Schools minister Nick Gibb and the leadership of exams regulator Ofqual will face questions from MPs at an education committee hearing on this summer’s results and plans for 2022.
The committee has announced today that Gibb will appear alongside Ofqual’s interim chief regulator Simon Lebus and interim chair Ian Bauckham.
It comes as Lebus, who has been in-post since January, prepares to hand over the reins to Jo Saxton, who was chosen earlier this year as the next permanent chief regulator.
Saxton was previously a policy adviser to education secretary Gavin Williamson.
Nick Gibb
The announcement of the hearing on September 7 follows the release of GCSE and A-level results last week.
Following the cancellation of formal exams and a move to teacher assessment, the proportion of top grades issued increased to 30 per cent at GCSE and 44 per cent at A-level.
As well as concerns about grade inflation, the results last week also prompted fears about growing inequality among some groups.
The committee will ask panellists about lessons learned from the 2020-21 academic year, and about the government’s plans for exams in 2022.
Ministers have said these will go ahead, but with some adjustments in an attempt to address concerns about missed schooling.
Committee chair Robert Halfon, pictured top, said: “Students, along with their hardworking teachers and support staff, deserve to be congratulated on some outstanding results after overcoming all the challenges posed in this most difficult of years.
“Ofqual and the DfE must now focus on ensuring all young people, particularly those that have missed out the most on learning during the pandemic, are properly supported in taking exams next summer.
“There also needs to be a proper plan for returning to more normal grading standards to reverse the grade inflation that has been baked into the system.”
Students and parents have picketed a London sixth form over accusations the college leadership unfairly altered their A-level grades.
The protesters claim grades handed to students at Havering Sixth Form College were not those set by teachers and were instead changed down by senior managers at the college’s parent group, New City College London.
Protest organiser and parent Sarah Bissagar told FE Week her son was predicted an A*, an A and a C and “continually” got top marks in his tests, only to be handed a C, a D and an E.
We’re here at @havering6thform at a protest by students and parents against their A-level grades. They are alleging the college management changed their grades AFTER they were set by teachers. Stay tuned to this thread for more 🧵 pic.twitter.com/X84pKhmtwp
She said her son had been applying for jobs and apprenticeships, but employers are not interested now he has got those grades back.
“His mental health is going to suffer massively,” she worries.
Bissagar said her son was told after he got his grades back: “The teachers put the marks and they were then amended by the senior level which turned out to be NCC London.
“These results were meant to be teacher assessments. Why the hell did they change them as they’ve never taught my son, nor seen him, or know his capabilities,” she questioned.
‘Why is it our college that loses out?’
This comes after this summer’s A-level, GCSE, and a number of vocational results were decided using teacher assessed grades – which led to the number of A-level grades A and above rising to 44 per cent on last year in England.
Yet this has not been the case at Havering, where protestors have questioned why the college took its performance in 2018/19 into account when deciding this year’s results, when the ways students were assessed were so vastly different.
Matt Cornish
Speaking outside the college today, 18-year-old Matt Cornish asked why, if there has been grade inflation across England, “is it our community’s college, with many students from low-income backgrounds, that loses out. We don’t understand.”
Romford MP Rosindell has written to McDonald, in a letter seen by FE Week, that it is “deeply concerning” students in his constituency “have seen their grades downgraded significantly from what their teachers awarded them, putting their whole future at risk”.
What was “more concerning” for Rosindell was that those students’ teachers were “shocked at the result, indicating new discussions were had with those who know their students best”.
In his letter, Rosindell wrote Havering’s students should receive the same treatment as students across the country and “should not be penalised for the absence of in-person exams.
“I do not believe students received fair or accurate results for their A-levels,” he concluded.
College takes students’ protests ‘very seriously’
NCC London said that overall, its pass rate for the over 2,000 A-level grades awarded to their students this year rose by 1.3 per cent on 2018/19 – the last year of in-person exams – and the number of B and above grades rose by 1.7 per cent in what they called “a good set of results”.
A spokesperson said teachers had set three assessments for each A-level, two of which were taken in March, with a final paper in June, which teachers marked before they all met to ensure scores were consistent. Grades were then generated by applying the 2018/19 boundaries to those scores, before a further moderation meeting where grades were moved up as well as down, the spokesperson said.
Ofqual’s guidance on submitting teacher-assessed grades this summer states exam centres should compare grades for the 2021 cohort to those from 2017, 2018 and 2019 for all A-level subjects combined, “to check that they have not been overly harsh or lenient in their assessment of the 2021 cohort compared to previous years”.
