An exam board has defended its decision to “significantly” hike up the grade boundary for a GCSE English resit exam after “shocked” college leaders complained of lower-than-expected pass rates and threatened legal action.
Last week’s 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 – which is 5 percentage points lower than 2023, and almost 10 percentage points down on 2019.
College principals have pointed the finger at Pearson Edexcel, claiming that there are thousands of “distraught” students who sat the awarding body’s 2.0 exam paper and were predicted to finally achieve their grade 4 pass but ended up being unsuccessful.
This was because Pearson shifted the grade 4 pass mark from 73, used in both the June and November 2023 resit series, to 84 this summer.
Entries to the 2.0 exam – which is designed specifically for resit students aged over 16 – more than doubled this year, from 21,111 in 2023 when 37.4 per cent achieved a grade 4 pass, to 47,904 in 2024 when the grade 4 pass rate fell to 20.7 per cent.
After receiving complaints from the college sector, Pearson told FE Week: “Our GCSE English 2.0 qualification was awarded for the first time in 2022 when grading was deliberately more generous to reflect a gradual return to a pre-pandemic standard.
“With 2024 being the first year when grading is fully back to normal, we have undertaken extremely thorough and detailed work to ensure the standards required in GCSE English 2.0 are in line with the national GCSE English Language standard.”
Exams regulator Ofqual also admitted that it raised concerns with Pearson about their grading of the 2.0 specification in summer 2023, and asked the awarding body to “investigate and improve their approach to aligning standards across English Language specifications for 2024”.
Principals that spoke to FE Week said they understand that grade boundaries can fluctuate but complained that Pearson’s increase was out of step with other awarding bodies, adding that they are yet to receive a satisfactory explanation for the huge rise.
AQA is the largest GCSE English language exam body and had over 83,000 entries for students in post-16 education in the 2024 series. Its grade 4 boundary pass mark went up by just two, from 71 to 73.
The proportion of AQA resit students that achieved a grade 4 pass fell only slightly from 25.7 per cent in 2023 to 22.8 per cent in 2024.
Collective complaint and legal threat
FE Week understands that more than 60 colleges have been negatively impacted by Pearson’s grade boundary rise.
One of the most affected is Luminate College Group, which runs four colleges Leeds. It had over 4,000 entries to Pearson’s English 2.0 exam this year, with 700 students between the grade 3 and 4 boundary.
In one example offered by Luminate, a student scored 54 marks with Pearson in 2023 and improved to 80 marks in 2024, but they still only achieved a grade 3.
Luminate chief executive Colin Booth said: “I believe that that Pearson Edexcel’s position and decisions have seriously undermined both the examination system as a whole and government policy on maths and English GCSE retakes.
“Our real examples show students that worked hard all year and, on a fair and ‘apples v apples’ basis, improved their marks in the exam significantly but still received a grade 3 in both years.
“Pearson Edexcel’s actions leave us all in the impossible position of having to try to explain to young people why working hard and improving your skills and marks in the examination may not lead to an improved grade. We are now having to also explain to these young people why they have to study and take the exam again in November.”
Carol Thomas, principal of Coventry College, said her team was also left “shocked and disappointed” at their GCSE English grades, adding that there was no notification of the significant grade boundary change until the day before results day.
“Pearson decided to make this change at the last minute or make it and just not inform anyone – so all staff across the sector have been working in the dark,” she told FE Week.
“For some learners this could be their second, third or even fourth attempt and this time they thought they had achieved it – but that success has been taken away unnecessarily.”
A group of 30 colleges has penned a collective complaint letter to Pearson that outlines their “serious concerns”.
The leaders are calling for a reversal or review of the decision “resulting in a more reasonable and fair approach to the change in grade boundaries consistent with other exam boards”, a clear explanation as to the rationale behind the decision, and a commitment to communicate significant future changes in a timely fashion.
The letter also demands free of charge remarks and resits to affected students, as well as a refund of the 2023/24 exam entry fees for the cohort.
