Teaching unions have blamed the government’s “rushed” exam reforms for inappropriate entries to GCSE science, which nearly resulted in pupils failing.  

Union officials said that teachers had not been given enough time or support to help them make the right decisions about what tiers pupils should be entered for.  

Yesterday Tes revealed that Ofqual had taken the highly unusual step of intervening in GCSE combined science after it found that more candidates than expected were getting an unclassified result.

The exam regulator lowered the "safety net" grade for the higher tier paper to 3-3 to stop a number of candidates from walking away with a U. Ofqual said it took the action because it looked like “in some cases students should have been entered for the foundation tier”.

Education unions welcomed the action – but said the eleventh-hour change was the result of the pace and scale of change of the government’s exam reforms.

Jill Stokoe, education policy adviser at the NEU teaching union, told Tes: “The new qualifications were rushed in far too quickly – teachers didn’t have enough time to get to grips with some of the specifications.”

With teachers struggling to predict what grades their pupils should aim for under the new 9-1 grade system, Ms Stokoe said it appeared that some candidates had been entered for the higher tier “almost by accident”.

'It was too much, too fast'

“I understand there may have been some mistakes made, but I would not blame the teachers. I’d say it was too much, too fast and teachers needed more time to get familiar with the new specifications.”

Sarah Hannafin, policy adviser at the NAHT heads’ union, said that teachers had faced particular challenges deciding which tier pupils should be entered for in combined science.

“With combined science this year, the whole problem is that the whole thing has been a world of unknowns,” she said.

“The specification has completely changed; there’s no coursework, there’s six different exam papers, there’s changes to content.”

She said the amount of information teachers had received had been “so limited” – with only one sample paper made available – that entry decisions had been “really, really difficult”.

Ms Hannafin said Ofqual was forced to intervene because of the rushed implementation of the GCSE reforms.

“Things like this are a result of the pace of change,” she said. “If things had gone a little more slowly, exam boards might have had more time to provide more materials for schools to use.

“It’s come through so quickly. There hasn’t been enough time for people to really prepare and reflect and get the support that perhaps would have been useful.”

'Change and churn' in GCSE science

She also said that teachers may have put pupils in for the higher tier because they were anxious not to limit their potential. “If a student is showing the ability that they could get a 6, as a former teacher myself, what you don’t want to do is to cap their ability to achieve that grade 6 by entering them in the foundation tier.”

Suzanne O’Farrell, curriculum and assessment specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders, said there had been a “huge amount of change and churn” in GCSE science.

She said entry decisions had been complicated by the introduction of a single point of entry for combined science. Under the legacy qualification, some schools entered pupils for "core" science in Year 10 and "additional" science in Year 11, but now students sit the double award qualifications in Year 11.

The Department for Education was contacted for comment.