The Department for Education has admitted that disadvantaged students were “slightly more likely” to have their A-level grades proposed by their teachers moderated down at grades C and above.
In a blog by the DfE, responding to criticisms that the moderation process for this year’s A-level results had disproportionately affected poorer students, the government said: “The claims are based on data that shows that at grades C and above, the cumulative difference between final grades and grades suggested by teachers for pupils of lower socioeconomic status was 10.4 percentage points, for those from medium socioeconomic status, it was 9.5 percentage points and for those of higher socioeconomic status, it was 8.3 percentage points.”
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“Although these do indicate that pupils from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are slightly more likely to have a difference between the grade proposed by their teachers their final grades at C and above, the difference is small and at A* and A pupils from lower socioeconomic groups were actually less likely to have their teacher grade adjusted.
“This is entirely different from the situation in Scotland, which saw disadvantaged pupils grades changed significantly more than their peers,” the blog added.
The DfE said that Ofqual’s standardisation model for grading “did not differentiate against those from different socioeconomic backgrounds” and that the “attainment gap in final grades between disadvantaged pupils and their peers has remained stable this year, showing that no group of students has been disproportionately disadvantaged by the process”.
It also pointed out that more pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds had been accepted into universities this year than ever before.
However, earlier today, Tes reported that Ofqual did not consider an in-built advantage to private school candidates in its analysis of its grading model.
