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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
National
Amelia Hill and Caroline Davies

A-level results day 2020 live: 39.1% of pupils' grades in England downgraded - as it happened

That’s all from me, Caroline Davies. Thank you for your time.

Updated

Summary

Here’s a summary of the key stories on A-level results.

Updated

Ofqual insisted that reports that successful appeals against A-level results could lead to other students being downgraded were not accurate.

The qualifications regulator tweeted: “We have seen concerns that appeals to A-level results could lead to grades going down. We can reassure students that, as there is grade protection this year, no grades will go down as a result of an appeal.”

Updated

The Liberal Democrats are also demanding pupils have the chance to appeal their grades directly at no cost [see 14:36 post on Labour making the same call].

A post on the Liberal Democrats website reads:

“Despite ministers being warned to take extra steps to ensure pupils were not unfairly penalised, the Conservative government’s chaotic strategy has dismissed the concerns of teachers - those who know their pupils best - and left many students understandably anxious and disappointed.

“Liberal Democrats demand that pupils have the chance to appeal their grades directly at no cost. This would involve them presenting evidence that best reflects their performance and progress. Ministers must also provide clear guidance on how re-sits will work – again, at no cost – and encourage universities to be flexible where necessary.

“It is completely unacceptable for any student to be downgraded based on their family income, or any other factor. Liberal Democrats will do all we can to support pupils in the fight to ensure their futures are not robbed by this Conservative government’s incompetence.”

Updated

A YouGov poll shows that almost three-quarters (74%) of people surveyed had either a “great deal” or a “fair amount” of sympathy for those students who have had their A-level grading disrupted.

Updated

Johnson said that where pupils feel they could have done better in their results, they will be able to resit exams.

He said:

Where pupils are disappointed, where they feel that they could have done better, where they feel that there’s an injustice been done to them, there is the possibility of appeal and they can resit, they can take a resit this autumn as well. But looking at the big picture, I think overall we’ve got a very robust set of grades, plus you’ve got the situation in which more pupils than ever before are getting their first choice course at university and more kids from disadvantaged backgrounds going to university.

Updated

Johnson said he has confidence in the education secretary, Gavin Williamson.

He said:

I think obviously it was going to be very difficult in the absence of formal proper exams this year of the kind that we normally have. Because of the virus, we’ve had to put in the system we have. I do think it’s robust and, as I say, a couple of things I think are very important – first of all, more students than ever before are able to go to their university of choice, to do the course of their choice. And on your point about kids, pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds, more than ever before are now able to go to university, are going to university this year as a result of the grades they’ve got today.

Asked if he has confidence in Williamson, he said:

Of course I do, but I think this is a robust system and it’s one that is dependable for employers. It’s very important that for years to come people should be able to look at these grades and think these are robust, these are dependable.

Updated

Boris Johnson has said the exam results published today are “robust” and “dependable”.

The prime minister said:

Well, let me first of all say that I want to congratulate all the students who have worked so hard to get the grades that they have and have done so well.

And let’s be in no doubt about it, the exam results that we’ve got today are robust, they’re good, they’re dependable for employers, but already I think that there’s a record number of candidates, of students, who are able to get their first-choice course at the university of their choice.

Plus, there’s a record number of students, of pupils, from disadvantaged backgrounds who now, as a result of these grades, will be able to go to university.

Updated

Laura Johnston, 18, who attended the Hazeley Academy in Milton Keynes, said she was “really shocked” to receive an E in chemistry down from an A predicted by her teachers at the end of Year 12. She also received an A in maths and B in economics, but the E in chemistry meant she was rejected by the University of Leeds where she had applied to study economics and maths.

“I didn’t really know how to process it. I spoke to my head of Sixth Form and she said to ring up and beg for my place which I tried to do but it didn’t really work. I didn’t ever consider getting an E,” said Johnston, who scored all As and Bs in her GCSEs two years ago and was predicted an A in A-Level chemistry.
Johnston, who is now considering other offers from Liverpool, Sussex and Leicester universities, said she suffered with anxiety and felt “really low” for a long time after being told in March that she would leave school with only her mock results - a B in maths, C in economics and D in chemistry - which she said did not reflect her ability.
She added: “It’s been really, really difficult and it didn’t help my mental health at all ...So many kids are going to put so much of their worth into these grades and it will affect them a lot. It will cause a lack of trust in government and how it’s run. This whole generation will grow up thinking ‘They’ve failed me back then’.”
Her father, Paul Johnston, said he was really worried about children who may simply accept their algorithm-generated grades because they, or their parents, do not have the wherewithal to challenge and appeal the process.
“There are going to be kids out there hit the hardest from the lower socio economic backgrounds thinking that their opportunities are limited to the lower-ranking universities. That breaks my heart in some ways,” he added.

Rose Lelliott, 18, in West Sussex didn’t do as well as she expected. “I luckily got into my first choice university but they lowered my grades so I’m appealing,” she said.

Lelliott, who studied politics, English literature and history at a state school, said her grades “didn’t make any sense at all”. “I was predicted AA*A but got ABB. Even though I’ve been getting A*s all year for English I got a B.”

She is pleased her deferred place at the University of Exeter to study English and modern languages has been confirmed, but in the build up to results day she struggled with her mental health. “I had never been more anxious in my life,” said Lelliott. “I would wake up and my hands would be shaking and I felt sick. I wish I had been able to sit my exams in some way to prove what I’m capable of.

“I’m glad I’ve got a place at the university I want to go to but I’m still disappointed with my grades. I feel like the government have shown that they don’t trust teachers enough though.”

Rose Lelliott, 18, in West Sussex.
Rose Lelliott, 18, in West Sussex. Photograph: Rose Lelliott

Updated

Kelsey Trevett is one of the fortunate ones whose grades matched the predictions. “I’m lucky that it’s gone to plan,” said Trevett, 18, from Watford who got A*A*A which was similar to what he was predicted. “Because I’m blind, I was a bit worried that this may affect my achievement under this year’s system.”

Trevett, who attends the Royal National College for the Blind, a specialist residential college in Herefordshire, is looking forward to studying PPE at the University of Oxford. “I’m a little bit shocked,” he said. “I was gearing up to not get the grades I needed, but I’m relieved.

“I was very stressed when I saw the news yesterday. I didn’t sit mocks in all of my subjects due to lockdown, and I was worried about retaking exams in October. I haven’t revised and I might not have got my assessment papers in Braille in time.”

What worries Trevett most is that disabled students in mainstream schools could be “negatively affected”. “It’s quite a small cohort in my college – my history and English classes for example only had three or four students – so I’m grateful to be in the situation I’m in. That doesn’t mean that the problem doesn’t exist for others though and I don’t feel like the system that has been put in place to determine grades is fair.”

Kelsey Trevett, 18, in Watford who attends the Royal National College for the Blind.
Kelsey Trevett, 18, in Watford who attends the Royal National College for the Blind. Photograph: Kelsey Trevett

Updated

The new Scottish Conservative leader, Douglas Ross, said he was not afraid to criticise his own party after suggestions that the UK government’s controversial handling of A-level results put him in an awkward position.

Ross, who became party leader last week, heavily criticised the Scottish government after it was forced to perform a U-turn over moderated grades which had left more than 124,000 results downgraded.

After the UK government’s method of moderating English A-level grades prompted a similar outcry on Thursday, Ross tweeted: “Some say the exam results in England cause me difficulties. My job as leader of ScotTories is to get the best for young people & everyone in Scotland. It’s not my job to support the UK government on everything. I’ll challenge them when I believe they’re wrong.”

Updated

The exams regulator Ofqual has said any statistical model, however good, was bound to produce anomalies, and wherever those occurred, schools and pupils should appeal.

Ian Bauckham, who is on the board of Ofqual and chief executive officer of the Kent-based Tenax Schools multi-academy trust, told BBC Radio 4’s World at One the statistical model had actually produced some good news stories.

“Results are up across the board. They are up in every main A-level subject. And results are also up ... for those coming from the least advantaged backgrounds.”

Confronted with the case of a student who was downgraded to an E, simply on the grounds the school had one E the previous year, he said: “It’s not excusable and it’s not a good outcome, but the vast majority of outcomes are good. What [that student] has to do is use one of the appeal routes that now exist for students and for schools to make a claim to their exam board that the outcome they got is unfair.

