The A-Levels and GCSEs fiasco - who was more to blame?

A-Level and GCSE students experienced a very turbulent period ever since exams were cancelled back in March, but particularly over the last few weeks of August, resulting from the effects of a flawed algorithm on pupils’ results, and the withdrawal of these grades a week later. The damage these decisions has caused has not been reversed, however, and many are furious at both Ofqual’s and the government’s incompetence, with the Ofqual chief Sally Collier having announced her resignation and even the permanent secretary of the Department of Education set to be replaced, but there is much debate about who is most at fault. Students’ future prospects and mental health were badly affected, both for those receiving results and those waiting for them during an incredibly uncertain period of time. Although there were bound to be difficulties, the government has had the most agency over both its own decisions and the decisions of Ofqual, and it was the body which primarily decided how grades would be allocated, so it is most at fault.

The first and foremost issue is of course the algorithm generated by Ofqual itself, whose details were only released after the release of standardised A-Level grades was set to wreak havoc upon students’ futures, in particular those from less privileged socio-economic backgrounds. This was purely due to the past performance of pupils’ schools, which seemed to be the main deciding factor for the distribution of grades in the algorithm rather than considering pupils’ own performances, as many received grades lower than their mock results. Almost 40% of grades were downgraded in total, with 3.5% of grades being lowered by more than one grade. This is significant because missing one grade of a conditional university, apprenticeship or job offer most often leads to rejection.

Alina Halstenburg, who received some iGCSE results which were moderated by the algorithm one week prior to GCSE results day shared her experience of being unfairly downgraded in her History iGCSE from a predicted Grade 8 to a 7, despite achieving an 8 in her mock exam. “When I saw the 7 in History I was very shocked and sort of scared to tell my parents, because they obviously weren’t expecting that, as was I. And because we were receiving information at the same time the school was, it was very hard for them to give advice and information as to what to do next,” she commented.

The government subsequently faced an insurmountable amount of public pressure to revert the standardised grades back to centre assessed grades (CAGs), especially after Scotland did so a week after its results day on the 4^th of August, and Wales and Northern Ireland followed suit a week later. Many students took to the streets for socially distanced protests, while others fiercely campaigned on social media. Numerous petitions, such as one on Change.org created by Curtis Parfitt-Ford, an A-Level student who was campaigning for more weight to be placed on teacher assessments and for a free appeals system, gained an immense amount of support in just a few days with over a quarter of a million signatures.

This petition was supported by Foxglove, a non-profit organisation with experience of filing lawsuits against governments and tech companies for misusing digital tools. They had created a robust lawsuit against the government for the unfair distribution of grades and discrimination against those from lower-income backgrounds. Due to all this pressure and this threat of legal action, the government was forced to step down and change its position.

Ofqual, as a regulatory body, was entrusted with the responsibility of creating a fair algorithm, so the algorithm’s failure was perhaps no fault of the government itself. The algorithm was flawed in many ways, especially due to its overreliance on historic performances of schools rather than placing more weight on schools’ professional judgments. It is understandable that Ofqual’s aim was to bring this year’s results in line with previous years as to avoid devaluing students’ qualifications, but when so many students received results which were not in line with their individual attainment, the results had no value in terms of demonstrating the student’s actual ability. It is also disappointing that the help offered by the Royal Statistical Society was rejected due to the statisticians’ refusal to sign a non-disclosure agreement, which could have avoided the flaws in the algorithm, whilst regulating grades in an appropriate and fair way and avoiding the need to revert back to CAGs which inevitably caused grade inflation.

Image source: The Guardian

As for the government, although it trusted Ofqual to deliver an infallible algorithm, it washed its hands
of responsibility even though it was the government’s idea to use an algorithm of this kind. It is highly unlikely that Gavin Williamson, the Secretary of State for Education, stayed uninformed about the algorithm’s details over the five-month period before A-Level results day, so it is surprising that he only took action to combat the discriminatory nature of the algorithm after public pressure started to increase and the issuing of results. Furthermore, both Nick Gibb, the schools minister and Williamson had been warned as early as July about the glaring issues of the algorithm.

This may have been a tactic to divert blame away from the government and onto Ofqual. By only taking action at the last minute after students had suffered from what was portrayed by the government as Ofqual’s blunder, saying the issues were ‘something none of us expected to see’, it gives the impression that Williamson was acting to correct the injustices created by Ofqual’s decisions through no fault of the government itself.

