A backlash against A-level results gathered pace today as examples of “utterly unfair and unfathomable” grades left large swathes of students and teachers disappointed.

Despite the Department for Education’s attempt to head off a backlash with a last-minute U-turn to allow students to appeal on the basis of mock exam results, prime minister Boris Johnson was forced to publicly back his education secretary this afternoon.

Mr Johnson insisted that the grading system was “robust”, adding that “obviously it was always going to be difficult without proper, formal exams”.

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Anger over A-level results

The prime minister’s intervention came as students and unions moved to increase pressure on the government to change tack:

• The National Union of Students has launched a petition calling on the government to give all students their teacher-assessed grades with no moderation; introduce a fair and free appeals process for all students “to combat any instances of racist, classist or other discrimination”; overhaul the current exam system and invest to end education inequality. The petition accuses the government of “putting statistics before students” and demands that it stops “an unjust algorithm” making the disadvantage experienced by young people due to the coronavirus pandemic worse.
• A law firm which recently won a case against the Home Office for using a ‘racist algorithm’ to award visas is gearing up for a possible legal challenge after a Year 13 student, Curtis Parfitt-Ford, contacted them last week. Mr Parfitt-Ford highlighted reports that teacher grades would have less weight in the algorithm in larger cohorts. A co-founder of the law firm Foxglove, Cori Crider, told Tes: “There is a democracy problem here. You are building these systems that have real effects on the lives of thousands of people, without having a real open and transparent democratic debate about how they work.”
• A protest has been organised by NEU teaching union officer and teacher Louise Regan for tomorrow at 12 noon opposite Downing Street - an action which she says is backed by sixth-form colleges.

Ofqual has maintained that there was no bias in the grading system, despite early evidence that a higher percentage of disadvantaged students were knocked out of the A*-C bracket when teacher grades were moderated. Anger has been provoked after it emerged that the proportion of A-level grades at grade A has risen at private schools at more than double the rate of any type of state school.

Controversy had mounted before results were unveiled today, after it emerged that teacher-assessed grades would not be taken into account in some cases under the standardisation process set by Ofqual in subjects with a large number of entries, and after widespread protests in Scotland led to an announcement that all downgraded grades would be withdrawn.