“Any statistical model, however well intentioned it is and however good the overall outcomes are, is going to produce anomalies,” he said. “What we’ve got to do is to drill down and think about individual students and make sure that they have got routes to correct things that are wrong. That is now in place. They should not suffer. They should get the grade corrected if there are grounds for doing so.”

Updated

The student movement in Northern Ireland has said the 37% of A-level marks downgraded from results predicted by teachers will discriminate against local pupils compared with their counterparts in the rest of the UK.

The Northern Ireland president of the National Union of Students/Union of Students in Ireland, Ellen Fearon, said:

Across Northern Ireland, A-level results have shown huge anomalies, with over a third of students’ grades lowered from their teachers predictions. It’s also important that we look beyond these worrying statistics, and think about the direct impact this will have on the futures of individual students. The reality is that students in Northern Ireland have not been offered the same safety net as students in the rest of the UK. They will be competing for university places with others who have been guaranteed results no lower than their AS grades, or had their moderated grades scrapped. It’s not fair that someone receiving their A-level results today is at a disadvantage to their peers simply because they live in Northern Ireland.”

Updated

Responding to A-level results, the Equality and Human Rights Commission chief executive, Rebecca Hilsenrath, said:

The pandemic has hit the younger generation hard. Education has been particularly disrupted, with potentially life-changing consequences for young people, particularly ethnic minority and disabled children. Many of these children come from disadvantaged backgrounds. If we are going to build back better and not make things worse, it needs to start with our children’s future. We have been clear with Ofqual that they must consider the equality impacts of all their actions and mitigate against any potential negative effect on these groups.

Ofqual should be clear about the impact of the algorithm used in the standardisation model and the steps taken to remove bias and take into account equality. To better understand any disparities for different protected groups, Ofqual must publish a full breakdown of the differences between teacher-assessed grades and the final grade. Students who have been downgraded must be able to appeal directly if they believe their grades are unfair. We will continue to discuss this with Ofqual and consider all our powers so that ethnic minority and disabled children, for example, are treated fairly in this process.

Updated

Here is a PA Media analysis on subjects on the up, and those on the down, along with other A-level trends.

Farewell general studies. There were zero entries for A-level general studies this year. Ten years ago there were 46,770. The subject had been in decline before it became formally unavailable as an A-level in 2017, though last year there were still 41 entries. Two other subjects have also bowed out: communication studies and critical thinking. Both had around 2,000 entries 10 years ago.

Spanish on the up. Last year, Spanish overtook French to become the most popular language at A-level. This year the gap has widened, with Spanish entries up 0.9% while French dropped by 1.1%. German suffered an even bigger decline, falling 6.2% and dipping below 3,000 entries for the first time.

Drama and music on the way down. Entries for music have fallen 43% since 2010, while drama is down 42%. Both have spent most of the past decade in decline. Drama dropped by 6% between 2019 and 2020, while music fell 3%.

Girls outnumber boys in science. For the second year in a row, there were more female entries than male entries in the sciences. When combining the figures for biology, chemistry and physics, girls accounted for 80,854 entries (50.9%) and boys 78,122 (49.1%). Though physics remains dominated by boys (77% of entries), girls make up the majority of entries for both biology (64%) and chemistry (54%).

Computing has biggest gender imbalance. While most of the entries for physics were from boys, it was not the subject that recorded the biggest gender imbalance towards males. That was computing, where boys made up 86% of entries and girls 14%. The biggest imbalance towards females was in performing/expressive arts, where girls made up 90% of entries and boys just 10%.

Psychology outranks biology. The most popular subject taken this year was maths (94,168 entries), as has been the case for the last few years. But there was a change in second place, with psychology (65,255 entries) overtaking biology (65,057 entries). Psychology has gone up by around 10,000 entries since 2014, and this - plus a year-on-year fall in biology entries this year of around 4,000 - allowed it to move into second spot.

Updated

All fees for A-level appeals should be waived in response to thousands of pupils having their results downgraded, according to Labour.

England’s exams watchdog Ofqual has indicated that nearly two in five (39.1%) pupils in the country saw their A-level grades downgraded from their teachers’ estimates.

The Welsh government has already announced that there will be no fees for appeals there, but the Department for Education (DfE) said appeal fees are a matter for individual exam boards in England, adding that there is no charge if an appeal is upheld.

The Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, said his party would allow individuals rather than schools to mount grade appeals and would waive any fee.

He said:

Of course there are always those who are pleased and those who are not, but that reflects an individual’s application in an exam on the day. Of course that can be upsetting if you haven’t got the grades you wanted after having sat an exam. Here, what we have got is young people being told the system has told you that you are not worthy of that grade. That’s the injustice that is felt very deeply.

He also urged the government to consider the sort of grading U-turn made by the Scottish government this week.

The government needs to reset, rethink and it should not rule anything else out, including the sort of U-turn that was forced on the Scottish government last week, where they had to go back to the assessment. Something has to be done to put right this injustice.

Updated

Linda Ovnik has been in contact to share the disappointment she and her son Maks feel at his downgraded grades, which means he has missed out on his university place.

Maks, who attended Christ the King College on the Isle of Wight, was predicted AAB, and his mocks were AAB also. But he received DAE, downgraded by three grades on two subjects.

She said: “Maks has now been rejected for his university place at Southampton and his choices with DAE grades are somewhat limited for university”

The school is hoping to appeal, she said. Maks has also asked to take the exams in October, but that would be without revision help or support, she said.

“Maks is devastated - he is a young carer and helps me look after my 102 year old mother who has severe dementia - he has worked so hard for his exams and now finds he has been downgraded by three grades on two subjects - it seems very very unfair. I have yet to hear of anyone with such an extreme case - its all very sad,” she said.

More from my colleague Josh Halliday, who has been at Wales high school in Rotherham, where 84% of pupils have had at least one grade moderated down.

Prof Sir Anton Muscatelli, chair of the Russell Group and vice-chancellor of the University of Glasgow, has urged those who have missed their grades not to panic and to contact their first-choice universities to discuss their options, Alfie Packham reports.

He said:

It is a unique and unprecedented results season and our universities are being as flexible as possible with admissions. They are taking a range of factors into account to ensure no students, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, are unfairly affected and can benefit from the world-class higher education offered by Russell Group universities.

Students receiving their results this summer have dealt admirably with an unprecedented set of circumstances and should be very proud of what they have achieved. Our universities are ready to welcome them and are working hard to provide the safest and best possible experience for every student.

Updated

A headteacher has angrily accused the education secretary, Gavin Williamson, of ignoring the professional judgment of teachers over their students’ A-level results.

Christine Cunniffe, the principal of LVS Ascot, confronted Williamson during an uncomfortable appearance on ITV’s This Morning.

Cunniffe said she had seen some of her top students downgraded by two grades as a result of the system put in place by the government for moderating exam results in England.

She urged him to follow the example of Scotland and abandon the system, saying students had “been through enough”.

However, Williamson said that without “checks and balances” to ensure consistency across the country, some schools would simply have assessed all their pupils as achieving the top grades.

Cunniffe said there was no longer a “level playing field” across the UK and demanded to know how Williamson could justify the system for awarding results after the Covid-19 pandemic meant actual exams had to be cancelled.

She was “quite incensed” that some students would not now be able to go to the university of their choice.

She said:

I have seen some of our students go down two grades where they are at the top of the school. So there are inconsistencies. Is this really the right time for checks and balances when we don’t know what they are? They have been through enough, let them move on.

We as professionals have given those grades in good faith, been very robust, and we have followed the consultation to a tee.

Williamson said the government had put in a “robust” appeals system for those students who were unhappy with their results but that it was essential to ensure there was consistency across the country.

He said:

As a father myself, as someone who always does the absolute best for all the children right across the country, it is about trying to put as much fairness into the system as possible. If you effectively rip up a whole book and say you are not having standards, not having the same sort of consistency, you will have had some schools who would have literally put in every child as either an A or an A* or a B.

Updated

The University of Hertfordshire has said it will hold places for students appealing against their results.

Dr Mairi Watson, pro vice-chancellor education and student experience at the University of Hertfordshire, said:

We understand that the past six months have been a turbulent time for all students, and particularly for those who should have taken exams this summer. In some cases the current predicted grades system has not allowed students the opportunity to shine.

