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Grades in GCSE 2021

Due to the pandemic, 2021 was another unusual year for GCSE results. With students unable to take exams, for the second year in a row, teachers had to try and calculate student grades based on coursework and mock exams.

In this article from PiAcademy, you’ll be getting a behind the scenes look at how the government decided on those grades. We’ll also look ahead to the future, where students might be sitting their exams in person for the first time in three years.

But how did students actually do in 2021?

  • Top grades (7/As and above) rose to 28.9% from 26.2% in 2020, while grades 4/Cs and above - seen as passes - rose to 77.1% up from 76.3%.
  • This is a smaller rise than 2020, the first-time exams were cancelled and teacher assessed grades were used.
  • Exams regulators have insisted the process has been fair and thorough.

Teachers submitted grades for more than half a million pupils to calculate GCSE results in 2021, using evidence such as mock exams, course work and tests.

In order to make sure this was fair and balanced, OFQUAL (the part of the government that sets standards for exams in the UK) had a set of rules and regulations every single school had to follow.

Quality Assurance in GCSE 2021

The policy for GCSE results in 2021 was to trust teachers to assess their students and to decide on the grade that best reflects their performance: 

  • Students were only assessed on the parts of their courses they had been taught. 
  • Recognising that schools and colleges had been affected in different ways by the pandemic, the course of which was uncertain, schools and colleges were given wide discretion to decide how to assess their students. 

This allowed them to:

  • take into account relevant work already undertaken and coursework or non-exam assessments
  • set new assessments written by teachers or using questions provided by the exam boards
  • vary the approach used for individual students where that was appropriate for their individual circumstances 

Schools and colleges each set out in their centre policy how they would assess their students and determine their grades, within the guidance provided by the exam boards. 

The boards contacted schools and colleges as they were developing their policies to make sure that they understood what they were required to do.

These centre policies were then submitted to the GCSE Exam Boards who checked them all. Where exam boards had concerns about the approach a school or college planned to take, the school or college was required to make changes.

These policies explained the steps that schools and colleges would take to ensure that their grades were properly determined. 

This included: 

  • making sure that teacher assessed grades (TAGs) were checked by at least 2 teachers. 
  • When submitting grades the head of each school and college also had to make a declaration confirming that they had been produced in line with the requirements and the centre’s policy.
  • After the TAGs were sent to the exam boards, the boards required each school and college to send in the work for a sample of subjects and students. 

The exam boards selected the subjects and the specific students for whom this work was to be sent in. Schools and colleges had 48 hours in which to submit their evidence.

It wasn’t exactly a normal year though, which is why later in the article we’ll discuss how things might change for students. 

The process of teacher assessment, with limited controls, a lot of flexibility over what could be included as assessment evidence, and a process in which teachers are likely to give students the benefit of the doubt, meant that an increase in grades was inevitable.  

Even in a perfect rule based system, the issue of the benefit of the doubt, or what a pupil is capable of achieving, would likely lead to an increase in outcomes. 

Imagine two very similar students working at the borderline of a grade 3 and 4. In a normal year, we might expect one of them to get just below their grade – not quite the perfect question for them, not their best answer, distracted by something outside of the exam entirely. But the teacher, using professional judgement, cannot distinguish between them, and they both get the higher grade.

Grade Boundaries

Simply put, there weren’t any grade boundaries in 2021 because there haven’t been any exams.

Grade boundaries are established by boards after A-level and GCSE exams have been sat, based on how students across the nation performed in the papers.

This prevents pupils from being penalised unfairly if they got fewer marks on papers which everybody found particularly difficult, and helps to standardise the results from year to year.

However, 2021 GCSE and results were calculated solely on teacher assessments, who used a range of evidence, including coursework and mock exams, to come up with a grade for each pupil.

Exams board OCR explained:

“We want to enable students to progress with results that are as fair as possible. We’re committed to working collaboratively with schools and colleges every step of the way.

“We will provide detailed support and guidance so the process of determining and submitting student grades is clear and manageable.”

When are grade boundaries usually released?

Previously, students were able to see the grade boundaries the day before they received their results, when exam boards shared their marking systems with schools and colleges.

This practice enabled teachers “to have the information needed to better support students and families on results day,” a spokesperson for the Pearson exam board told Schools Week.

However it meant nervous students tended to predict their own grades, causing them stress before receiving their official marks.

The decision was therefore made in 2017 to only give the boundaries to students on the day of their results.

A spokesperson for the Joint Council for Qualifications, which oversees the seven largest qualification providers in the UK, told i previously: “In 2017 the awarding bodies decided to release grade boundaries alongside examination results.

“This was to ensure that students did not try to work out how they performed in advance of receiving their results. In addition, the increasing practice of sharing presumptions on social media was adding to unnecessary student stress.”

What are the differences this year?

In September 2021, Ofqual and the Department for Education (DfE) set out the support that will be available for students taking their exams next summer, in response to the disruption to education caused by the pandemic: 

  • A choice of topics in some GCSE exams like English literature and history 
  • Advance information about the focus of exams to help students’ revision for other GCSEs and all AS and A levels, 
  • Support materials in some exams, such as formulae sheets in GCSE maths.

Exam boards will publish the advance information for GCSE, AS and A levels no later than 7 February 2022. 

The government will decide whether the advance information should be published before this date should there be significant further disruption from the pandemic.

For GCSE results in 2022, the government will aim for a grading standard that reflects a midway point between 2021 and 2019: 

  • Exam boards will set the grade boundaries so that more students get higher grades in 2022 than before the pandemic. 
  • This will provide a safety net for students who might otherwise just miss out on a higher grade.

They have taken this decision to reflect that we are in a pandemic recovery period, that student's education has been disrupted and that they have made adaptations to the exams. 

In 2023 they aim to return to results that are in line with those in pre-pandemic years.

Though we expect exams to go ahead as planned, if the 2022 exams cannot go ahead due to further Covid disruption, your grades will instead be determined by your teachers, using a Teacher Assessed Grade (TAG) approach. 

This means that your teachers will gather evidence, through assessments, to help them determine Teacher Assessed Grades (TAGs) if exams do not take place.

To build up evidence for these grades, schools have been told that students sitting GCSEs, AS and A levels and the Advanced Extension Award should be assessed “under exam-like conditions wherever possible”, although it also says this could be done in a classroom rather than an exam hall.

What is important for parents and students is the government has made it clear recently that it is “firmly committed to exams going ahead in summer 2022.”

If COVID disruption does happen, then we might see a return to the TAG system set out beforehand in this article. 

But many schools are hopeful that with more and more people vaccinated, a return to normal for exams might be possible. 

Parents should keep their eye on the situation and be aware that this might be the first year in a while that actual exams have taken place, and mock exams and coursework might not be enough. 

GCSE results in 2022 could be a surprise for everybody!

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