NCC says a second moderation process was then undertaken at principal level “to ensure the overall grades awarded were consistent, robust, and in line with historic performance”.
The college says the principals’ moderation process confirmed the grades from the first moderation stage in most cases, though “in a minority of subjects, grades were adjusted to ensure consistency”.
“The process of converting a score into a grade is complex especially for a centre of our scale,” they argued, and teachers and students “had concluded the final outcome of the moderation process does not align with their own grade assessment,” which is what led to them expressing “dissatisfaction” with the college.
“We take this very seriously and our accelerated appeals process will be concluded next week,” the spokesperson said.
Labour has warned cutting off public funding for BTECs could entrench inequalities in exam results, especially affecting students with free school meals or special educational needs.
Ofqual equalities analysis of spring and summer 2021’s results for applied general, like BTEC, and other vocational performance table qualifications, shows students on free school meals were on average four per cent less likely to achieve the highest grades at levels 1 and 2 than students not on FSM.
The probability of free school meal students not getting top grades has increased to four per cent
SEND students were 5.3 per cent less likely to achieve the highest grade than their non-SEND peers in spring and summer 2021, the analysis also showed.
But Labour has found students on free school meals were 57 per cent less likely to achieve a grade 7 or above in their GCSEs this year, according to its own analysis of Ofqual’s data.
Pulling BTEC funding could ‘hold young people back’
Shadow FE and skills minister Toby Perkins is concerned the government’s plans to pull public funding from qualifications like BTECs “risks embedding inequalities and holding young people back”.
Yet the Ofqual analysis also shows students on free school meals are increasingly less likely to get the highest grade in those vocational qualifications than non-FSM students.
The average probability of free school meal students not getting the top grades has increased from 2.3 per cent in 2018 to four per cent in 2021.
Students with SEND were 3.6 per cent less likely than non-SEND learners to achieve top grades in 2018; rising to 5.3 per cent this year.
Following its level 3 and below qualifications review, the Department for Education last month revealed applied general courses will become “rare” under a new streamlined system of qualifications.
Applied generals are set to have their public funding pulled if they overlap with the government’s new T Level qualifications, unless awarding bodies can demonstrate a “real need” for them.
Toby Perkins
However, an equalities assessment run by the department for the review showed students from disadvantaged backgrounds have the most to lose if applied general qualifications are defunded, as it is these students who typically choose to take the courses.
Perkins said: “Despite recognising the harmful impact that this decision will have on students from poorer backgrounds, the Conservatives are ploughing ahead, showing a shocking disregard for young people’s life chances.”
More people applying to university with BTECs
Eleven sector leaders published a joint statement under the banner #ProtectStudentChoice in June, warning that removing funding for BTEC qualifications “will leave many students without a viable pathway at the age of 16 and will hamper progress to higher education or skilled employment”.
The latest undergraduate application data from admissions service UCAS shows there was a 13 per cent increase in English people applying to universities with BTECs between 2011 and 2020, a 119 per cent increase by those applying with BTECs and A-levels, while there has been a two per cent drop from those applying with A-levels.
“These qualifications are valued by employers, universities and students themselves,” Perkins argued. “The government’s alternative T-Level qualifications are currently unproven and a hasty charge to abolish BTECs would be hugely irresponsible.”
A Department for Education spokesperson said their qualification reforms “will simplify and streamline the current system, ensuring that all qualifications are fit for purpose, are high-quality and lead to good outcomes.
“Great qualifications are essential in helping everyone reach their career goals and get good jobs, regardless of their age or background.”
But they promised reforms would be implemented in a manageable way.
Adults across England are today finding out whether they have stepped closer to their dream careers or finally passed their exams after multiple attempts.
FE Week has decided this year to dedicate its coverage of level 2 results day today to learners who have passed their English, maths or vocational assessments later in life than the average GCSE or BTEC student.
Many of the people we have heard from are looking to use their qualifications to study for careers in healthcare, such as occupational therapy or nursing.
From beauty therapy to mental health nursing
Twenty-six-year-old Jade Digby from Loughborough College has achieved a grade 4 in GCSE maths and an access to health studies qualification and will be taking an undergraduate Master’s degree in adult nursing with mental health and leadership.
Jade Digby
She said she was “over the moon,” as “being able to work in mental health is really close to my heart because I’ve experienced quite a few issues in my family over the years”.
She worked for nine years as a beauty therapist before deciding to change her career – yet needed the GCSE in a subject she “hated”.
