Some of Britain’s top-performing sixth-form colleges have seen their pupils savagely downgraded by the A-levels algorithm which one London teacher described as “a bloodbath”.
The Sixth Form Colleges Association published research showing that on average results were down by 20 per cent in sixth forms, equivalent to 12,000 grades being slashed. It said a number of schools had been handed the worst results in their history out of the blue.
At Esher Sixth Form College, in the constituency of Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, some staff spoke of seeing grades chopped from Bs to Ds and some pupils given ungraded in exams they were expected to sail through.
“It is as though Ofqual tossed a bunch of grades in the air and let them settle at random,” said one experienced teacher at the school. “It has been a bloodbath.”
Bill Watkins, chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association, called on the Government to recalibrate the A-level algorithm, which has a “fault”.
“In our study it is clear that in every single A-level subject the results this year were lower than the previous three-year average,” he said. He added: “There is a fault in the algorithm.”
Mr Watkins said the algorithm could be tweaked to give fairer results but if that failed he would not rule out simply adopting teacher-predicted grades.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the study looked at 65,000 A-level entries in-sixth form colleges across 41 A-level subjects.
He said: “There are two separate but connected issues at play. First is the chasm between the teacher grades and the algorithm grades.
“Second is the failure of the algorithm to ensure that results this year are broadly in line with previous years, which is something the Government said it wanted to achieve.”
