Dozens of colleges that threatened to take awarding body Pearson to court over this summer’s GCSE English resit controversy have ditched their legal action.
Luminate Education Group led the charge for a judicial review on behalf of 31 colleges that signed a collective complaint in August and sent a pre-action protocol legal letter a month later.
But following crunch talks last week, the colleges dropped the litigation after deciding a “long legal battle would not serve students’ interest”.
The row stems from what the colleges claimed was an “unprecedented” 11-mark increase in the grade boundary needed for a grade 4 ‘pass’ in Pearson’s GCSE English language 2.0 exam.
Teachers and leaders said the “shock” hike, which was communicated just a day before results day in August, caused lower-than-expected pass rates and left thousands of borderline students who were predicted to pass distraught.
In one case, a Luminate student scored 54 marks with Pearson in 2023 and improved to 80 marks in 2024 but still only achieved a grade 3.
Pearson apologised for the poor timing of communication and explained the significant grade boundary rise was necessary to bring the qualification “in line with the national GCSE English Language standard”.
The awarding giant did offer a 15 per cent rebate to affected colleges for 2023-24 entries – which would have cost Pearson hundreds of thousands of pounds – and offered free-of-charge re-marks which usually cost almost £50 per paper.
After taking legal advice, Luminate took the view that a judicial review would have resulted in a ruling that Pearson acted “unlawfully and unfairly”.
But following a meeting with Pearson last week, the group, which is made up of six colleges in Yorkshire and had the largest number of entries to Pearson’s 2.0 exam, said a legal victory would “not change anything in a positive way for students or colleges”.
Instead, Luminate and Pearson have “agreed to work together and campaign for positive change that will help create a better system”.
Luminate CEO Colin Booth told FE Week his team was “as certain as we could be” that a judge would find in favour of the colleges but there was “nothing we could ask for in terms of redress of that, that a court was likely to force to happen”.
Any judicial review would have been carried over to next year, and the ideal outcome, a change in students’ grades, would be unlikely.
Booth said the collective college complaint has always been about the “wider impact” it could have by sparking a national debate on the flaws in the resits policy. He wants awarding bodies to develop new GCSE English and maths qualifications specifically targeted at post-16 students who are forced to resit if they fail to achieve a grade 4 ‘pass’ at school.
Over 86 per cent (41,268) of the 47,819 students who took the Pearson 2.0 GCSE English examination in summer 2024 were aged 17 or older.
Raising the grade 4 ‘pass’ boundary by 11 marks reduced the grade 4 ‘pass’ rate by 16.7 percentage points, moving from 37.4 per cent in summer 2023 to 20.7 per cent. The change left many students, the majority of which were taught within colleges, a whole grade poorer than if they had sat the exam in 2023.
Colleges believe Pearson’s decision to move the goalposts was the dominant reason behind an overall drop in post-16 GCSE English pass rates. Results day revealed that 20.9 per cent of the 148,569 England-based students resitting their English language GCSE achieved a grade 4 pass, five percentage points lower than in 2023.
Booth said: “Pearson’s English 2.0 qualification highlights an assessment system simply not built in the interests of further education colleges or our students.
“We would like national policy to support a post-16 GSCE English qualification that would likely feature modular assessment rather than summative, with less creative writing and more focus on practical English skills for the workplace and for life skills. The same design principles should also be applied to creating a post-16 GCSE maths qualification.”
A spokesperson for Pearson said: “We apologise for not clearly communicating to schools and colleges during the 2023-2024 academic year the fact that grade boundaries may change – sometimes significantly – and for the impact this had on students, educators, parents, and guardians on results day.”
Pearson agreed it is “evident” the current resits policy is “not meeting the needs of many students and we need a new approach”.
David Hughes, chief executive of the Association of Colleges, said: “The increase in the grade boundary by Pearson between 2023 and 2024 resulted in many students improving their performance but failing to achieve the much-coveted grade 4.
“The increase should have been communicated far earlier so that colleges and students could understand where the achievement bar was for 2024.
“I applaud Luminate for pursuing this with the other colleges, and also for stepping back now to focus on the needs of future learners.”
The government is currently running an independent curriculum and assessment review led by Becky Francis, who is expected to recommend changes to resit rules.
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