“When I was at school, I had so many different teachers and didn’t enjoy it, so I never really bothered. But the support and quality of teaching at Loughborough has been brilliant.”
Mum studied in hospital car park
Mother of four Kathleen Rawlinson found out about her grade 5 in maths and a grade 6 in English the same day as her son got his GCSE results back.
Kathleen Rawlinson
She partly studied for her GCSEs and a pre-access to HE course in a hospital car park while her husband was ill, and will now continue studying at West Nottinghamshire College towards a job as a community nurse.
“Studying as an adult felt a bit daunting at first,” she said.
“I’d thought about coming to college the year before and talked myself out of it, but this year I decided to do it. It has been a hard year with the lockdowns, but I just rolled with it.”
Dyslexic adult goes from D to A in English
Thirty-two-year-old Greg Hounsome left school with G in GCSE maths and a D in English.
Greg Hounsome
Yet has improved that to a 5 (equivalent to a high C or low B) in maths and a 7 (a lower A) in English language with Highbury College.
This is despite struggling with dyslexia and admitting thinking “I can’t do this, it is too much”.
But he “stuck with it and it feels good to have passed.”
He is now going to study an access to HE diploma in health and human sciences at Highbury.
Stay-at-home dad discovers his calling
Richard Jackson, 41, spent 20 years as a builder after leaving education without his maths and English GCSEs, before becoming a stay-at-home dad and discovering his “calling”.
“I’ve always been the biggest kid wherever I go.
Richard Jackson
“When I’d take my kids to pre-school, I’d always end up playing games with the kids and didn’t want to leave.
“The staff there told me that this was my calling and that I should consider going into early years.
“It was a big decision, but my wife and I talked about it and decided it was now or never.”
Richard has now passed his maths and English GCSEs with USP College and will be going on to level 3 early years qualification and is even thinking of becoming a teacher.
Singer felt her autistic son was ‘let down’
Another career-changer, Gillian Coleman from Middlesbrough College, was inspired to swap jobs after feeling let down by the lack of support for people on the autism spectrum like her son.
She went from a 20-year plus career working as a singer and entertainer to enrolling on an access to HE course, to achieving a 7 in English and 5 in maths.
Gillian is now about to start the second year of a youth, childhood and community studies degree.
“I left school with an O Level in art so to know I’ve finally achieved my maths and English GCSEs is incredible – it just proves it’s never too late to go out there and do it.”
Of course, some adult learners will be receiving results after trying to pass their exams on a number of occasions.
Student passes GCSE on fifth try
Twenty-two-year-old Caymen Hammond from Suffolk New College has finally gained his grade 4 in English on his fifth try, and said it was a “relief” after “all the hard work”.
HND construction management student Earnest Korley, 22, has today passed his GCSE maths with London South East Colleges after three attempts.
He said he “always struggled with numbers,” but his “fantastic” tutors “related the maths to how it can be applied in daily life and I think that’s how I eventually came to understand things a little better.
“After my last re-take, just before the Covid pandemic struck, I was ready to concede but thanks to the encouragement of my mum and brother, I decided to give it one more go.
“Thank God I did,” he said, as this will make his life “so much easier”.
A much-loved adult residential college has announced it will remain standalone and has fought off a £2.4 million funding clawback from the government.
Northern College became locked in a legal dispute with the Education and Skills Funding Agency earlier this year over funding for its residential provision, while it was struggling to meet an adult education performance threshold.
Yet the Barnsley-based college has now revealed it has “retained its independence and is here to stay, with secured funding to support adults to re-enter education and transform their lives”.
‘Challenges remain’ for college
Yultan Mellor
Principal Yultan Mellor told FE Week it has negotiated a clawback worth £2.4 million from the ESFA down to £1 million.
It has also secured three years’ funding for its residential provision from Sheffield City Region and West Yorkshire combined authorities.
In a letter to South Yorkshire MP Miriam Cates, apprenticeships and skills minister Gillian Keegan wrote the steering group for a structure and prospects appraisal (SPA) of Northern College had “unanimously agreed” with the FE Commissioner recommending the college remain standalone.
Though she said “challenges remain” for the college, and a discussion between them and the Department for Education over “funding repayments” are ongoing.
Review of residential funding ‘ongoing’
The long-term sustainability of the Ofsted grade one college was put at risk earlier this year, owing to what was called a “perfect storm” of funding issues.
The Education and Skills Funding Agency was demanding repayment of funding it said the college owed for claiming residential uplift support for learners who were not resident.