As one of the most socially inclusive universities in the UK, the vast majority of our students are from non-selective state schools and over half are the first member of their family to study at university. It is extremely important to us that this year’s cohort of sixth form and college leavers have an equal opportunity to study at university, as is always the case at the University of Hertfordshire.

As a campus-based university, we are committed to giving students studying with us this year the best possible teaching and student experience in a safe and supportive environment.”

The University of Hertfordshire can confirm that we will hold places for students who appeal their A level grades after not meeting their offer of a place at the University this year. We will take a flexible approach, so we may still be able to offer students a place, even if their results were lower than expected.

Updated

Rhi Storer
The number of students sitting one of the three English courses available rose in England in 2020 for the first time since the exam was reformed back in 2017.
There were a total of 59,786 sittings among this year’s A-level cohort, a 2.5% increase, good considering that the overall number of sittings was down 2.5% this year.

The greatest increase in participation was on the English literature course which enjoyed a 7.1% increase in entries this year while English language entries rose by 2.1% with the combined English literature and language course the only one to drop (down 4.2%).

English literature students fared best with 82.2% of exams resulting in a C grade or above compared to 77.3% taking the combined English literature and language course and 76.9%% of those sitting English language.

The number of students sitting one of the three English A-levels available rose in England in 2020
Standfirst ...
English Literature
English Language
English Language & Literature
0
20,000
40,000
60,000
42246 40456 37179 37964 20641 17589 13689 14666 10250 8878 7479 7156
2017
2018
2019
2020
Guardian graphic | Source: Joint Council for Qualifications. Base: English A-level students sitting English Language, English Literature or English Language and Literature A-levels


Participation in foreign languages, was a mixed bag. Entry for German A levels in England has declined from 2,864 entries in 2019 to 2,663 this year, a decrease of 7%, quite a bit higher than the 2.5% decline in the overall number of exams sat.
Entry for French A levels in England was down by less than 1% with 7,557 entries this year, and 7607 in 2019.

Meanwhile, Spanish, which overtook French in popularity for the first time in 2019, enjoyed 8,033 entries this year, compared to 7,932 in 2019 — an increase of 1.3%.

Updated

Ministers in England are facing fresh calls to follow Scotland’s lead and scrap moderated exam grades in the wake of today’s A-level results.
On Tuesday, Scotland’s Education Secretary announced that lowered marks would be reverted back to teachers’ estimates following an outcry.
Unions are now calling for ministers in England to use teachers’ predicted grades after Ofqual revealed 39.1% of A-level grades were downgraded after moderation.

Jo Grady, general secretary of the University and College Union (UCU), said:

The Government needs to accept it has got this badly wrong, stop trying to pull a rabbit out of the hat and keep things simple by using teacher predictions - as happened in Scotland.”

Larissa Kennedy, president of the National Union of Students (NUS), said:

“England must follow Scotland’s lead and scrap moderated grades, moving to give all students their teacher assessed grades. We must look at what this will mean for individual students without such action, many of whom will miss out on opportunities to attend the university of their choice because of this process. For 3% of students to have had their results downgraded by two grades means that there will be thousands of students receiving results that are no reflection of their true ability.”

There may be widespread disappointment across the country today, but Brampton Manor Academy, a state school in east London with a highly selective sixth form, is once again celebrating with students securing 47 confirmed places at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, up from 39 last year.

The school’s success has featured in the Guardian before, and once again the vast majority of students on their way to Oxbridge this year are from ethnic minority backgrounds, and will either be the first in their family to attend university or are in receipt of free school meals.

Reacting to the results, Lindsey Parslow, chief executive of the charity Business2Schools, said:

As a charity with such a vested interest in state education it’s a sad day for so many students today; because even though there is an appeal process and mock grades can be included, it is disappointing to see such a low value placed on them by the grades awarded to them by the government.

A headteacher has warned that students in Wales risk being “shortchanged” by an A-level system that is “not fit for purpose”.

Neil Foden said there was growing concern among fellow headteachers at the number of estimated A-level grades downgraded by the moderation system overseen by the regulator Qualification Wales and the exam board WJEC.

Foden, who is head teacher of Ysgol Friars in Bangor, north Wales, said he had spoken to several heads who were unhappy with the A-level grades their students were awarded.

He said:

There is real concern in schools about the number of learners whose results have been downgraded from the teacher estimates.

This is already the generation whose wellbeing and, in some cases, mental health has been affected by lockdown and concerns about Covid-19, and a number feel that in some way their results would not be as valid because they hadn’t sat a formal exam.

Now they are the generation who could be shortchanged by a statistical model that is clearly not fit for purpose.The mathematical model used by Qualifications Wales places too much reliance on national data and appears to over-emphasise performance in AS-level examinations in 2019.

The Welsh education minister, Kirsty Williams, announced on Wednesday that final grades would not be lower than pupils’ earlier AS results.

The Joint Council for Qualifications said the provisional A-level and AS results in Wales were broadly similar.

Around 98.6% of students achieved A* to E and there was a small increase at A*, with 10.8% of candidates collecting these grades.

A record 29.9% of students recorded an A or A* grades, which was an increase of 2.9% from last year. The figure, though, is less than the 40.4% estimated after the initial teacher assessments.

The regulator said the grades submitted by schools and colleges were “optimistic and, without standardisation, would have produced atypically high outcomes”.

“This would have been contrary to the aim of achieving broadly similar national outcomes to reduce the risk of unfairness to learners over time and maintain public confidence,” a spokesman said.

Foden, who is also a member of the national executive of the National Education Union, said schools across Wales were reporting candidates being awarded results two or three grades below their estimated grade, PA Media reports.

He also highlighted several examples of students of equal ability in a subject who were awarded the same grade by their teachers having at least a two-grade difference between them after standardisation by WJEC.

He said:

Scotland, in particular, took early steps to avoid learners being disadvantaged.

The appeal process in Wales could take eight weeks. In the meantime, our university candidates are expected to go cap in hand to universities to ask them to be ‘flexible’ while appeals are resolved.

Updated

Hi. Caroline Davies here, picking up the live blog from my colleague Amelia Hill. You can get in touch on caroline.davies@theguardian.com

And that’s me for the day. Handing you over to the inestimable Caroline Davies for the rest of the day’s A-level highlights.

Like many A-level students across England, Jana Abdal-Rahman woke up to results she called ‘disappointing’ on Thursday after the Ofqual exam regulator’s algorithm downgraded many grades.

Due to school closures and exam cancellations amid the coronavirus outbreak, Ofqual was forced to develop a statistical model to calculate and moderate assessments.

Abdal-Rahman achieved an A in sociology and Cs in maths and economics and won a place to study international relations at Royal Holloway, University of London, but said: ‘There was just a lot of confusion’, adding that: ‘No one was really happy with what they were getting because we all know we would have got better in the exams than our predicted [grades].’

Updated

More tweets appearing suggesting that some universities aren’t heeding the call to be flexible if promising students miss their predicted grades:

Many disappointed students will be thinking about whether they can now appeal. The government recently came up with a plan to allow aggrieved candidates to use their mock result, if it can be validated, as a route of appeal. The details are still being worked out by the exams regulator Ofqual.

The idea may give hope to some pupils, but overall it has not been well received by the sector as mocks are hugely inconsistent and are used in different ways by different schools to achieve different ends.

One school leader flagged up that pupils who have been downgraded but have good mock results could now end up with results higher than the centre assessed grades which were deemed too unreliable by the government.

Sammy Wright, vice principal at Southmoor Academy in Sunderland and Social Mobility Commission lead for schools and higher education, said 45% of grades among his students had been downgraded - some by two grades. Looking at their mocks, however 51% have results that are higher than their calculated grades that could enable an appeal.

“The use of mocks as a like-for-like substitute grade risks undermining the legitimacy of the process while offering no solution,” said Wright. “Mock results were rejected by Ofqual for reasons that still stand. They are inconsistent and have a wildly varying relationship to the final grades.

“However once we say we will look at mock grades instead of calculated grades, then the logic is that we need to use this to look at whole cohorts, not individuals.

“If the mock grade is higher than the calculated grade for one student, but the ranking order (which teachers also had to submit) remains intact, all students need to be re-examined or the ranking order needs to be challenged.

“The only solution is to do as we’ve asked for since April, and allow schools as whole centres to appeal on the basis of their internal data, including mocks.”

