The 2023 exams season is well underway, with students across the country sitting their GCSE and A-level papers.
Although the exams they are taking are very similar to the ones taken in 2019, grading this year will be slightly different. The government is trying to return grades to a similar level to that seen before the pandemic, after the grade inflation that resulted from exams being cancelled in 2020 and 2021.
In 2019 the proportion of students achieving a grade C equivalent or above at GCSE was 69.9 per cent.
This figure rose to 78.8 per cent in 2020 when centre-assessed grades (CAGs) were awarded, and in 2021 it increased to 79.1 per cent with teacher-assessed grades (TAGs). When in-person exams returned in 2022, the proportion dropped to 73 per cent.
There is a desire from the exam regulator, Ofqual, to get results back to the 2019 level. To find out exactly what is happening with 2023 grading to achieve this, Tes spoke to Dr Jo Saxton, chief regulator at Ofqual.
GCSEs and A levels 2023: How will exam grading differ?
In 2023, the circumstances around the exams will be considered when it comes to awarding grades, says Dr Saxton, with the impact of the pandemic on the current cohort of students being taken into account.
“Ofqual are asking the exam boards...to take into consideration the disruption students have suffered and to bear in mind what outcomes looked like in 2019, so that even if the quality of student work is slightly weaker at a national level within a subject, results are as similar as possible to those of 2019,” she says.
Dr Saxton explains that Ofqual has “been working to take a measured approach to getting back to normal”.
“We have heard loud and clear - from students up and down the country, parents and, obviously, teachers and leaders - that people want to get back to normal but not in one go, which is how we have got to the approach that we have got to,” she says.
Which subjects will be having adjustments?
As with exams in 2022, there will be adaptations made in some subjects to take into account the disrupted learning experienced by the cohort.
However, this is limited to GCSE exams this year, and only maths, science and languages. For maths and science, students will have formulae and equation sheets, and in languages subjects students will not be tested on unfamiliar vocabulary.
Saxton says this decision has caused upset among some teachers, although others have been supportive.
“It’s one of the things that’s been the biggest item in my inbox in terms of letters,” she says.
“I’ve had such divided correspondence. I’ve had a lot of teachers writing to me saying it’s literally the worst thing that could have happened to their subjects because it’s stopping students actually realising that they need to know these equations and formulae. And other people have said, ‘It’s wonderful. Please will you keep it forever.’”
How is the exam timetable different this year?
As well as these adaptations, GCSE and A-level students will also have the benefit of extra spacing in the exams timetable this summer.
This spacing was originally put in place to allow students who had tested positive for Covid to isolate between papers. However, Saxton says it has been kept on for another reason.
“The feedback we had, from students, schools and colleges, was that it was actually really important for catch-up and revision and that it helped them,” she explains.
“Lots of schools and colleges then, instead of having gained time because everybody has disappeared because the series has started, they were able to keep running classes and bring students in.”
How will grade boundaries be decided?
In a normal exam year, grade boundaries are agreed during a process called “awarding” that takes place once all the exams are marked.
Senior examiners from all exam boards bring together example exam papers from that year, and previous years, to ensure that standards have been maintained over time, and a grade 4 in 2017 is comparable with a grade 4 in 2018 and 2019 and so on.
In 2022, due to the grade inflation that happened while CAGs and TAGs were in place, there was some generosity during awarding with the aim for grades to be at a midway point between the distributions seen in 2021 and 2019.
The 2023 approach differs to 2022 in that there is no “statistical point” in the plan.
Saxton says this year isn’t going to be as “dramatic as last year [when they] worked from an abstract statistical point”.
Instead, adjustments will “make sure that students get the benefit of the doubt and that national results are as similar as possible to 2019”.
Does this mean grade boundaries will be lower?
Nobody knows for sure where the grade boundaries will be set because every year there will be small differences in the difficulty of an exam paper. This is the reason why every year there will be small changes with the grade boundaries.
Saxton says that with this in mind, “it’s plausible that what this will mean is the benefit of a couple of marks at a boundary”.
But she emphasises that “papers are changed every year, sometimes they are easier and sometimes they are harder. We’ve got to rely on the expertise of the system in determining those things. There will always be some exceptions where a boundary is sort of higher”.
Does this mean there is a quota of grades?
In 2023, as with every year, there is no fixed quota of grades.
This means that any number of grades can be awarded a 4 at GCSE or C at A level. The only exception is grade 9, which is decided using an approach based on a mixture of statistics and examiner judgement.
Saxton says: “I’m absolutely amazed how on the visits that I do how many people, even people who have worked in education for their whole career, believe that there is a quota, and there really isn’t. So I don’t want people reading this to read into it, ‘Oh, proof there’s a quota. There really isn’t.’”
What data is used in making decisions about grade boundaries?
Ofqual does not run the awarding process but instead sets the rules for exam boards to follow to decide grade boundaries. Saxton says this is to put “parameters” in place for exam boards.
“We set the rules for the exam boards, of what they need to do,” she says. “And if they feel that there are reasons why they can’t comply with the parameters that they’ve set with them, they have to report it to us. So they can’t kind of go rogue.”
Saxton says no decision has been made yet about whether the National Reference Test data will be used in awarding.
“Whether or not they use the data from the National Reference Test [an Ofqual assessment that provides national data on student ability in a specific year and evidence of how performance has changed over time], that’s a decision for me as chief regulator,” she adds. “I haven’t seen National Reference Test results yet but I will have a decision to make in due course about whether I’m going to instruct them to change grade boundaries based on outcomes of the National Reference Test.
“Last year the National Reference Test results, I didn’t apply any adjustment, because to do so would have been counter to the policy of giving students the benefit of the doubt with the pandemic. So I don’t know where we are with it yet, but it would be surprising if we did something different.”
Although key stage 2 data is also used, Saxton says that this is to “check and balance”.
“In terms of the other data that gets used, I think it’s just so important that people don’t think, ‘Oh, they’re looking at my Sats or my GCSEs and they’re going to use that to predetermine what I get,’” she says.
“It’s all about using as much data as possible at population level as a check and balance to make sure that human markers and examiners are being fair to students. I think that’s the important point. And they have got a wide range of data available to use, including, of course, they’ll be able to rely much more securely on scripts and materials prior to the pandemic than they were last year.”