The uplift multiplies funding for residential courses by nearly five times as much as the normal rate.
But the agency claims the college made “errors” worth £1.2 million across 2018/19 and 2019/20 because it applied an agreed uplift for residential funding to each course rather than to each learner.
Yet this interpretation of the rules for the uplift have been challenged, with another adult education residential provider Fircroft College writing in its accounts it had seen “no evidence that the ESFA’s position is legally valid” – both Fircroft and Northern engaged lawyers to challenge the government.
A national review of residential funding was announced by the Department for Education last year and a departmental spokesperson said today it is still ongoing.
A significant shortfall in enrolments, blamed on Covid-19, meant the college also faced having to pay back £660,000 because it failed to hit the ESFA’s controversial 90 per cent tolerance threshold for national adult education contracts.
Northern given ‘huge stamp of approval’
Then FE Commissioner Richard Atkins was asked by the agency to conduct a diagnostic assessment and SPA of the college, which left some fearing the Barnsley-based provider would be forced to merge after having been open since 1977.
The commissioner’s report said Northern College “faces an increasingly uncertain future due to a combination of factors,” including the clawback and changes to the uplift, “which taken together contribute to a ‘perfect storm’”.
Yet fears of a merger have not come to fruition it seems, with Mellor saying the college had been given a “huge stamp of approval.
“Following the SPA process to review the work of the College and how we are funded, it has been confirmed that we will retain independence and continue to develop and deliver outstanding adult residential education for the communities of South and West Yorkshire, and beyond.”
The pass rates for this summer’s GCSE maths and English resits have risen on 2020, new figures out today have revealed.
The proportion of males and females aged 17 and over passing English has risen by 2.8 per cent compared to 2020.
This year, 42.3 per cent received a grade 4 (equivalent to a C) or higher; whereas in 2020, it was 39.5 per cent.
Men continued to perform worse than women with 38.6 per cent receiving a 4 or higher, compared to 35.2 per cent in 2020.
47.4 per cent of women achieved grade 4 or higher this year, compared to 45.5 per cent last year.
In maths, 38.6 per cent of England’s males and females aged 17 and over passed with at least a grade 4.
This is almost six per cent higher than in 2020 – where 32.9 per cent passed.
As in English, women have performed better than men: 36.8 per cent of the latter passed their maths resit this summer, compared to 30.1 per cent last summer.
Whereas, 40.1 per cent of women passed this summer, compared to 35.4 per cent last year.
The overall number of students taking English and maths resits this year in England dropped by 13 per cent, with 133,982 of those aged 17 and over retaking English, and 165,150 retaking maths. Last year, 164,545 students resat English and 180,782 student resat maths.
Click here to download the JCQ data on GCSE results for those aged 17 and over in England.
See below for the table of results for English and maths exams taken in England by those aged 17 and over (results in brackets are for 2020).
Clear conversations about next year’s exams are needed right away, writes Sharon Witherspoon
The last two years have been a rollercoaster when it comes to exams.
While last year the government abandoned their poorly considered plans to use an algorithm to award individual grades, this year they took a different approach and delegated responsibility to teachers and exam boards.
But then it took them until late February to make the decision about how grades would be assessed.
Instead, earlier guidance about assessment would have helped ensure more consistency in the evidence available for grading, and saved both teachers and students a lot of stress and uncertainty.
As it was, teachers were sometimes scrambling to identify pieces of evidence from each student’s work and there was no way to ensure that students at different colleges and schools were being assessed on the same types of work or in the same way.
Had the government set out in early autumn what would happen if exams had to be cancelled again, they could have encouraged more consistency in the work to be assessed and teachers would have had a wider range of evidence to use.
Having a “plan B” would also have meant there were more “data points” for teachers to use in their assessments, and there might have been more consistency between colleges and between schools.
This would have created more of a level playing field in assessment.
‘Attainment gap has widened’
The importance of consistency is highlighted by the fact that this year the attainment gap has widened for students on free school meals, from areas of high deprivation and Black candidates.
Some of this will reflect real differences in learning loss, but in the absence of consistency in assessment processes and evidence between colleges and between schools, we cannot be sure.
This underlines the real need to start a proper conversation about next year’s exams now.
There are contentious statistical and wider issues to consider. It is important that there is broad agreement about how best to proceed.
I see two clear priorities for the future.
‘Full transparency from exam boards’
First, there should be a full and transparent account of what statistical evidence was used by exam boards to select which colleges and schools would be subject to further scrutiny.