The second issue was the lack of transparency that caused so much confusion for those affected. The details of the algorithm itself were not released until after A-Level results day, preventing anyone but the government and Ofqual from knowing what to expect in terms of results. Furthermore, in the lead up to the U-turn, there was very little explanation as to what exactly was being discussed between Ofqual and the government. If there had been more transparency about a potential U-turn, perhaps universities, employers and sixth form colleges could have made preparations for this outcome, especially as the sudden reversion to CAGs was announced just three days before GCSE results day.

Even when there were some guidelines announced by Gavin Williamson on the ‘triple lock policy’, the specific details of this policy were yet to be published, and even when the details were published on the Ofqual website, they were withdrawn a few hours later. This lack of clarity and reliable information made it difficult for schools to devise an appeals system for the inevitable unjust downgraded results every school experienced, which would need to be put in place as soon as possible especially for university students who missed their offers.

All this uncertainty for both A-Level and GCSE students caused anxiety levels to rise significantly. Ahaana Manglani, a GCSE student at South Hampstead High School also shared her experience of waiting for results, saying, “Since the announcement [of the cancellation of exams] there hadn’t seemed to be a clear plan. I was left confused at the beginning, middle and end of the process. The government had six months to give children their grades! I grew increasingly worried with every new article published criticising the system and everyone I knew felt the same way. After the A-Level fiasco, I didn’t sleep much because of stress. It wasn’t fair that the government messing up led to stress, anxiety, worsened asthma and lack of sleep.”

Ofqual should have been more transparent about the details of its algorithm earlier than the moment results were released. The algorithm was going to be subject to criticism at any rate, so perhaps by sharing its details earlier on particularly to the Royal Statistical Society, it could have avoided having to discard the algorithm completely when it was too late to rework it. Ofqual was equally responsible for creating an appeals system at the right time, as a solution to the unfair grades which had been awarded to students.. There was much speculation at the time that the removal of the appeals process was an indication that Ofqual was gearing up to completely change the grading system, but the lack of communication from Ofqual meant that it was impossible to know whether this was true.

However, the government was the cause of all this confusion and distress within both Ofqual and the public as there was little to no transparency as to what was being debated at the time in terms of reverting back to CAGs in Parliament, and it seems that the new appeals was a temporary compromise during a time of public outcry. The appeals policy was announced without consulting Ofqual, who were then left to decide on the details of this process by the following Monday. Even after its publication on Saturday, but there was still a great amount of controversy and confusion about the validity of mocks and non-exam assessments whilst it seemed the government was not fully aware of the purpose of mocks. This is a likely reason for Ofqual withdrawing the appeals policy shortly after its publication, stating it was ‘being reviewed’, as they would have been aware of this issue and may have wanted to provide clearer guidelines to assessments that could be used, or they may have been rethinking this guidance altogether.

Lastly, many of the problems created by the fiasco have been overlooked and not addressed enough. One of these problems is the neglect of private candidates which include candidates retaking exams and home-schooled pupils, who did not have CAGs or sometimes even mock exam results. Therefore, the U-turn has not helped them, and many have not been awarded any grades despite their hard work over the past year or two. The only feasible option of them receiving any grades according to Ofqual is for them to sit exams in the autumn. However, this may not be an option for many candidates, for example those retaking exams to apply to study medicine at university, as many courses require you to complete A-Levels within three years.

The impact of the decisions that have been made on future cohorts has not been sufficiently addressed by the government or Ofqual either. Those taking A-Levels next year are particularly disadvantaged by the cap on university places being lifted when many more pupils met their offers after the U-turn. This is because many students are having to defer a year, which means there will be fewer places available for those applying to join those who have already gained places for next academic year. GCSE students are struggling to cope with having to revise for many subjects with many having received very little support and having missed out on months of teaching.

It is unfortunate that it seems that Ofqual, whilst deciding on an algorithm to award grades, simply did not consider private candidates and what kind of evidence should be used to decide their grades. Schools were unwilling to provide CAGs to those retaking exams and home-schooled pupils were not able to receive CAGs without a centre that could assess their grades. But it is difficult to believe that after five months of deliberation, they could not devise a system for awarding these candidates grades which they deserved to receive as much as every other candidate. Perhaps they could have used other forms of assessment data, or even just work completed throughout their exam years, looking at these individuals on a case by case basis rather than neglecting them altogether.

