Exam board Cambridge International has revealed it will use schools’ past exam performance to set grading standards this year.

The board, which cancelled exams in the UK in February, said it will use a group of “benchmark” schools’ grades from June 2019 to see how standards have moved in 2021 and then adjust grading thresholds.

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The board will use teacher assessment to award grades in the UK and other countries where directives from national and local authorities make it impossible to hold exams, but students will sit exams in other jurisdictions.

Today, the board said it would use historic exam performance data from a group of “benchmark” schools to set grading standards in 2021.

“Our usual approach to grading exams uses a variety of statistical and judgemental methods. These methods help us maintain the awarding standard from a previous exam series, usually the exam series the previous year,” the board said.

“One method is using ‘benchmark centres’ - schools with large and stable numbers of entries. For each syllabus, we identify which [schools meet our criteria to be considered as benchmark [schools],” the statement said.

“We expect that the grades awarded to a large group of benchmark [schools], considered as a whole, will remain stable from year to year under normal circumstances,” it added.

“For June 2021, our grading process will look back to the last June exam series, which was June 2019.”

The board said it would identify a group of benchmark schools from those submitting teacher-assessed grades.

Once it collected their school-assessed grades, Cambridge International said “we will be able to see how much the standard has moved since June 2019 in the countries and regions where school-assessed grades are to be awarded, including in England”.   

“Having determined how much the standard has moved, we will set grade thresholds for our exams which permit the same level of movement compared to June 2019,” it added.

The board also said that this would mean students taking exams this year were not disadvantaged compared to those awarded grades through teacher assessment.

And it said that, as in 2020, teacher-assessed grades were likely to be more generous than exam grades prior to the pandemic. 

“Understanding the extent of generosity means we can adjust standards of exam grades to make sure it is not systemically harder or easier for students to achieve good grades in June 2021,” Cambridge International said.