Private schools are being investigated by exam boards over allegations of malpractice in grade inflation, the chief exams regulator has told MPs.
Ofqual chief exams regulator Dr Jo Saxton today told the Commons Education Select Committee that exam boards were investigating “individual cases” of malpractice in private schools when exams were cancelled due to the Covid pandemic.
In the summer of 2021 students in England were awarded teacher-assessed grades after exams were cancelled, with private schools seeing a 12.1 percentage point increase in the number of A* grades awarded at A level.
Dr Saxton told the committee: “Ofqual takes all allegations of malpractice and cheating extremely seriously, and we require the board to investigate any credible evidence of malpractice and cheating.”
She was speaking after the committee chair, Robert Halfon, and shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson both called for an investigation into claims of inflated grades being awarded at private schools.
Today Dr Saxton said that while it was “tempting” to make comparisons between results in 2021 and 2022, “it was a totally different form of assessment”.
In summer 2022 exams returned with mitigations put in place to help students who had their learning disrupted by the pandemic, including advance information on topics and exam aids, such as formulae and equation sheets.
Claims that private schools inflated grades
This year the proportion of A* grades awarded for private school A-level entries fell by 11 percentage points from last year’s figure.
However, an FFT Education Datalab analysis published in August suggested that claims that independent schools had inflated teacher-assessed grades more than state schools and colleges were “harsh”.
Dr Saxton said: “We take all allegations of malpractice extremely seriously and I know that there are live investigations which I can’t talk further about.”
When questioned on this by Mr Halfon, she said cases were being investigated at private schools.
She said that while the exam boards carry out the investigations, they are monitored by Ofqual.
This year’s results revealed that the attainment gap between the North and South of England in the proportion of GCSE and A-level exam entries achieving top grades had widened since exams were last held before the pandemic.
Speaking about regional divides, today Dr Saxton told the committee that it was an “unfortunate fact that there are differences in outcomes in qualifications in different parts of the country”.
She highlighted that these differences also exist between different education centre types.
She said that while, when she was a school leader, she was “determined to see those gaps closed”, it was “not the role of qualifications to mask inequalities”.
Dr Saxton said she had a “statutory obligation to make sure that qualifications that are awarded are the most accurate measure of what students know, understand and can do”.
When questioned about the possibility of introducing regional variation in qualifications, Dr Saxton said that Ofqual academics and researchers “spent many days, hours, weekends looking at whether it was possible to do something bespoke” for different local areas but that they realised it “wouldn’t be possible”.
Ofqual urged to think again about Covid impact
Committee member Ian Mearns said that “the pandemic hasn’t gone away” and that cases in his constituency of Gateshead were “pretty prevalent”.
He said that, as a result, “lost learning is still occurring” in places such as the North East of England “at a much greater measure than it is in other parts of the country”.
“I really do think that Ofqual and the boards need to have another think about what’s going to happen next year because the students next year will have had a year of lost learning on that course out of the two, and they’re probably still being affected to some measure now in a disproportionate way,” he said.
Dr Saxton said that Ofqual will be once again be publishing an analysis of the attainment gap.
She said that while it was not something Ofqual had done prior to the pandemic, she thought it was now “incredibly important”.
In August Ofqual chair Ian Bauckham said that no “right-thinking person” would be unconcerned about the wider regional gap in top grades in this year’s A-level results.
An Ofqual spokesperon said: “Ofqual takes allegations of malpractice extremely seriously and we require exam boards to carry out investigations into such allegations and address any proven cases of qualifications-related malpractice in a school or college.
“It would not be appropriate for us to comment on specific cases. We would ask anyone with concerns about potential malpractice to contact the exam board or Ofqual.”
