Headteachers on the ground have welcomed Ofqual’s decision this afternoon to allow GCSE and A-level students to receive their teachers’ centre-assessed grades (CAGs) as their final results rather than moderated grades.

The U-turn follows a national outcry after more than a third of last week’s A-level results were downgraded by moderation in a process that benefited private schools while disadvantaged students were penalised.

Headteacher Steve Wilson, from Whitley Bay High School, in North Tyneside, where 82 per cent of A-level students had at least one downgrade, said the decision meant Year 11s would not suffer the same “upset and confusion” this week.

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Mr Wilson said: “The [A-level] grades awarded in no way reflected our students’ hard work and their ability, nor did they even reflect the historical performance of the school. They made no sense. This change will mean our students will get the grades they deserve and not be disadvantaged by the algorithm.”

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Headteacher Alan Gray, of Sandringham School in St Albans, Hertfordshire, said: “The vast majority of young people in the country should be very, very happy, and their families as well. We can now move on and we can celebrate results, because at the moment nobody is celebrating and they should be.

“This will go down incredibly well at my school and with schools across the country. It shows the government is trusting teachers to know the children better, particularly those that have really suffered through the artificial algorithm.”

Following the cancellation of this year’s exams because of the coronavirus, teachers spent “weeks and weeks arguing, debating and discussing” what grades students should get. But they later learned their grades would be ignored in many cases, while the government later said valid mock grades could be used.

In arguing the case for moderation, Ofqual said the “vast majority” of schools had submitted “optimistic” grades, and that an improvement on such a scale in a single year had never happened before, and that to allow it to happen would “significantly undermine” the value of these grades. 

Mark Fenton, chief executive of the Grammar School Heads’ Association, said today’s decision was “an imperfect solution, which at least puts an end to the uncertainty”.

He said: “It will be an enormous relief to thousands of students and their parents that the government has changed course. The last few days have been hugely challenging for schools”

However Jules White, head of Tanbridge House School, in West Sussex, said “confidence is shredded” and that “serious questions remain”.

He said: “The chasm between schools and colleges operating on the ground, who know and understand children and how exams actually work, and the Department for Education, who clearly do not, has been cruelly exposed.”