Headteachers have today called for this year’s A-level grading process to be “written off” so that students receive their school’s centre-assessed grades (CAGs) as their final grades without moderation from exam regulator Ofqual.

The moderation of CAGs, following the cancellation of this year’s exams, has resulted in around 40 per cent of A-level results being downgraded in a process described by heads as “heartbreaking and utterly unfair for students”.

Headteacher Steve Wilson, from Whitley Bay High School, North Tyneside, said that 82 per cent of his 253 A-level students had been downgraded and that he would be writing to the DfE and his local MP. He called for moderated results to be scrapped, just as happened in Scotland on Tuesday.

He said: “If these were the real results after exams we would see these as catastrophic.”

Teachers spent “weeks and weeks” deliberating over CAGs, only to find out they would be ignored in many cases because Ofqual’s moderation process would go on factors such as pupil rankings and a school’s historical performance when awarding grades. 

Alan Gray, headteacher of Sandringham School, St Albans, said that in some cases the moderation process had downgraded pupils by three grades from their CAG, and that one pupil he knew of had gone from a B to a U.

He said there was “discrimination” because moderation wasn’t being applied to grades in smaller schools and in smaller subjects, and said it was a shared view of around 15 headteachers in his local consortium that students should receive CAGs without moderation. He added: “Let’s write this year off and say that teachers did know best.”

In arguing the case for moderation, Ofqual said the “vast majority” of schools had submitted “optimistic” grades, and that an improvement on such a scale in a single year had never happened before, and that to allow it to happen would “significantly undermine” the value of these grades. 

Philip Wayne, headteacher of the Royal Grammar Schools in High Wycombe, said that his school’s A-level results were the best for five years. He said this was “an exceptional year group” and that he was expecting results to be even better. However, he said some pupils were disappointed, and that it was “terribly sad” that they couldn’t understand why their teacher’s grade had not been accepted. But said he understood the need for moderation and that the system was “as good as it could be”.

The DfE has been contacted for a comment