At Wales high school, a large comprehensive in Rotherham, the sports hall was filled with tearful students trying – and failing – to get through to universities to try explain why they had not met the required grades.

The vast majority - 84% - of the around 130 students collecting A-level results on Thursday morning had seen at least one grade downgraded from those calculated by their teachers. For some, it was the difference between being accepted into university and not.

“I’m disappointed, confused,” said Anna Hogarth, 18, after picking up an A in maths, C in chemistry and D in physics – a downgrade from the ABB assessed by her teachers. For two hours she had been trying, without success, to contact Nottingham University, where she wants to study chemistry and molecular physics.

She said: “The idea that we’d just be given grades, I didn’t think it was real.I want to be able to prove myself. Something so simple for the government that they will never think about again will affect the rest of my life.

“In years to come we’re always going to be the year that didn’t count. The pandemic year - 2020. It was a kneejerk reaction [to cancel exams] but they’ve stuck with it and it’s proven today that it wasn’t the right move.”

Students affected by the mass downgrading of A level grades in England have been urged to join a possible legal action against the Department for Education and the exams regulator.

Nearly 40% of A-level assessments by teachers were downgraded by Ofqual’s algorithm, according to official figures published on Thursday morning. The method for allocating results was used because students could not be assessed during the coronavirus lockdown.

Curtis Parfitt-Ford, an A-level student at a comprehensive school in Ealing, supported by Foxglove, a non-profit that campaigns against misuse of digital technology, has demanded that Ofqual correct defects in its grading algorithm or potentially be taken to court.

In a legal letter sent to both Ofqual and the Department for Education, the algorithm was described as unfair and potentially discriminatory because it graded the school, not the student.

Parfitt-Ford said his peers deserve better than to be graded by a postcode lottery. He said: “I’m very conscious that something which works as a good system for me as someone who goes to a west London comprehensive school, with some of the best teachers I could possibly ask for and a great academic history, is probably not representative of what’s good for the rest of the country.”

Woodhouse College, a selective state sixth form college in the London borough of Barnet, has sent an email to pupils and parents/carers after half of their submitted grades were downgraded.

Expressing frustration that their predictions were downgraded ‘even after we had internally moderated them to fit the pattern of recent years’, headteacher John Rubinstein pointed out that: ‘I reckon there are about 200 of you whose final grade this morning is lower than your mock in a subject.’

Brighton, Hove & Sussex Sixth Form College, usually abbreviated to BHASVIC, is a college in Brighton & Hove, England for 16- to 19-year-old students, has taken the unusual step of posting their Centre Assessed Grades on their website so that students can see what was predicted.

In an email to students and parents, William Baldwin, the headteacher has said: ‘I was hopeful that the Centre Assessed Grades that we provided to exam boards would be largely accepted by them. Unfortunately, this has not been the case.

‘We submitted a set of CAG that were both in line with previous year outcomes and which reflected the strength of this cohort, within a tightly controlled system that was full of integrity.

‘The exam board standardisation process has suppressed a number of final grades against those we submitted on a range of courses (as well as against last year’s outcomes and our three-year average).

‘We are hugely disappointed and frustrated that this has happened to some of our students – it doesn’t seem fair or right – particularly against the political rhetoric of ‘no individual will suffer as a result of the cancellation of exams’.

Although it was well aired in recent days after a Guardian exclusive that almost 40% of students in England would see their grades downgraded from that issued by their teachers, what wasn’t known was just how different those grades would be.

This morning’s release from Ofqual answers that: more than a third of results in England (35.6%) were downgraded by one grade from the mark issued by teachers. A further 3.3% saw a drop of two grades while 0.2% were downgraded by three grades.

Conversely just 2.2% of results were marked up by one grade, with miniscule numbers marked up by two or three grades (0.05% and 0.01% respectively).

Almost 40% of A-level grades in England downgraded from those issued by their teachers
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Guardian graphic | Source: The Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation

The University and College Union (UCU) have said ministers must stop trying to pull a rabbit out of the hat to fix the A-levels fiasco and keep things simple.

The union said ministers should use teacher predictions, as happened in Scotland, to level the playing and put students first. Relying on schools’ past performance will hit pupils from the poorest areas the hardest. In Scotland, 124,000 exams were downgraded and pass rates for pupils in deprived areas went down by 15.2% compared to just 6.9% in affluent areas.

UCU said last-minute efforts from secretary of state Gavin Williamson to try and resolve things – such as the “triple lock” and suggesting different start times to the academic year - were only adding to the chaos and confusion.

UCU general secretary Jo Grady said: “The government needs to accept it has got this badly wrong. If they are now saying - after months of UCU calling for it - that we need to delay the start of term for some students, then it needs to provide a substantial funding package so that no jobs are lost and so universities can properly support students.

‘Universities have been needlessly making cuts and threatening redundancies because of the uncertainty created by the government. Without substantial government support, any delayed start will simply create further chaos for students and unbearable workloads for staff.’

UCU general secretary Jo Grady will be hosting a webinar this evening at 6pm looking at the impact of Covid-19 on the education system. She will be joined by NUS president Larissa Kennedy and Unison assistant general secretary Roger McKenzie to consider issues such as the downgrading of exam results, safety concerns about a return to campus and the impact of job cuts.

Labour leader Keir Starmer waded into the controversy, saying, “something has obviously gone horribly wrong with this year’s exam results,” and a Scotland-style U-turn should not be ruled out.”

“Nearly 40% of young people have had their grades marked down and that’s thousands of young people whose opportunities could have been dashed,” he said.

“Parents, teachers and young people are rightly upset, frustrated and angry about this injustice. The system has fundamentally failed them.

“The government needs to urgently rethink,” he added. “We need to guarantee the right to individual appeals, the fee for appeals waived and nothing to be ruled out, including the u-turn that was forced on the Scottish government last week”.

The proportion of private school students receiving A and A* was more than twice as high as the proportion of students at comprehensive schools, underscoring the extent of inequality in the education system.

Ofqual data shows 48.6% of students at independent schools received an A grade or above, compared to 21.8% of students at comprehensive schools.

Some private and independent schools reported a 50% increase in the number of A and A* grades awarded compared to last year.

The proportion of private school students receiving A and A* compared with comprehensive schools.

Private schools also increased the proportion of students achieving the top grades at a much faster rate than comprehensive schools. The year-on-year increase for independent schools was 4.7%, while comprehensive schools saw a rise of just 2%.

Grammar schools received significantly higher proportions of A and A* than comprehensive schools, but still fell short of private schools. The data shows 37.2% of students at selective schools received the highest grades.

Updated

Over a third of A level grades estimated by teachers in Northern Ireland were then downgraded in today’s final results. Around 37 percent of the results for 28,0000 Northern Irish A Level students were lowered by the CCEA exam body.Paradoxically in these strange pandemic times, the A Level and AS students in the region still performed better overall than in previous years. CCEA said 9 percent of students obtained A* grades in Northern Ireland, which was an increase of one percentage point compared to 2019.Meanwhile 32 percent of Northern Irish A Level pupils received A grades - a year on increase of 2.3 percentage points. Northern Ireland consistently scores the highest in terms of A Level grades across the UK.CCEA chief executive Justin Edwards said collaborative work within the education community “delivered grades to students which we predict they would have achieved had they sat an examination and which carry the same value as previous years. “He added: “Northern Ireland students have seen slight increases across grades, which are comparable with previous year on year performance for this particular age group.”

If your grades aren’t what you hoped for, it’s not the end of the story – you can still apply to university via clearing. There will be some leeway for individual students to appeal their results on academic grounds or to negotiate their university applications. Our clearing guide has the information you’ll need to make an informed choice as to where you’ll go next. Best of luck.

Ucas applications timeline:
13 August 2020Clearing is open to all students. If you did better than expected, you can enter adjustment. If you’ve changed your mind, you can release yourself from your offer. To find out which applies to you, check Ucas Track.

1 September 2020
Adjustment closes.

7 September 2020
The deadline to provide any extra information your university needs to help you meet offer conditions (eg. extracurricular achievements).

8 September 2020
If you’re deferring the year, you can apply for courses starting in 2021.

21 September 2020
The final date to submit applications for courses starting in 2020. After this date, you’ll have to approach universities and colleges directly as clearing is closed.

