Ofqual’s chief regulator has said that she would be “really surprised” if any school achieves better results than it did in 2021, when teacher assessment was used to grade GCSEs and A levels.

Jo Saxton said she hoped students would achieve better results than the cohort in 2019 - the last time exams were sat - and she also advised schools not to attempt to work out what their Progress 8 scores might be this year.

In a new podcast interview, embedded below, she said that Ofqual has tried to “level the playing field” for the disruption that students have faced through Covid so that they get the grade they would have achieved had there not been a pandemic.

• GCSEs 2022: How exams will differ this year
• Background: Lowest grade levels since 2019
• GCSEs 2023: How exams will be run next year

When asked if schools might be able to achieve better results in this year’s exams than through last year’s assessment, Dr Saxton replied: “I would be really surprised if anybody’s results are better than [in] 2021.”

Exams will be marked in the same way as in normal years but Ofqual has said exam boards are taking the impact of Covid into account when looking at grade boundaries.

Ofqual’s executive director of standards, research and analysis, Cath Jadhav, said: “The marking will be the same as in previous years. What will be different is that the grade boundaries will reflect the fact that we’re getting back to normality but not all in one go.

“So this means grade boundaries will likely be lower than before the pandemic but we won’t know until students have sat their exams, their papers have been marked and those senior examiners have got together to review the evidence.”

In the podcast interview, with Teacher Tapp co-founder,  journalist and former teacher Laura McInerney, Ms Jadhav said it was right that there was “wiggle room this year to take into account the changes in the pandemic”.

Grade boundaries are set by exam boards once all work has been marked and given a score. 

Students are sitting exams for the first time in two years this summer after cancellations in both 2020 and 2021 led to grades being awarded based on teachers’ assessment.

Students don’t want ‘Covid grades’

Dr Saxton said: “I have talked to lots of students since I have been chief regulator and the vast, vast majority want exams to go ahead. They don’t want ‘Covid grades’. They want qualifications through sitting exams themselves.”

When asked if she thought exams going ahead this year was the best thing to do, she added: “Yes, I do. I think if there is a lesson from 2021 and 2020 it’s that the examined route is the fairest form of awarding qualifications we have.”

Dr Saxton also highlighted the adjustments that have been made to this year’s exams in order to take the impact of Covid into account.

She added: “For example, you could choose topics in history, you could choose between different parts of the English literature paper…In sciences and maths, formulas and equation sheets will be provided in exams so they haven’t got the last minute memorisation like before and, exceptionally, exam boards have worked incredibly hard to produce advanced information which I think of as giving young people a heads-up about what is coming up on the papers that they will sit in the summer.”

Dr Saxton said she did not think these changes gives this year’s cohort an advantage.

The chief regulator said that young people know exactly what they have missed as a result of Covid disruption.

“They know that that they haven’t missed entire topics necessarily but they have missed some of it or it hasn’t been the teacher who they think of as their teacher. These arrangements are to accommodate that so that they should be able to get the grade that they would have had had the pandemic not happened.

Dr Saxton said: “I hope the results will be higher than in 2019, we’ve put everything in place to enable this to be the case.

“The bit I can’t control is what students actually do. They’ve got to turn up and sit their exams and I’ve put every possible mechanism in place to accommodate the disruption they’ve had and hopefully return grades that are higher than 2019.”