School and trust leaders were asked to undertake a process, set out by the exam regulator Ofqual, to produce centre assessment grades.
As Ofqual notes in their statement published yesterday, schools and trusts were asked to take account of each school’s historical performance:
"Schools and colleges were asked to make holistic, professional judgements about a student’s likely grade taking into account evidence such as any mock results, other assessments, assignments, performances in subjects such as music, classwork and homework. To help them make realistic judgements, schools and colleges were asked to take into account how this year’s students compared to those of previous years, the prior attainment of this year’s students relative to that of previous students and previous results in the school or college in the subject (noting that Ofqual’s data shows that for most centres any year-on-year variation in results for a given subject is normally quite small).”
To be clear, schools did not apply an internal ‘algorithm.’ Teachers and leaders used their professional judgement to determine to the best of the ability and on the best available evidence, what grade a student would have received had they taken an exam.
Schools undertook this process on the understanding that all centre assessment grades would be moderated by the exam boards, using Ofqual’s statistical model, to ensure fairness across the system.
When the problems with the statistical model became clear, Ofqual and the DfE decided to revert to whichever was the higher of the centre assessment grade or the grade awarded by the standardisation process.
Ofqual decided yesterday that a school cannot raise concerns about its centre assessment grades on the basis that another institution took a different approach.
This year’s process for awarding grades this year has undoubtedly been imperfect. No-one can say with full confidence what grade a student would have received if they had taken an exam. The important thing now is that we support students to get to the right destination in education or employment.