Though Ofqual has provided some information on this, further details are promised for “later this year”.
There were also several news stories in the run-up to results day about parents – especially at private schools – pressurising teachers over grades.
So it is important to understand how results were queried at private, and state schools and colleges to understand the extent to which the scrutiny process tackled this issue.
‘Open discussion needed for next year’
Second – and even more important – there needs to be open discussion about how exams and assessment will work next year.
The return to exams will help ensure consistency of grading between colleges and between schools, but it will not address the hours of education lost due to the pandemic, and how this varies between students and different education institutions.
The government has announced steps to ensure exams take some account of learning loss (for instance by giving a choice of topics to answer).
These steps are welcome. But exams are statistically ‘norm referenced’, which means the cut-offs between different grades are partly set by prior decisions about what grading results should look like.
Is the plan to revert in one fell swoop to 2019 grade profiles, or to adjust them more slowly? Public debate about this should start now.
The cohort of 18-year-olds is growing. That, combined with aspirations for more students to attend university (particularly given the small number of available degree-level apprenticeships), means that decisions will need to be taken that intersect statistics and policy.
The public – including teachers – needs to be part of that conversation.
A college has appointed a sector veteran as interim principal for the second time after its permanent principal left last week.
Previously the principal of Dudley College, Lowell Williams ran Hull College on a temporary basis from January until Bradford College’s former deputy chief executive Chris Malish started in April.
However, after the college announced Malish, the first permanent principal since 2019, had resigned owing to difficulty working away from his family, it has been announced Williams will be taking up the reins from next Monday.
College chair Lesley Davies said: “I am pleased that Lowell has once again agreed to support the college as interim principal and CEO. As a board we know well his expertise and professionalism and look forward to working with him to deliver our ambitions for the college.”
Williams was the fourth interim leader of the college appointed since Michelle Swithenbank resigned from the college amid a controversy over the college ‘s finances and management.
He had previously been working as a consultant for Hull.
Williams has worked in colleges for over 30 years and set up his own consultancy firm shortly after leaving Dudley College, which he led to an Ofsted grade one in 2017.
The proportion of top A-level grades handed out this year has increased to more than 44 per cent following the cancellation of exams and switch to teacher assessment grades.
The record-breaking results saw 37 per cent of all A-level students in England get three As or better – more than double the 17.9 per cent in 2019.
And 6.9 per cent of students, more than 12,000, got three A*s, up from 4.3 per cent last year and 1.9 per cent in 2019.
Formal exams were cancelled this year for the second year running following the decision to close schools again in January because of Covid.
Unlike last year, when an algorithm used to standardised centre-assessment grades had to be abandoned at the last minute, this year’s grades were set by teachers and then quality-assured by exam boards via an evidence-checking process.
Data released this morning by Ofqual and the Joint Council for Qualifications shows 44.3 per cent of grades awarded in England were an A or above, compared with 38.1 per cent in 2020 and 25.2 per cent in 2019.
Ofqual said teachers “may have given students some benefit of the doubt across the multiple opportunities many students had to show what they had learned – quite different from end of course exams”.
As well as a boost to the highest grades, results were also higher at grade B and above (69.8 per cent in 2021, up from 65.4 in 2020 and 51.1 per cent in 2019), whereas Ofqual said results were “relatively stable” at lower grades.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the ASCL school leaders’ union, congratulated students on their results. But he said it was “invidious to make direct comparisons with other years and vital that we celebrate the achievements of this year’s cohort who have had to endure so much over the past 18 months”.
Ofqual said variation in outcomes between schools this year was “generally lower” than it was in 2019 and “only slightly greater” than in 2020.
This suggests that teacher grades “lessened the impact of the pandemic on centres’ results – otherwise we would expect to see much greater variability in centres’ results this year”, Ofqual said.
Ofqual also said it found “general stability” in the differences in outcomes for students with different protected characteristics, and increases in outcomes for “many groups”. Again, the regulator said this suggested the changes to assessment had “lessened the unevenness in outcomes we may otherwise have seen”.
However, Ofqual did find that the gap between girls and boys had grown, with girls receiving higher grades on average than boys. The average change was a fifth of a grade, the regulator said.
And whereas Ofqual’s model suggested that students with special educational needs and disabilities received slightly higher grades than non-SEND students in 2019, this reversed in 2021, with a change of a tenth of a grade.
The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service has also reported a record 395,770 students had confirmed places on their first-choice of undergraduate course as of this morning, up 8 per cent on 2020.
Ofqual’s 
