Ofqual has announced plans to overhaul the A-level appeals system in England, dubbing it “overly complex” and “opaque” in a report published today.

The qualifications watchdog’s Review of Quality of Marking in Exams in A-levels, GCSEs and Other Academic Qualifications praised the quality of grading, but pledged to review the process when mistakes were made.

It comes after grades on 54,380 GCSEs and A-levels were changed last year following 301,267 enquiries. The figures compare to 28,903 changes from 164,874 enquiries in 2009.

Ofqual said it would “fundamentally re-design” the appeals process, with a new system in place by next year. Exam boards will be asked to provide more data on the quality of their marking and to improve aspects of both onscreen and traditional marking. They will also be expected to contribute to an Ofqual led programme to develop understanding about what makes a good mark scheme, for candidates of all levels.

The move was welcomed by the Association of Colleges’ policy director, Joy Mercer (pictured), who said the current appeal system was ” not transparent, fair or strong enough”.

And Andrew Hall, chief executive at AQA, which sets the papers for around half of all GCSEs and A-levels with nearly 2 million students sitting its exams every year producing more than 7 million exam scripts, said: “We welcome today’s report.

“We know that getting the right results is absolutely crucial for both students and their teachers, and we agree the current appeals system needs to be improved so that it properly addresses genuine marking errors and builds confidence in the exam system.”

Currently there is a six-stage appeals process, which with ‘service one enquiries about results’— a clerical check to ensure all questions have been marked and all marks have been added up correctly.

The final stage is an ‘examinations procedures review service’, a hearing with a panel of senior Ofqual and independent figures.

Last year, 1,950 service one enquiries about results were made, while eight examinations procedures review services were carried out and two were upheld.

The Ofqual report found that many teachers saw this system as “opaque”. It called for teachers to have a better understanding and be more engaged with the system.

Its chief regulator, Glenys Stacey, said: “Our report has found that the overall quality of marking is good. There is much to have confidence in, but there is no doubt that it could be better still.”

More than 16 million exam scripts are marked every year and Ms Stacey acknowledged that mistakes did occur “in a system of this scale”.

“Although genuine mistakes are few and far between, they undermine confidence in the system,” she said.

“The appeals system has been under increasing pressure, particularly from accountability measures and overly complex processes.

“To make our appeals system fit for the future we need to overhaul it. We want a new system that is more transparent, fair and sufficiently robust to differentiate between reasonable variations in marks and genuine marking errors.”

Ms Mercer said: “We feel there is a clear set of recommendations, which particularly support a decision to completely redesign enquiries about results and the appeal system in England.

“We agree that at the moment the system is not transparent, fair or strong enough to demonstrate the difference between variations in marks and genuine marking errors.

“However, Ofqual has highlighted that there needs to be better interaction between teachers and the exam systems… we welcome Ofqual’s understanding that colleges need up-to-date information and a further level of transparency.”

She added that the current situation left many colleges confused over what help they could get from awarding bodies.

Mr Hall said: “It’s important to remember that the process of ensuring students get the right results starts long before an examiner sits down to mark their scripts.

“Dealing with the root causes of the issue is critical and that starts with the design of the qualification, the question paper and the mark scheme guidance, which all have to work well. If they don’t, then there is only so much you can do to put that right further down the line.”

Brian Lightman, Association of School and College Leaders general secretary, said: “The qualifications system is not broken, but aspects of it need to be reviewed and adjusted. The challenge now is for Ofqual and the awarding bodies to put these recommendations into action.

“The fact that we cannot currently compare the quality of marking of qualifications and subjects between exam boards is clearly an area that needs addressing.”

He added that he was hopeful that issues with the appeals system would now be addressed.

“Large inconsistencies or marking errors can have significant consequences for the students affected and the current appeals system does not enjoy the confidence of schools and colleges,” he said.

“We recognise that the enquiries about results and the appeals system need changing. However, we are disappointed that the report gives no indication of the importance of engaging with … leaders on proposed changes. “

He added that Ofqual and the awarding bodies needed to take a lead on improving the understanding of teachers and the general public about how the marking processes work.

A controversial funding rate cut for 18-year-olds was the subject of a lively protest and crunch talks when Skills Minister Matthew Hancock visited MidKent College last week to appear on Question Time.

Members of the college’s Students Union (SU) formed a flag-waving picket line at the college’s Medway campus, in Gillingham, on Thursday night while BBC cameras rolled.

And although Mr Hancock did not visit the demo, he did meet with SU members and college principal Sue McLeod to discuss the funding rate cut for 18-year-olds. Full-time learners in the age group will be funded at a level 17.5 per cent lower than that of 16 and 17-year-olds. At current levels that would mean a cut from £4,000 to £3,300 a year.