15 October 2020
The deadline for 2021 applications to Oxford and Cambridge, and most courses in medicine and dentistry.

15 January 2021
All applications to undergraduate courses starting in 2021 will be considered equally before this deadline. Universities don’t have to consider applications received after this date – but they can if there are still spaces available.

Many colleges in England, with large numbers of candidates, have been particularly badly affected by downgrading, with some centres seeing more than half of assessed grades marked down, and some college leaders reporting their lowest grade profile ever.

The Association of College’s chief executive, David Hughes has written to Gavin Williamson and Ofqual raising concerns about “systemic bias” and calling for an urgent review of the standardisation process.

He said: “My congratulations go out to the many college students who will have received the results they deserve and need to successfully realise their ambitions. Thanks to their hard work and the efforts of college staff, most students will be able to progress to the next stage of their education despite all the disruption this year.

“However, we are deeply concerned that the adjustment process may have disadvantaged larger centres such as colleges and those with historically strong value added data. There seem to be inconsistencies across the board.

“While 39.1% of Centre Assessment Grades were adjusted down by one or more grade overall, we are hearing from a number of colleges that over 50% of their grades have been adjusted downwards. Colleges with large cohorts and very stable and predictable results over time are seeing their lowest grade profile ever, particularly at the higher grades, A to C. Because on average more disadvantaged students attend further education colleges this may have resulted in a systemic bias.

“It is for this reason that I have written to the Education Secretary and the Chief Regulator of Ofqual this morning to ask for an urgent technical review into the A Level results standardisation process. If colleges, and subsequently many disadvantaged students have been hit by an unfair or inconsistent process then this needs to be investigated immediately – and adjustments made quickly. This should not be left to individual colleges or students having to use the appeals process.”

The Royal Statistical Society is concerned regarding Ofqual’s lack of transparency.

They say these are not ‘just’ technical statistical issues. “In choosing the statistical adjustment mechanism, the qualification authorities are making various judgements, which would have benefitted from wider discussion,” they said.

“Chief among these are treating the rankings of students as more certain than they probably are (particularly in the middle) and treating exam centre performance as equally fixed for all types of exam centres (schools and colleges).

“Smaller exam centres, or those who serve different types of communities, may be more variable, and their students more affected by statistical adjustment. This may be part of the reason for the Scottish results showing greater adjustments for relatively-deprived students.

“We will be calling for OSR to examine the statistical adjustment procedure, but given the timetable for this year, and the lack of clarity about appeals, we hope that UUK and UCAS will also consider how it might need to respond to students whose predicted grades were markedly different from their estimated grades. While we are not saying qualification authorities were wrong – they have not been transparent, and it has not been clear that other methods would not have better balanced system integrity (teacher-predicted grades being biased upwards) with being as fair as possible to students whose education was disrupted by Covid-19.”

The British Academy is warning that the continuing decline in the number of students in England taking foreign languages poses significant risk to the UK’s linguistic capacity – a key component in trade, soft power and social cohesion.

Today’s Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ) data show a continued decline in the number of students taking qualifications in languages, which has fallen 13% this year.

“The exceptional circumstances surrounding today’s A level results for England, Wales and Northern Ireland hide an important issue for the future linguistic capacity of the UK,” said Professor Neil Kenny FBA, British Academy Lead Fellow for Languages.

“Of most concern is the substantial fall in students taking ‘other languages’ such as Mandarin, Urdu, Arabic and Japanese. Entries this year are 40% down from 2019 – a decline that is nearly three times as steep as the 14% drop between 2018 and 2019.

“The impact we see today in the small number of formal qualifications awarded in these languages will exacerbate the sense that skills in heritage and community languages are not valued, despite the crucial role many of these students may have played over the last few months in translating and interpreting public health messages for those who do not understand English well.”

Anger from this school in North Tyneside where more than 40% of predicted A-level results have been downgraded:

Ellie French, an A-level student from Basildon, has accused exam boards of “playing around with people’s futures” after her downgraded results meant she was rejected from her chosen university course.

Ellie, 18, had been hoping to study history at Nottingham, but her C in history, despite A-grades in English and politics, means she was turned down and will now go through clearing.

She told PA she was “expecting an A at least” in history and added: “In all of my mocks I’ve ever done, I’ve never got lower than a B. I’ve never ever got a C, I’m always As and Bs.

“My school sent me my results and they also put the teacher-assessed and final mock grade on it as well as our final grade and for me, history read: Final mock grade: A; teacher assessment: A; final grade: C.”

Ellie, who studied at the Appleton School in Benfleet and intends to appeal over the grade, said she had no idea why she had been given a C.

“I honestly don’t know,” she said. “It seems like they just randomly pick and choose who can go up and who can go down in the grade, it doesn’t really make sense.

“I’m just really annoyed and confused. If I did the exam I would have got the grades I was meant to get. It just feels so stupid. I feel like they don’t really know what they’re doing.

“They’ve really messed it up. I blame the exam boards and I think they’re just playing around with people’s futures.”

Calculated A-level grades awarded in Northern Ireland have seen pupil performance increase across all grades.

The overall pass rate of pupils achieving an A*-E grade rose by 0.8% to 99.1%. The percentage of pupils achieving the top A* grade increased by 1% to 9.8%, while those achieving A* or A grades rose by 2.3% to 33.2%.

Female students again outperformed their male counterparts at the highest grades, with the gap broadly in line with recent years.

The calculated system also saw performance at AS level improve on 2019. The percentage attaining a top A grade rose by 2.1% to 29.4%. Those attaining an A-E grade rose by 0.9% to 96.4%.

The majority of the results (86%) were issued by the Northern Ireland awarding body, the Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment (CCEA). The remaining 14% of results were from exams set by other UK awarding bodies.

Commenting on the results, CCEA chief executive Justin Edwards said:

Since the cancellation of the exams, it has been a very unsettling and challenging period for the education community, particularly our students. Northern Ireland’s students, and those across the UK, Ireland and further afield, due to Covid-19 were unable to sit their exams, as has been commonplace for so many before, and will be for so many in the future. All of us at CCEA, working closely with the education community, have strived to ensure that students are able to progress this year.



Updated

More students have been accepted on to UK degree courses this year, Ucas figures show.

A total of 415,600 people, from the UK and overseas, have had places confirmed, up 1.6% on the same point last year, according to data published by the university admissions service.

Among UK applicants, 358,860 have been accepted - a 2.9% rise compared with 2019.
Of these, 316,730 have been accepted on to their first choice, up 2.7% on the same point last year.

So far, 7,600 people have already found places through clearing this year. Of these, 3,860 went directly into clearing to secure a spot rather than applying through the main application scheme.

Clearing is an increasingly popular route for students to find a degree course, with leading universities among those offering last-minute places through the system.

Ucas chief executive Clare Marchant said:

In a year unlike any other, students should be proud of their achievements. It’s especially encouraging to see record numbers of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds with a confirmed place at university, and an increase in applicants accepted on to their first choice.

Universities and colleges have plans to welcome students on to their courses as safely as possible, which have been received well, as we’re seeing a similar proportion of placed applicants currently planning to defer as last year.

Updated

The breakdown of A-level grades across the participating countries shows that Wales outperformed their English and Northern Irish counterparts in the highest (A*) grade category, but students in Northern Ireland did better at all other levels.
More than one in 10 A-level results in Wales were an A* grade (10.9%) compared to 9.8% of those in Northern Ireland and 8.9% in England.

Breakdown of A-level grades across the participating countries

Here are some key statistics in today’s results:

- The proportion of candidates receiving top grades is the highest on record. A total of 27.9% of entrants scored either an A or A*, up from 25.5% in 2019.

- Some 9.0% of entrants received an A*. This is another record high, and is up from 7.8% last year.

- The overall pass rate (grades A* to E) was 98.3% - again, another record high. It is up from 97.6% in 2019.

- Some 78.4% received a C or above, up from 75.8% in 2019 and the highest since at least 2000.

- Girls have extended their lead over boys in the top grades. The proportion of girls who got A or higher was 28.4%, 1.1 percentage points higher than boys (27.3%). Last year, girls led boys by just 0.1 percentage points (25.5% girls, 25.4% boys). Boys briefly took the lead in 2017 and 2018, following a long period in which girls had been ahead.

