came after the qualifications regulator announced its own investigation into claims that as many as 10,000 pupils were hit by a sudden change in grade boundaries this year.

Ofqual said the probe would look at how results were calculated in a “small number” of English modules this summer.

On Tuesday, officials will meet with the Association of School and College Leaders, which is collating a vast dossier of complaints, to discuss the controversial grading affair.

MPs from the Commons Education Select Committee will also make a decision next week over to launch its own probe.

It is believed that pupils saw results plummet when exam boards suddenly inflated the number of marks needed to secure good grades between modules taken in January and June.

Figures show that pass marks were shifted upwards by as much as 10 per cent in some units.

But Graham Stuart, the Conservative head of the select committee, warned that the problem was more likely to have been caused by grade boundaries being too low in January assessments rather than unfairly high in June.

He told the Telegraph: “It would have been politically easier just to give higher results to the June cohort on the basis of consistency with January rather than on the basis of a wider assessment of the appropriate grade boundary.

“In truth, it is not that people in June have been unfairly treated, it is the fact that people who banked their results in January were perhaps rather over generously treated.”

ASCL, which represents secondary heads, has been collecting evidence of the effect that the sudden grade shift has had on schools.

It emerged over the weekend that more than 600 - around 20 per cent of the total in England - had completed an on-line questionnaire, with numbers were rising by the day.

Brian Lightman, general secretary, said that most schools reported a “large number” of pupils dropping suddenly from C to D grades in English – the threshold for a good GCSE pass.

In some cases, pupils also gained Bs instead of A grades, he said.

“The sheer number that have responded to the call for evidence, on a weekend during the summer holiday, shows how frustrated and concerned heads and teachers are,” he said.

“Part of the reason we are in this situation is the constant tinkering each year with GCSE exams. This has to stop. We need a reasoned, thoughtful debate about the long-term future of exams at 16.”

Last week, it emerged that the number of pupils gaining A* to C grades across England, Wales and Northern Ireland had fallen for the first time in the exam’s 24-year history.

The proportion being awarded good grades in English alone fell from 65.4 to 63.9 per cent.

Head teachers also warned of unexplained drops in pass-rates in other subjects, such as English literature.

Tim Hands, the master of fee-paying Magdalen College School, Oxford, told how 88 per cent of his pupils gained A*s in one English literature paper, but the same pupils registered just 44 per cent in another exam.

“The marking appears this year, based on the reports of several schools, to be very questionable,” he said. “The goalposts are being shifted but not necessarily by someone with a valid GPS.”

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