Nevertheless, the government is more at fault, as it ultimately provided instructions to Ofqual to create an algorithm, should have considered private candidates and have given clearer and more explicit guidance on how to manage the issue of providing them with grades rather than leaving them in the dark. Furthermore, the government’s inflexibility in its refusal to consider that the algorithm was not the best option for awarding grades even after multiple warnings resulted in them having to make last-minute reversals due to public pressure. If the government had been more open to other options or even reworking the algorithm much earlier on, many issues could have been avoided. There wouldn’t have been so many last-minute changes to grades, with universities having to accept those who had met their offers through their moderated grades on top of those who had through their CAGs, and consequently, there would be less competition for places for Cohort 2021.

There was also a failure to deliver on providing good online education to those in exam years. Some Year 12 students received little academic support, or if they had online school, very few had live lessons which contained the same benefits of experiencing lessons in person. Year 10 students are facing the same difficulties, with many having to teach themselves four months’ worth of content and yet still being expected to take exams.

The government promised they would distribute laptops to disadvantaged students to ensure continuity for their learning and revision, and access to online resources. Unfortunately, in June, one month before the end of the school year, 68,000 out of 230,000 laptops had still not been delivered. In addition, a final decision on how exams will take place next year has not been made, including the dates and whether there will be further changes to the content, despite many, including Collier, calling for the government to announce its plans before the start of the summer holidays so that teachers could start planning for the year ahead.

Overall, circumstances like these with exams being outright cancelled had never been experienced in history, so it is understandable that the process through which grades were eventually awarded was not foolproof and encountered many issues. However, many of these issues were avoidable. Both Ofqual and the government made decisions that resulted in the emergence of various problems which caused many difficulties for students, schools, and higher education institutes. But from the evidence and analysis of events, the government clearly had the most power in controlling the situation and over Ofqual itself, so the decisions, made by the government, or lack thereof, had the most impact on students. Its inflexibility resulted in disarray during and after A-Level results day, its lack of transparency and communication made the situation impossible to follow, and the fundamental issue of the government’s distrust of schools’ professional judgments resulted in the need for such a flawed algorithm.

The decisions and failure to deliver on decisions of the government over the past few months regarding education have shown that young people are far from the forefront of the government’s priorities, especially as it seems that it was only forced to act to revert to CAGs by the will of young people themselves. This situation has been far from ideal, but one definite positive from the situation is that it is clear that young people’s voices have the power to enforce change and fight against injustice.

References:

https://unherd.com/2020/08/how-ofqual-failed-the-algorithm-test/

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/aug/13/england-a-level-downgrades-hit-pupils-from-disadvantaged-areas-hardest

https://inews.co.uk/news/education/a-level-algorithm-what-ofqual-grades-how-work-results-2020-explained-581250

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/aug/13/almost-40-of-english-students-have-a-level-results-downgraded

https://www.globalgovernmentforum.com/uk-government-drops-exam-grading-algorithm-in-the-face-of-public-anger/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-53636296

https://news.sky.com/story/gcse-results-algorithm-scrapped-in-northern-ireland-with-pupils-set-to-get-teachers-predictions-as-grades-12050857#:~:text=Aubrey%20Allegretti&text=GCSE%20students%20in%20Northern%20Ireland,controversial%20moderating%20system%20was%20scrapped.&text=Northern%20Ireland's%20Stormont%20Assembly%20will,debate%20the%20furore%20on%20Tuesday.

https://news.sky.com/story/a-level-and-gcse-results-in-wales-will-be-based-on-teacher-predictions-as-controversial-algorithm-scrapped-12050939#:~:text=Aubrey%20Allegretti&text=A%2Dlevel%20and%20GCSE%20students,the%20controversial%20system%20was%20scrapped.&text=No%20student%20who%20received%20their,the%20announcement%2C%20Ms%20Williams%20added.

https://www.foxglove.org.uk/

https://news.sky.com/story/a-levels-exam-regulator-ignored-expert-help-after-statisticians-wouldnt-sign-non-disclosure-agreements-12049289

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8645041/Ofqual-told-algorithm-doomed-MONTH-ago-ignored-warnings.html