- The gap between the best-performing boys and girls has fallen slightly. The proportion of boys who got A* was 9.3%, 0.5 percentage points higher than girls (8.8%). Last year, the gap was 0.7 points.

- The most popular subject this year was maths. It was taken by 94,168 entrants, up 2.5% on 2019.

- Psychology was the second most popular subject, overtaking biology. It was taken by 65,255 entrants, up 1.0% on 2019. Biology slipped to become the third most popular subject, taken by 65,057 entrants, a fall of 6.0%.

- ICT (information and communications technology) saw the biggest drop in candidates for a single subject with more than 1,000 entrants, falling by 15.3% from 1,572 to 1,332.

- Computing saw the biggest jump in candidates of any subject with more than 1,000 entrants, rising by 11.7% from 11,124 to 12,426.

- There were 780,557 A-levels awarded, down 2.6% on last year’s total (801,002) and the lowest number since 2004.

Wales education minister Kirsty Williams sent a message to all students collecting their results today.

“I want to send my very best wishes to everyone who receives their A-level, AS, Welsh Bacc and vocational qualification grades today,” she said.

“Due to the many changes we’ve had to make this year in exceptional circumstances, you’ve had to make many sacrifices.

“But you have every reason to be proud of all the work you’ve done, which will serve you well, and proud of the determination you have shown to overcome this challenging time.

“As announced yesterday, we have guaranteed that a learner’s final A-level grade cannot be lower than their AS grade.”

In Wales, the provisional A-level and AS results are broadly similar, according to the Joint Council for Qualifications.

Around 98.6% of students achieved A* to E and there was a small increase at A* with 10.8% of candidates collecting these grades.

The total number of A-level entries stood at 30,448 - a reduction of 3.3% on last year, which is in line with a declined in the size of the 18-year-old population.

More boys got A* grades than girls, but girls outperformed boys at all other grade levels.

Updated

Here is the A-level pass rate (students receiving A*-E grades) broken down by nation and region, from PA news agency.

(The figure in brackets is the change in percentage points on 2019.)

England 98.2% (up 0.7)
Wales 98.6% (up 1.0)
Northern Ireland 99.1% (up 0.8)
North-east England 98.7% (up 0.4)
North-west England 98.4% (up 0.4)
Yorkshire & the Humber 98.4% (up 0.6)
West Midlands 97.8% (up 0.7)
East Midlands 98.2% (up 0.7)
Eastern England 98.3% (up 0.7)
South-west England 98.4% (up 0.7)
South-east England 98.4% (up 0.6)
London 98.0% (up 1.1)
All 98.3% (up 0.7)


Here are the rates for students receiving the top grades (A* and A):
England 27.6% (up 2.4)
Wales 29.9% (up 2.9)
Northern Ireland 33.2% (up 2.3)
North-east England 24.9% (up 1.9)
North-west England 25.3% (up 1.7)
Yorkshire & the Humber 25.4% (up 2.2)
West Midlands 24.2% (up 2.2)
East Midlands 24.4% (up 3.4)
Eastern England 28.0% (up 2.3)
South-west England 28.6% (up 2.8)
South-east England 30.7% (up 2.4)
London 29.8% (up 2.9)
All 27.9% (up 2.4)

Rhi Storer writes that maths remains the most popular subject among A-level students in England with 2.6% more students taking the A-level this year despite an overall fall in the numbers sitting A-levels.

The sciences are a different story. Although biology and chemistry remain among the most popular subjects, all the main science subjects saw falls in the proportion of students opting to take the exams. The number of students taking biology is down by 6.5% on last year, higher than the overall fall in the number of A-levels which are down 2.5%. overall Chemistry fell by 5.5% while physics is down by 2.8%.

Humanities fared even worse. Geography is down a whopping 14%, while history also had a downturn of 13.3%. Psychology has marginally increased by 0.8%, but Art and Design was down by the same proportion.

Chart showing maths remains the most popular subject

Updated

Looking at examples like the tweet below, questions are being raised as to whether Ofqual accepted Centre (ie: school) Assessed Grades (CAGs) for small cohort sizes but not large ones. If so, this means that, rankings aside (not that there isn’t a issue), students in small sixth forms are likely to be at an advantage over large colleges:

Updated

David Batty has written that the body representing sixth form colleges has called on the government to take action over the A-Levels fiasco after the vast majority of principals reported lower-than-expected grades.

The Sixth Form Colleges Association fears its members have been disproportionately affected by the system to moderate grades, with almost half of principals reporting that their calculated grades were “much lower” than those submitted to exam boards, Schools Week reports.

Its survey of 81 sixth form college principals, responsible for around 75,000 students receiving results, found that 96% said that overall their calculated grades were “lower than centre-assessed grades”, and more than a third reported that calculated grades bear “little or no resemblance” to performance in previous years.

Bill Watkin, chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association, said: “Our survey suggests that the government’s model for calculating this year’s A level grades is flawed and unreliable. A fundamental objective of the process was to ensure year-on-year comparability in exam results – the very clear evidence from our members is that the standardisation model has utterly failed to achieve this.

“Our members, who between them deliver a quarter of the A-levels sat in England each year, have experienced inexplicable variations.

“The only way the government can rescue this situation, and ensure that thousands of students are not disadvantaged, is to base results entirely on centre assessed grades – the predictions made by teachers. This is the only alternative to what has proved to be a failed experiment by the government to develop a fair process of standardisation”.

Updated

Gavin Whitham has got in touch regarding his daughter, Jasmine. He says:

“My daughter has suffered from a central downgrading of the evidence based estimates made by her school for both UCAS and the A level process. I think that the central downgrading process, which took no account of individuals at all, is a farce.

“My daughter is currently very disappointed, having spent 2 years working incredibly hard with the aim of achieving 4 A*s in her A levels, she has achieved 3 A*s and an A, a very good result but a disappointment to her.

“I have written to my MP, Andrea Leadsom and hope that the government is able to make another U-turn to address the inequalities of the current process. I am writing to [the Guardian] to make you aware that the central process has not worked and has left some very able students disappointed after 2 years of very hard work.”

Personal stories starting to roll in. This tweet, noticed by our own David Batty, is getting a lot of attention online:

Updated

A new grades evaluation service has been launched for A-Level students who fear their grades have been unfairly lowered.

Predicted grades – and by implication the teacher rankings used by Ofqual – have been shown to be an inaccurate forecast of the final grades a student will achieve through examinations, say the social mobility charity, upReach, the new grades evaluation platform.

Analysis of three years of university applicant data showed that only 16% of applicants had their grades predicted accurately, and 75% of applicants were over-predicted. However, “high-attaining, disadvantaged students are significantly more likely to receive pessimistic grade predictions.”

To address this, upReach have built a new CovidCohort Grades Evaluation platform, that helps students, schools, universities and employers better understand the likelihood that their A-Level grades have been unfairly capped by the system in place for 2020 by providing “Grades Evaluations.”

Sophie Graham, Careers Adviser from the National Careers Service, offers some tips for anyone receiving their A level results this summer

Make a plan for the day: This year will be different to most, but once you know your school’s policy on collecting your results think about what you want to do, who do you want to be with when you open results? Avoid putting any unnecessary pressure on yourself by deciding on a game plan and sticking to it.

Maximise online communities: Covid-19 and lockdown has moved much of the world online, giving us more direct access to key experts and speakers than ever before. If you want to explore your options further, take advantage of any virtual advice, including career fairs such as the Virtual Careers Fair hosted by the National Careers Service on 24th August and 25th August, to inform and inspire you on any choices you may make.

Seek advice from the experts: Family and friends can often be emotionally invested in your future, so it’s a good idea to seek out neutral advice on the options available to you. The Exam Results Helpline (0800 100 900) from the National Careers Service provides free, impartial and personalised careers information, advice and guidance from expert careers advisers. The helpline is free and will be open 8am-10pm until Friday 28th August.

Make the most of spending more time at home: If you’re spending more time at home, it’s the perfect opportunity to research your dream career and even work on your CV. It is important to remember that there is often more than one route into most careers. Take some time to look at the option that works best for you. Visit the National Careers Service website, it offers advice on your options at 16 and 18, as well advice around writing your CV and prepping for interviews https://nationalcareers.service.gov.uk/get-a-job.

