Heads and teachers across the country have expressed their relief at the DfE’s U-turn over GCSE and A-level grades.

Speaking to Tes ahead of today’s results day, their views include that the DfE and exam regulator Ofqual have failed to recognise how much they have ultimately depended upon teachers to get them through a difficult process. This follows the DfE’s dramatic change of heart on Monday when it announced that students would receive their centre-assessed grades (CAGS) rather than grades moderated by Ofqual (or whichever was the higher).

Tes columnist Sarah Ledger, who is also head of Year 11 at William Howard School, Cumbria, said the risk of students feeling they’d been cheated by lower-than-expected moderated grades - which schools had no agency over - was more significant than the risk of grade inflation (predicted by Ofqual to be around 9 per cent using CAGs).

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She said: “I feel that to some extent, even though the agency is on the part of school [as opposed to students], we have got a little bit of that back, whereas we didn’t have it before. And there’s nothing more stressful than feeling completely powerless and feeling that you’re being put through a machine and put through a mechanism that doesn’t belong to you. I’m relieved that we’re in the place that we’re in for tomorrow [today] and I feel that we can have some much more productive conversations.”

She added: “Roger Taylor [Ofqual chair] talked about the distress that was caused [to A-level pupils last week] - that’s the appropriate thing [to talk about] and if we’re going to encourage young people to go on and be educated and take their education further and go into further education and higher education they have to feel they haven’t been cheated.”

Following the cancellation of exams due to coronavirus, Ofqual and the DfE said there was a need to moderate this summer’s grades based on factors such as a schools’ historic performance data and the rank order of pupils in every subject submitted by schools.

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But headteacher of Whitley Bay High School, Steve Wilson, said last week’s A-level grades did not reflect the historical performance of the school nor the ability of the students, and that there was concern the same thing would happen this week with GCSEs.

But he said: “[There is] absolutely relief for parents, students and staff. The students and parents of this school do have faith in the school and do believe we would have had the best interests of students at heart and predicted accurate grades.”

A-level and GCSE results fiasco like ‘Morecambe and Wise sketch’

David Collins, headteacher of Knole Academy in Sevenoaks, Kent, said the whole scenario of Ofqual awarding moderated grades reminded him of the Morecambe and Wise sketch with the world-famous conductor and pianist Andre Previn.

He said: “It was the Andre Previn/Morecambe and Wise sketch, with Eric Morecambe saying: ‘I’ve played all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order.’ And that seemed to be broadly what Ofqual’s approach to this was, you know, broadly, nationally, centre lock-wise you’re getting the same results but it may not be that the kids actually receive them. And to me, fundamentally, when we do exams the core purpose is to provide a grade for a student which is representative of the time effort and attainment they’ve achieved and the government lost sight of that. End of story.”

Meanwhile, schools reported GCSE results arriving on time ahead of results day, as was promised.

Tes columnist David James, who is also deputy headteacher of Bryanston, an independent boarding school in Dorset, said he hoped there be “genuine relief” on results day.

He said: “What I hope is that both the DfE and Ofqual realise how much they depended on teachers to get through this difficult process. And I haven’t seen that enough actually. While the political furore has begun to eat itself and drag Ofqual down, [what I’ve seen is] that the schools have tried to deliver what they feel is overwhelmingly a fair set of grades. There will be some lumps and bumps and unevenness but teachers have done everything they can under intense pressure.”