A new report from the Education Policy Institute (EPI) has highlighted key risks in Ofqual’s plans for the awarding of GCSE and A level results this year.

The think tank has published the report as part of its response to Ofqual and the Department for Education’s consultation on the government’s plans for how grades will be awarded, which closes tomorrow.

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The government has proposed that GCSE and A-level grades are awarded through teacher assessment, with students sitting external tasks set by exam boards as part of the evidence teachers will use to assign grades.

GCSEs and A levels 2021: The EPI’s key concerns

The EPI has identified a number of risks with the proposals, detailed below, although it says the plans laid out by the government are the “least bad option” for assessment this year.

1. Student learning losses will be masked by teacher-assessed grades

The response warns that some students will progress on to the next stage of their education “without the skills they need to succeed in education or work”.

“We need to identify significant learning loss and consider how this can be addressed. And we need to avoid some students proceeding to inappropriate destinations,” the EPI report says.

2. There is a lack of clarity over how to set grades in 2021

“The consultation makes clear that teachers can make some allowance for course content not covered this year,” the EPI response says.

But it adds that it is proposed that teachers and schools “must seek to award grades based on the ‘standard’ that a child is performing at, and not their ‘potential’ or likely standard, in the absence of the pandemic-related learning losses”.

The EPI says that it is not clear what this means, or that “it will be interpreted in a consistent and fair way by teachers”.

Its response points out that before the government cancelled GCSEs and A levels this year, there was an expectation that the overall grade distribution would be similar to that in 2020, even though 2020 grade levels were “considerably higher” than in 2019 and previous years. 

It says that exams were cancelled because the view was that they could not be fair given the learning losses during the pandemic, but that the “government’s stated approach seems to imply that they are willing for differential learning loss to impact on pupil-level results”.  
 
Grading students on the standard reached this year would “appear to suggest that the government might expect average grades to be lower” but there seems to be an expectation that grades may be even higher than in 2020.

The EPI says that as a result of this “confusion”, teachers and schools may apply different judgements to setting grades. 

Its response, therefore, warns that “some degree of inconsistency in grading is highly likely in 2021, and that this will be much greater than in a regular exam year”.

3. There could be high levels of grade inflation

The EPI points out that in 2020, very few schools saw significant overall declines in their average point scores. For some school leaders whose overall results did not increase greatly in 2020, there may be a feeling that their students were disadvantaged last year.

“This, combined with uncertainty over how to grade fairly under current circumstances, could lead to a very large degree of grade inflation in 2021 - some schools might, understandably, be tempted to grade more generously in 2021 to avoid their students ‘losing out’,” the EPI response says.

It warns that significant grade inflation this year could reduce the credibility of the qualifications, be unfair to other cohorts and mask real learning losses, leading students to progress on to further studies for which they are unprepared.

4. External tasks could damage credibility

The government has proposed that students sit external tasks set by exam boards, which teachers will use as part of overall evidence to assign students a grade.

“There are complex issues around how such assessments should be structured, so as to be fair and meaningful for students who may not have covered the whole exam curriculum,” the EPI’s response says.
 
“There are also serious risks to the credibility of the test if: test papers are taken at different times and are seen by some students well in advance of their test; test content varies very widely from school to school; tests are taken at home or not under normal exam conditions,” it adds.

And the response says that if tasks are voluntary and many schools decide not to use them, there is a significant risk to external moderation processes.

5. Boards could be swamped by ‘mass appeals’

“A system without appeals would be unfair. But a system that makes it too easy to appeal could be swamped by mass appeals, which could be difficult to deal with fairly, given the method of assessment/grading this year,” the response says.

“There also needs to be an effective system to allocate grades if the exam boards or regulator considers that the grades of some schools are excessive...In our view, while schools may need to provide information to evidence that they followed the right process and took a valid judgement, the appeal should be made through the exam board itself, so there is proper oversight of the process and a buffer between schools and parents and carers,” it adds.

To mitigate the risks, the EPI has made the following recommendations in its response:

• The distribution of students’ exam grades within schools in 2019 should be used as the anchor point when schools apply teacher-assessed grades in 2021. If schools’ grades sat at around the 2019 level, their grading would be subject to “light touch” external checks. Schools would be able to submit grades outside this range but they would then be subject to greater external scrutiny. The EPI says it expects this would lead to a 2021 grade distribution between the 2019 and 2020 levels.

• Students in all schools and colleges should take a short, standardised assessment in the May or June period in most subjects. These would “allow students to focus on the areas of the curriculum they have covered this year”, and “making this assessment a universal requirement would help teachers to assess pupil learning, and improve the ability of exam boards to quality assure grading, where this is necessary”.

• Clearer advice is needed for schools and colleges to inform grade setting this year, and to take Covid learning loss fairly and consistently into account. The EPI says the guidance needs to be as clear as possible so that students in all schools are graded on the same basis. It adds that in some subjects, students whose learning has been “deeply damaged by the pandemic may find it difficult to prove they are working at the standard they were on course to achieve before the severe disruption of the last year”, and that in this minority of cases it is reasonable for schools to take evidence of the standard students were working at before the pandemic into account.

• Grades should be released in August, not July, to allow for enough time to quality assure them. “The need to properly quality assure results after they have been submitted by schools and colleges means it is unlikely that grades can be checked and published in early July, as the government and Ofqual have suggested,” the EPI says.

• The government must move quickly to address the huge problem of pupils’ underlying learning loss.

Natalie Perera, EPI’s chief executive, said: “We need to accept that awarding grades to students under these extraordinary conditions will be incredibly challenging, and it will simply not be possible to maintain exactly the same standards of fairness and accuracy that we might expect in a usual year when public exams can be sat and when learning has not been so unequally lost.

“The government was right to cancel formal examinations this year, and to rely instead on teacher judgements.

“But much clearer advice and guidance, and more robust quality assurance, will be needed in 2021 if confidence in the value of the grading is to be maintained.”

 And Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “We agree with the EPI’s conclusion that the broad plan being put forward by the government is the ‘least bad’ option for grading students in lieu of exams, although all of this could and should have been sorted much earlier as a ready-to-go contingency system.

“However, we are where we are....Within this broad plan there are a number of detailed questions which need to be resolved and we’ll be submitting our response on Friday, having consulted with members.

“There is a difficult balance to be struck between giving the maximum amount of flexibility in how students are assessed to reflect differential learning loss, while also providing system-wide consistency.

“Our view is that the first of those considerations is the most important, particularly in light of the further disruption caused by the extended lockdown, and our response will be shaped on that basis.”

The EPI’s response also suggests that the government considers whether there could be a wider student entitlement to repeat the school year, for students who have lost a significant amount of learning and are dissatisfied with their results. 

Mr Barton added: “We are interested in the EPI’s idea of the right to repeat a year for students who have experienced extreme learning loss.

“In principle, this is worth consideration, but in practical terms it would need to be confined to small numbers or otherwise it would create a logjam in the system which would leave schools with more pupils than they could accommodate.”