The most important thing is not to panic: Whether you get the results you expect or not, you have options. The best thing you can do is to stay calm and focus your energy on figuring out your next steps, and making the most of the support that’s there for you.

Sol Schlagman, co-founder of student employment startup Stint - which collects regular feedback from the 20,000 students on the platform - said: “From primary school children to students, young people have been badly let down throughout this pandemic. Today, it’s school leavers who are facing yet more disappointment and setbacks, as many miss out on the results they deserve.

“We work with thousands of young people and the feedback we’re getting is that they feel totally left behind. They’ve had their part time work and internships cancelled this summer, have had graduate jobs taken away and are asking why the government here hasn’t delivered anything like the levels of financial support students have seen in other countries.

“For many school leavers, the choice now will be between a bleak jobs market already under pressure or clearing at a time when learning has already been severely disrupted. The future is really uncertain for young people, and the government needs to do more or else it will be guilty of abandoning this entire generation.”

Numbers crunched by our own Data team has found that more than a third of A-level grades have been downgraded in England, with some students receiving results as much as two grades lower than those assessed by their teachers.

Although almost six in 10 students (59.1%) of students were awarded the same grade as that given by their teacher, 35.1% of students received one grade lower than assessed by their teacher, while 2.2% of students were assigned one grade higher. However 3.6% of grades awarded were different by two grades of more.

Despite this the highest ever proportion of A* grades were assigned this year. Boys were awarded more of the top grades than girls, with 9.1% of boys and 8.8% of girls receiving an A*. The proportion of A-level students in England receiving A* to C grades also increased by 2.4 percentage points in 2020.

The BBC are reporting head teachers are warning of “volatility” in this year’s A-level results and that some lowered grades seem to be “unfair and unfathomable”.

In England, 36% of entries had a lower grade than teachers predicted and 3% were down two grades, in results for exams cancelled by the pandemic.

But the overall results, across England, Northern Ireland and Wales, show higher A* and A grades this year.

Controversy has surrounded how results have been decided.

There was “deep frustration” in schools about the confusion caused by late changes to the results system, including the use of mock grades, said Geoff Barton, leader of the ASCL head teachers’ union.

“While there has been an overall increase in top grades, we are very concerned that this disguises a great deal of volatility among the results at school and student level,” said Mr Barton.

“We have received heartbreaking feedback from school leaders about grades being pulled down in a way that they feel to be utterly unfair and unfathomable. They are extremely concerned about the detrimental impact on their students.”

The A-level results show:

  • 9% of entries were A* (up from 7.8% in 2019)
  • 27.9% were A* and A (up from 25.5% in 2019).
  • 78.4% of entries were A*-C (up from 75.8% in 2019)
  • Psychology now the second most popular subject, after maths
  • Girls outperform boys, except in A*s
  • In England, the moderation means that 36% of results have been lowered by one grade, 3% by two grades, 2% have increased
  • There will be 25,000 university courses available in clearing, including 4,500 in top Russell Group universities

And the Sixth Form Colleges Association has called the system for calculating A-level grades, “flawed and unreliable” after almost all colleges said grades were lower or much lower than predicted.

A third of college principals reported results lower or “dramatically lower” than their historic exam performance.

Figures just released show this year’s A-level results could have one of the highest-ever proportions of top A* and A grades.

In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, almost one in 10 entries, 9%, were A* - up from 7.8% in 2019.

Overall, more than one in four entries - around 27.9% - were A* and A - up from 25.5% last year.

Around 78.4% of entries were A*-C - up from 75.8% in 2019.

More than a third of A-level entries in England were lowered by one full grade as part of a moderation process due to cancelled exams, Ofqual said.

New figures just released showed 36% of entries were downgraded by one grade compared with teacher predictions.

Around 3% of entries were downgraded by two grades, while 2% saw final grades increase over predictions.

Exam boards claim analysis to be published later will show no bias on grounds of either ethnicity, gender or socio-economics.

The National Union of Students has launched a petition demanding that all A-Level pupils receive their teacher-assessed grade.

The petition states: “A grading system that ignores the work students have put in and the judgements of teachers is wrong. You simply cannot award grades based on the results different students received in previous years, or where a student lives, or what school/college they attend.

“The fallout from the coronavirus pandemic is already disadvantaging young people massively. If anything, this year’s students deserve a leg up rather than marking down.”

The petition also calls on the governments in England, Wales and Northern Ireland to introduce a fair and free appeals process for all students to combat any instances of racist, classist or other discrimination, commit to an overhaul the current exams system, and to increase investment in education to end inequality.

Thousands of pupils’ results downgraded

Thousands of pupils’ results have been downgraded after this year’s summer exams were cancelled because of Covid-19 despite record-high results.

The proportion of A-level entries awarded an A grade or higher has risen to an all-time high, with 27.9% securing the top grades this year, figures for England, Wales and Northern Ireland show.

But exam boards downgraded nearly two in five (39.1%) pupils’ grades in England, according to data from Ofqual - which amounts to around 280,000 entries being adjusted down after moderation.

Teachers were told to submit the grades they thought each student would have received if they had sat the papers, alongside a rank order of students, after exams were cancelled amid the pandemic.

Exam boards moderated these grades to ensure this year’s results were not significantly higher than previously and the value of students’ grades were not undermined.

In England, a total of 35.6% of grades were adjusted down by one grade, 3.3% were brought down by two grades and 0.2% came down by three grades, figures from Ofqual show.

But overall, the proportion of entries in England, Wales and Northern Ireland awarded the top A* grade this year has surged to 9% - the highest proportion since the top grade was first introduced in 2010.

In total, 27.9% of entries were awarded an A or A* grade this summer, which is up by 2.4 percentage points on last year when 25.5% achieved the top grades.

The figures, published by the Joint Council for Qualifications, cover A-level entries from students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland where around 300,000 students are receiving their results.

The Government announced late on Tuesday that students in England will have the “safety net” of being able to use mock exam results as the basis for an appeal if they are higher than the calculated grade.

It came hours after Scotland’s Education Secretary announced that moderated calculated grades would be scrapped following an outcry after more than 124,000 results were downgraded.

Speaking about the A-level results, Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), said: “While there has been an overall increase in top grades, we are very concerned that this disguises a great deal of volatility among the results at school and student level.

“We have received heartbreaking feedback from school leaders about grades being pulled down in a way that they feel to be utterly unfair and unfathomable. They are extremely concerned about the detrimental impact on their students.”

He added that school leaders are “dismayed” that the statistical model used to standardise grades has had a “devastating impact.

Barton said: “We are now calling on the government and the exam regulator Ofqual to review the situation as a matter of urgency, and we would warn them against simply digging in their heels, and insisting all is well.”

Dr Philip Wright, director general of JCQ, said: “Students across the UK receiving their A-level results today should be proud of their grades, which reflect their hard work and commitment over the previous two years.

“Thank you to all the teachers, senior leaders and exams officers whose efforts to produce the Centre Assessment Grades will mean students are able to move on to the next phase of their education or into employment.

“This is a moment for students to celebrate their learning and we wish them all the best as they take their next steps in life.”

Updated

Another piece in the Telegraph considers whether £55,000 of debt is worth it for some remote learning, no freshers’ week and a salary on average £9,000 a year more than non-graduates.

The median salary of working-age graduates was £34,000 while those who hadn’t been to university earned £25,000 on average, according to Department of Education figures for 2019. Postgraduates earned £42,00 on average.

Two in three graduates were in “high skilled” employment compared to one in four non-graduates. The employment rate is also higher for graduates, with 87.5% in work last year compared to 72% for non-graduates. Almost 90% of people with post-graduate degrees were in work last year.

The Times is claiming that school leavers have been given new hope after A-level chaos with a report that vice-chancellors pledge to ‘soften’ grade requirements for degree courses.

More than 100,000 pupils who will have their A levels downgraded by regulators today have been thrown a lifeline by universities that are ready to rip up their admissions rules for this year.

Universities have reassured ministers that they will “soften” the grades they normally require for entry to take account of the extraordinary circumstances that led to exams being cancelled.

Helen Thorne, of UCAS, told Times Radio: “Universities are taking the extreme situation into account,” and the initial picture is “positive”.

Grades in England are being awarded using teacher assessments of how pupils would have performed, moderated by exam boards and the regulator Ofqual using a computer algorithm. Nick Gibb, the schools minister, confirmed that 40 per cent of the grades offered by teachers in England had been downgraded by the algorithm, which could disappoint thousands of pupils who were expecting top marks.