Matt Stanley, SU president and level three diploma student, told FE Week: “We felt it was a really unfair funding cut, and something which affects the most vulnerable students.

“He [Mr Hancock] wouldn’t come and speak to us unfortunately, but he did meet with some of our members and the principal.”

Ms McLeod said: “I was keen to stress to the minister how deeply unfair the planned funding cut is for FE colleges, and the negative effect it will have on the young people of Medway and Maidstone in particular.

“We have more than 1,000 students aged 18 at the college, so a funding cut of £700-£800 per head equates to about £800,000 in total.

“Mr Hancock appeared sympathetic to our situation and said he regretted the decision, adding that the government would seek to assist those colleges that are hardest hit, which provides us with some hope for the future.

“However, we will continue to campaign on behalf of 18-year-olds from across Medway and Maidstone who are being unfairly targeted by this poorly-researched plan.”

The students also protested about the sell-off of student loans, but the funding rate cut, along with concerns about an official impact assessment justifying the move, has been raised with Mr Hancock on numerous occasions by colleges, students and fellow MPs, with a number questioning the skills minister in parliament.

Among the most recent to question the cut was Lib Dem MP Tim Farron, who wrote to Mr Hancock asking if, “he will consider reversing the reductions in funding for full-time education places for 18-year-olds announced by his department in January 2014”. 

Mr Hancock wrote back: “We have to make the funding reduction for 18-year-olds in order to live within the Department for Education’s funding settlement at the spending round 2013, which was reduced at the autumn statement of December 2013.

“The published impact assessment of the reduction in funding for 18-year-olds sets out why it was the least detrimental of the options for savings that we considered.

“We will consider whether we can afford to introduce measures to mitigate its impact on individual colleges.”

Tory grandee Lord Heseltine has expressed doubts over the ability of the European Union (EU) to help solve the problem of youth unemployment in the UK.

The former deputy prime minister made the comments to the House of Lords EU sub-committee on internal market, infrastructure and employment yesterday as part of its investigation into EU action to tackle youth unemployment.

Lord Heseltine questioned the extent to which EU could play a part in tackling the issue with his 2012 report, No Stone Unturned, having said economic growth could be stimulated  by devolving power from central government to Local Enterprise Networks (Leps).

“I am a strong believer in Britain playing a part in Europe,” he said.

“But how can I solemnly sit here and criticise London for its effect on the provinces and then say I want Brussels to cover more? It makes no sense.

“The effect of everything I believe is that these are problems which should be addressed by who people live there, know there and understand it — that is localism.”

The Conservative peer also rejected the idea that Leps should have an unemployed young person on their board, saying: “Would I single that group of people out to put on the Lep boards? No, I wouldn’t actually.”

He told committee chair Baroness O’Cathain: “I think that if you had asked whether I thought we should put a representative of young people on the board you wouldn’t have received firm answer, but I don’t regard unemployed youth as representative of young people.”

Last week the head of the Department for Work and Pensions European Social Fund Division, Angus Gray, told the committee that he believed European funding for tackling youth unemployment could be better spent at local level, rather than centrally. Lord Heseltine agreed.

“It sounds to me as though the criticism is right — the European view of their funds is that they should be generally available for local allocation to meet local problems,” he said.

“But that doesn’t suit the way Britain works, so the functional departments have taken their bits of the European policy and functionalised them, and that does suit the way Britain works — but of course it very seriously limits the discretion locally available.

“As part of the package that I recommended to be devolved were the European funds. So do it — give [Leps] the discretion locally without the functional departments getting their hands on it and that would then enable people to do what they thought was appropriate locally, such as employment.”

However, he said he did not believe youth unemployment should be seen as separate from joblessness in adults.

“I wouldn’t myself concentrate on one aspect of unemployment because I think they’re a seamless row,” he said.

He went on to describe London’s influence on the rest of the UK as “monopolistic”.  He said: “The more you explore the consequence of that on the more ineffective I find it, the more intense my frustration has become… and the more indefensible the way in which now in the most minute detail London takes the decisions and the local discretion is very constrained.”

However, he described himself as an “admirer” of the government’s moves to implement his report recommendations so far, although he pointed out that he had asked for and extra £40bn in funding.

The man in charge of England’s college inspections has called for “oversight” of the relationship between colleges and local enterprise partnerships (Leps).

Concerns that colleges were not meeting the skills needs of their local areas were raised by Matthew Coffey, director of FE and skills at the education watchdog, during a meeting of the House of Commons Education Select Committee this morning.

