Paul GroverAs if sixth form students weren’t already panicking enough about getting their A-Level results on Thursday, reports are now suggesting that thousands of students are expected to receive incorrect grades.
The news comes as the Government’s regulator Ofqual has claimed that an exam board “lacked understanding” of marking, and students and teachers are being urged to challenge grades if they feel pupils have been awarded the wrong marks.
It means that this year’s results will likely lead to thousands of successful appeals, but it could cause a massive headache for students along the way, and potential heartbreak for those pupils given an incorrect mark which potentially costs them a place at their chosen university.
GettyWorryingly, evidence has shown that exam boards are “guesstimating” grades rather than actually marking them – because why not, it’s only kids’ futures they’re dealing with here.
The warnings follow cases in previous years in which students missed out on places after having been awarded a lower mark by mistake, as well as an increase in the number of student inquiries about results every year since 2008.
Ofqual, the exam regulator, raised concerns about the system following a report into Oxford, Cambridge and RSA (OCR), one of England’s leading exam boards, that found that it lacked an understanding of how crucial exam results were at the start of the allocation of places by universities.
