The gap between privileged students and their less affluent peers at A level has remained “fairly static” and this shows that “education recovery is not done”, a social mobility leader has warned.
Sarah Atkinson, chief executive officer of the Social Mobility Foundation, said she was “really concerned” about the 2023 exams and warned against “treating next year as a back-to-normal year” and ditching “mitigations” that were put in place for this summer’s examination series.
Measures were put in place to support students taking exams this summer - the first since 2019 - that were designed to mitigate against disruption to learning caused by the Covid pandemic, such as advance information on topics that would appear in papers.
Exams regulator Ofqual said it would be using 2022 as the first step in a “two-step return” to 2019 grade standards and that, in 2022, grading would be pegged to a midpoint between 2021 and 2019.
The attainment gap between regions in the North and South of England in terms of the proportion of A-level exam entries achieving top grades has widened since exams were last held before the Covid pandemic.
A-level results 2022: Next year ‘can’t be a back-to-normal year’
The gap between the North East, which received the lowest proportion of A-level A* and A grades out of all the regions (30.8 per cent), and the South East, which received the highest proportion (39.5 per cent), was 8.7 percentage points this year.
Top grades at private schools fell dramatically this year, but these schools still received significantly more A* grades than schools in the state sector.
Ofqual chief Jo Saxton said she was aiming to get confirmation of how 2023 grading would work during September, but added that the organisation had agreed to keep discussions on adaptations “under review” with the Department for Education.
Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at the University of Buckingham, warned that because A-level results had not gone down dramatically towards 2019 levels this year, there may be a further significant drop in grades next year, to get them back to pre-pandemic levels.
“If the regulators and exam boards have only got back some of the way, then there’s going to be more to do next year,” he said.
“A small step this year means a bigger step next year unless the government say, ‘We’ll do it in three steps rather than two.’”
Regional divides ‘a concern’
Speaking on BBC Radio 4‘s World at One programme today, Ms Atkinson cautioned against removing exam mitigations next year. “Treating next year as a back-to-normal year rests on the premise that the education recovery agenda has been successfully completed” but “we know education recovery is not done”, she said.
In reaction to Ms Atkinson’s comments, schools minister Will Quince said that “no decision” had been taken on grading and marking next year, but added that we “do need to get to a point, at some point, of business as usual”.
Other experts have also raised fears over the gap between the North East, which received the lowest proportion of A-level A* and A grades, and the South East, which received the highest proportion.
Jo-Anne Baird, professor of educational assessment at the University of Oxford, described the regional gaps in education as a “concern”, and said the issues required “deep changes to the system”, with schools “calling out for more funding”.
Chris Zarraga, director of Schools North East - a network of schools in the region - said the results reflected “the disproportionate effect the pandemic has had” on the area.
He said schools urgently needed a properly “thought through and resourced ‘recovery’ plan” that recognises the regional contexts schools operate in.
Professor Robert Coe, director of research and development at Evidence Based Education, said the inequality had not been created by the pandemic but the pandemic had “highlighted bits of it”.
In terms of solutions, he said: “I think the funding is a big issue. Many schools are really struggling with budgets and that looks set to get worse in the foreseeable future. And it really does make a difference”.
Difficulties comparing results
A key message from teaching leaders has been about the differing experiences that students and schools have had during the Covid pandemic, and how this means that comparing results on a school or student level is very difficult.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said that it was “likely that results at the level of schools, colleges and students will be uneven because of the highly variable impact of the pandemic, with those affected more by infections potentially faring less well than others”.
He added: “Adaptations were made to exams to try to mitigate this impact in as far as that is possible but this is not a normal year by any measure, and it is important that we focus on supporting the progression of students rather than fixating too much on grades.”
Similarly, Dame Alison Peacock, chief executive of the Chartered College of Teaching, said that individual students might feel that their results were “unfair”.
“The government and Ofqual made the decision to provide a stepped approach [to grading, with results dropping compared with 2021 levels this year, but not as far as 2019 levels]. This is fine, but if you are a student who has particularly suffered during the pandemic, it’s tough for you, because what evens out at a system level doesn’t necessarily feel fair to the individual,” she said.
“It’s really important we make sure that young people feel that their experiences have been recognised - maybe they had to miss a lot of school, maybe their teacher did.”
‘Pride’ in the ‘unluckiest cohort’
Lee Elliot Major, a social mobility professor at the University of Exeter, described this year’s cohort as “the unluckiest of all”, citing a “perfect storm” of pandemic disruption and “one of the toughest university admissions rounds in years”.
School leaders corroborated this, with Alison Downey, the principal of Ark Putney Academy in south-west London, saying that top-level universities were being “less flexible” than others, partly because of the number of students that deferred places last year.
However, she added: “It has been difficult but, as in any circumstances, the children who have worked the hardest have got what they deserve.
“There’s a fair distribution of grades and, for us, it’s all about making sure the children get to the right destinations.”
Dan Morrow, chief executive officer at Dartmoor Multi-Academy Trust in the South West of England, said that schools were “thrilled” with their results overall - with grades improving on 2021 levels, even in most cases.
He added: “These results are also a signal of the resilience and courage of this generation. In the South West, Covid was particularly bad between January and April 2022 and post-16 attendance was at times below 50 per cent. Yet the desire to achieve of our young people, as well as the additional sessions put on by staff, have paid off.”
Independent school results drop
The proportion of A* grades awarded to private school A-level entries has fallen 11 percentage points from last year’s figure, narrowing the gap with the state sector.
Barnaby Lenon, chairman of the Independent Schools Council, said that the drop in top grades “was expected” because independent school students are more clustered at the top end of the grade distribution, where there has been most deflation this year.
“It’s right that top grades should drop - there should be a correction,” he added.
And he said that the private schools he had spoken to were “pleased” with their results, and that in some cases they had improved on last year.