An analysis in the Times says that a “triple lock” on A-level results may sound sturdy but it has only added to the chaos.

The paper says that throwing the grades achieved in mocks into the mix at the 11th hour, as happened last night, has added to the confusion and distress. The government is calling it a “triple lock”, which may sound reassuring, but it contributes to the chaos for schools and university admissions.

The government says any “valid mock” result can stand, but mocks are just that, practice runs taken in very different ways in different schools. There is no official and comparable record of the grades.

Ofqual, the exams regulator, won’t be able to explain what this means in practice until early next week, days after A-level results are released.

Even in a normal year, the exams process is not perfect and can let down some pupils, but it is well understood and broadly respected.

The uncomfortable truth, and the biggest headache for education wonks and politicians, is that there is no fair system this year and however grades are calculated there will be individual injustices.

Updated

Writing in the Telegraph, Williamson has said that inflating the grades of the Covid generation risks devaluing their exam results and harming their future career prospects.

Williamson said he would refuse to follow Scotland in an about-turn allowing students to be awarded grades predicted by their teachers.

He said that, if teachers’ grades were used, “we would have seen them shoot up, which would devalue the results for the class of 2020 and would clearly not be fair on the classes of 2019 and 2021”, adding: “But worse than that, it would mean that students this year would lose out twice over, both in their education and their future prospects.”

Yesterday, Nick Gibb, the schools minister (see video above), said 40% of grades have been lowered from teachers’ recommendations – far more than the 24% downgraded in Scotland.

Share your reaction and experiences

We want to hear from school leavers, parents and teachers about how grades have been affected. If you’re getting your results today, whatever your story, and wherever you’re headed next, we want to hear from you.

You can get in touch by filling in the form here. The form is encrypted and your responses are only seen by the Guardian. You can also contact us via WhatsApp by clicking here or adding the contact +44(0)7867825056.

Updated

Gavin Williamson was asked whether Michael Gove, his predecessor as education secretary, made a mistake in scrapping AS-level exams in England, because Welsh students can rely on those grades for their results.

Speaking to Nick Ferrari on LBC, Mr Williamson said: “No, not at all.

“I would probably rather have liked the AS (level) system, sort of what they’ve got in Wales today, but there’s no point in chatting about what you would maybe like.

“In truth, none of us would have wanted to be in this situation in where we’ve had to have exams cancelled in the first place.

“But what we saw in Republic of Ireland, where they tried to proceed with an exam process they ended up having to drop that.”

Ucas figures show 316,730 of applicants from the UK have been accepted on to their first choice of course – up 2.7% on the same point in 2019.

The number of UK 18-year-olds taking up places has risen to 30.2%. This comes despite a 1.5% drop in the population of this age group in the UK.

So far, 4% of placed UK students are currently planning to defer starting their course, which is the same proportion as at this point last year.

Updated

Williamson told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Universities are looking at being as flexible as possible.”

The education secretary said there would be more pupils this year with higher grades than 2019, adding: “There’s going to be more youngsters in a position where their grades are going to meet the usual exam expectations of those universities.”

On the autumn exams, he explained: “We have been working with the university sector and we’ve had early discussions about making sure there’s a system of clearing that can be run for youngsters to be able to start their university a little bit later than they would have ideally been wanting to do in September/October, but be in a situation of where they’d be able to join the university in January and running a sort of late clearing process.”

Updated

Pupils from the most disadvantaged backgrounds would have been at “high risk” of losing out compared to their more middle-class counterparts if exams had been delayed rather than cancelled, according to the Education Secretary.

Gavin Williamson was asked if he regretted not pushing for exams to be delayed until June.

He replied on Times Radio: “If we’d been in a situation where we tried to delay the exams - and this is what happened in Ireland - what became apparent is that children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds, who maybe hadn’t had the same level of support and help, would have been at a maybe high risk of not either turning up to those exams or not having had the same level of support in the run-up to those exams as children from more middle-class backgrounds.”

Williamson said there have been “very few examples” where delaying exams was a “feasible” route to go down.

Williamson ruled out further changes to the grading system in the face of any exams backlash.

He told Times Radio: “What is clear to me is there will be some youngsters, no matter how much we try to do in terms of this system to maximise the fairness of it, who don’t get the grade they should have potentially have got.

“That’s why we need to have a really robust system, that’s why we’ve got the triple lock.”

Williamson said this would provide “robust grounds of appeal” and allow pupils to take exams later in the year if required.

Asked if he was prepared to change the system again amid threats of legal action from parents, Williamson replied: “We’re not going to be changing this system again.

“We believe that we’ve put in place - in terms of the triple lock, in terms of the actions we’ve taken - a system that is able to put its arm round those youngsters where there has been a grade that has been unfair on them and is able to put that right.”

The Education Secretary was asked why England’s exams regulator Ofqual was not in a position to tell students on results day whether they would have the opportunity to appeal their grades, after it announced it has cancelled its press conference on Thursday.

Speaking to Sky News, Gavin Williamson said: “The reason Ofqual hadn’t got it ready for today is because it’s obviously a decision that was made sort of later on in the process, and that they are working to make sure that information is shared with schools and colleges over the next few days.”

Gavin Williamson replied “yes” when asked if he had agreed a process with Ofqual before announcing the changes on the grading process for exams.

Asked why Ofqual has not got a process in place for assessing mock exam results, the Education Secretary told BBC Breakfast: “Ofqual has got processes in place for appeals, there’s a whole range of routes that schools can take the appeal process through but the mock exam was an important step forward to ensure there’s enhanced fairness for all pupils right across England.”

He added: “Ofqual is going to be issuing clarity as to how this is to be done, making sure that valid mock exams can form the basis of that appeal so that that child can be awarded that grade from that mock exam.”

Gavin Williamson has said that he will not make the same exams grade U-turn as Scotland.

The Education Secretary told Sky News: “When we’ve consulted widely, when Ofqual consulted widely (on) the whole system of awarding, this is the message that we got from everyone - this is the right approach to go forward.

“You’ve got to have a system that has checks and balances, that looks at the whole performance and making sure you maintain standards within the exam system, to ensure those results carry credibility.”

He added that a “late clearing process” is expected to be available for pupils who opt to sit A-level exams in the autumn.

Disturbingly, Gavin Williamson has just admitted on LBC radio that the standardisation process “tends to” disadvantage high-achieving pupils in low-performing schools - and has said he has asked exam boards to contact these schools, to ask them to mount appeals on those childrens’ behalf.

Those children, of course, will already have already been rejected by their universities by the time their appeal is decided. That wasn’t discussed in the interview but one presumes those questions will be asked eventually.

Williamson said: “There is sometimes a danger where you have an exceptionally high-performing child in a low-performing school to be in a situation where they don’t get the grades that they want to.

“What we’ve asked the exam boards is, where they think there may be outliers, is actually to be contacting the schools to talk with them to make sure that appeals are put forward.

“The reason we’ve got the appeals process that we have is to ensure if there is a situation where a child is in that place that they get the grades that they deserve.

“There is no system that is as good as the exams system, and any of the system that is put in its place will have weaknesses compared to the exams system.”

Despite the fears of downgrading, more students have been accepted on to UK degree courses this year, Ucas figures show.

In total, 358,860 people from across the UK have had places confirmed, up 2.9% on the same point last year, according to data published by the university admissions service.

The figures show that 34,310 international students from outside the EU have been accepted (up 2%), while acceptances from students within the EU have fallen by 15.2%, to 22,430.

A total of 415,600 students have a confirmed place on an undergraduate course in the UK. This is a 1.6% increase on results day last year.

The figures come on the day that students across England, Wales and Northern Ireland are receiving their A-level results.

Updated

Good morning and welcome to our A-level results live blog. I’m Amelia Hill and will be taking you through the morning where students across England are set to receive their results amid a storm of controversy.

Some 40% of the teacher assessments submitted to Ofqual, the exam regulator for England, have been downgraded by its algorithm, which relies heavily on the GCSE results of each student and on the three-year averages of A-levels in each course obtained at each school.

School leaders yesterday received their first look at those results with one saying there was “anger, dismay, disbelief” among heads.

We will get the first national figures from 9.30am.

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