Booth said his college’s next move could be to go legal and launch a judicial review, depending on Pearson’s response.
‘This has to be questioned at the highest level’
Introduced in 2014, the government’s resits policy forces students who have not achieved a grade 4 pass in English and/or maths GCSE by age 16 to continue to work towards achieving these qualifications as a condition of their places being funded.
Students who achieve a grade 3 must retake their GCSE, while students with a grade 2 or below can either take a functional skills level 2 or resit their GCSE.
The policy has split the sector since its inception, with some arguing it is a vital lifeline for young people who struggled at school, while others say that forcing students to repeatedly retake the exams is demoralising.
Booth said the government resit policy and the examination system “must be at least based on the principle that young people who work hard and then very clearly demonstrate a significant increase in knowledge and skills in an examination should see their grade improve”.
Cath Sezen, director of education policy at Association of Colleges, recognised that it is “vital” that grades are standardised across different specifications and exam boards and while grade boundaries can change year on year, she pointed out they have a “disproportionate impact on resit students as unlike year 11s they cluster around the grade 3 and 4 borderline”.
Sezen said that “such a significant change” in the grade 4 boundary for the Pearson 2.0 specification, with an impact on progression opportunities for “so many” students, “has to be questioned at the highest level”.
“Neither can the ongoing implications for colleges of more students needing to resit their GCSEs be underestimated,” she added.
An Ofqual spokesperson told FE Week the regulator is “aware of concerns raised, in particular about Pearson’s communication with its centres”.
“We have been monitoring closely the actions that Pearson has taken,” the spokesperson added.
Pearson said in a statement: “After the completion of marking, it is common for grade boundaries to differ from previous years. Occasionally, grade boundaries may vary more than anticipated. When this happens, we know that it can be surprising and disappointing on results day for those students, teachers and parents/guardians who do not receive the grades hoped for.
“We appreciate that this can be particularly disappointing for students post-16 who are resitting the subject to achieve a grade 4, and for colleges who are teaching the qualification.
“We are providing full support to help colleges, schools, students and parents to understand results this year and provide advice on next steps.”
Pearson also pointed out its English 2.0 grade boundary shift, which was +6.9 per cent from 2023, is not the most significant ever. The exam board said other grade boundaries varied from –9.3 per cent to +8.3 per cent compared to 2023.
Even worse is that thousands of young people are erroneously awarded grade 3 in the first place.
According to Ofqual’s own research, published in November 2018, only about 61% of GCSE English candidates are awarded the senior examiner’s “definitive”/”true” grade, implying that 39% are awarded a “non-definitive”/”false” grade.
That number implies that, this year, about 34,000 students were “awarded” grade 3, ‘fail’, but whose “definitive”/”true” grade is grade 4, ‘pass’ – up from last year, when the equivalent number was 30,000.
Even worse – this happens even if there are no “marking errors”, so these wrong grades cannot be discovered and corrected by a “review of marking”.
These young people are unfairly sold-down-the-river-of-failure not because they don’t know their fronted adverbials, but because Ofqual can’t deliver reliable grades. Despite its legal obligation “to secure a reliable indication of knowledge, skills and understanding”.
What needs to happen to force Ofqual to deliver grades that are reliable, and can be trusted?
Three quarters of our students will receive a grade below that which would have been achieved with the 2023 boundaries. Looking at the papers of many of them it is clear that they would have received the higher grade had they taken the exam with another board (I have marked for AQA for over 10 years).
I have raised our concerns with Pearson and with Ofqual. Their response will reveal whether there is any integrity left in the system.
The inadequacy has been around for decades and the process and model used to award points, marks and grades needs changing to provide a fairer system.
When a student has made real progress in studying a subject which they have previously failed, it is harsh and discouraging to know changes in grade boundaries result in a further failure.
It is time that those students who repeatedly fail to get a pass in English and Maths are given the opportunity to take other qualifications which recognise other skills and abilities that may genuinely have , and receive positive rewards for their efforts, rather than feeling and believing they are totally useless and can be written off for life.