Flanked by his boss, Sir Michael Wilshaw, Mr Coffey called on the government to address a “mismatch” between the skills offered by colleges and those required by their communities and Leps.

His comments reaffirmed those made in Ofsted’s annual report last year, which called for a move towards a higher quality and more relevant provision in the learning and skills sector. They also reaffirmed comments made in an exclusive Q&A with FE Week following the annual report.

And responding to a question from Stroud MP Neil Carmichael, Mr Coffey told the committee that the skills gap was a key factor in Ofsted’s demand for better working between colleges and Leps.

Mr Coffey said: “I think the key area for us in this annual report is that we think the country is facing a skills crisis.

“There are a million unemployed young people, there are employers that continue to report significant skills shortages and layered on top of that we have got a sector which has been given more and more autonomy over the years.

“We visited 17 colleges and we found that only three of those colleges had changed their curriculum to any large degree to meet the needs of the local area, as being defined by the Lep, so there is a real mismatch there and the concern we have expressed in the report is that with that autonomy there has to be some oversight as to how the skills are being delivered to meet the nation’s needs.

“I think the government has got to take this very seriously now, because we could have a situation where colleges are empowered to deliver whatever they want to deliver, and yet that doesn’t meet the skills requirements of the country, and who is going to intervene is the key question.

“If it is the LEP, then they need to use the P in their title of partnerships and work very closely with FE colleges and what we have found from our report is that that relationship is at its very early stages, to be generous.”

He said meeting skills need in the community was already something inspectors looked for, but said a data dashboard would be launched for governors in the FE sector in April to allow them to compare the curriculum of colleges against skill priority areas set by Leps.

But Mr Carmichael said: “All of that is predicated on there being a really effective understanding of the local labour market, and we are giving a big challenge there to Leps to make sure that they provide that.

“Surely there must be a need for some sort of strategic overview of Leps, because you have certain colleges reaching out beyond certain Lep boundaries.

“For example, in my own patch we have two Leps looking after a unified college, Filton and Stroud, so that wouldn’t necessarily work particularly well unless you had a strategic view of the labour market in that whole area.”

The Education and Training Foundation (ETF) has unveiled the make-up of three expert panels with the announcement of more than 30 appointments.

Panels for leadership, governance and management; vocational education and training; and, professional standards and workforce development have seen 32 appointments, including a chair, co-chair and independent adviser to each.

Plans for a further panel on knowledge and intelligence have been put on hold, but among the appointments announced this week were college principals, governors and directors, independent learning provider chief executives and managing directors, union leaders, local authority heads and university professors.

David Russell, ETF chief executive, said: “I am delighted that we have been able to draw on the breadth and diversity of professionals across the sector to form our first panels.

“Together they have a vital role to play in shaping the future of the profession: advising the ETF on the programmes we should establish and commission, and monitoring their success.”

Expert panel chairs and co-chairs sit on the ETF governing board, where they will be expected to reflect views of their panels.

Dame Asha Khemka, OBE, principal of West Nottinghamshire College, was given the chair of the leadership, governance and management panel.

Her group, co-chaired by Stockton Riverside College governors’ board vice chair Mark White, has 11 members including Peter Coley, head of learning and development at St Mungo Homelessness Charity, and Kate Stock, managing director of Smart Training.

The professional standards and workforce development panel is chaired by Don Hayes, chief executive of  the Third Sector National Learning Alliance (TSNLA) and also Enable, a voluntary and community sector learning and skills consortium serving the East Midlands.

His co-chair is Lynsi Hayward-Smith, head of adult learning and skills at Cambridge County Council. The panel has a dozen members.

Peter McCann, principal of Kirklees College, chairs the vocational education and training panel with John Hyde, executive chairman of Hospitality Industry Training, as co-chair.

Their group has nine members including independent expert Alison Fuller, professor of vocational education and work at the Institute of Education, and Walsall College principal Jatinder Sharma.

The panels will meet formally for the first time next month with the ETF hoping for each panel to eventually have a dozen members, including chair, co-chair and independent adviser.

Mr Russell said: “We will continue to add to the membership of these panels to ensure that we reflect the sector’s needs.

“I want us to bring in those whom the sector serves — learners and employers. As the customers of the sector, their voice, insight, wants and needs are of the utmost importance.

“The ETF is an impartial organisation here to ensure the quality and professionalism of the workforce. These experts, and those who will join them over the year, will play an essential role in enabling us to make sure that learners and employers benefit from a high quality and professional workforce.”

He added: “There is so much expertise among the professionals who work, train and support the education and training sector; and they have so much that they can offer and share with other professionals in the workforce.”

Email Maria.Semak@etfoundation.co.uk for information on becoming an expert panel member.