Exam results will be lower this year in most schools and colleges, the body responsible for qualifications in Wales has warned. How much lower grades will be compared to last summer depends on how students performed in the first GCSE, AS and A levels sat for three years, as well as changes in results during that time.
Jo Richards, Director of Regulations for Independent regulator Qualifications Wales said comparisons should be made with 2019 results, the last year papers were sat. Record GCSE, A and AS level results were posted in 2020 and 2021 when they were awarded on teacher assessed grades after exams were cancelled during the pandemic - the aim this year is to achieve results around midway between the last sat exams and last summer's results - but they won't be exactly half way, said Ms Richards.
This year’s grading is being arrived at by subject level, not at a school or college level, which means that schools and colleges will see different levels of change in their results relative to 2021 and 2019, Ms Richards said. Content was reduced this year to take account of another year of pandemic disruption with tens of thousands of pupils sent to work remotely again and many without subject teachers for weeks on end.
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After two years of what has been seen as “grade inflation” under teacher assessment, the aim this year is to re-balance the system. But Qualifications Wales said while results will be higher than 2019 and lower than 2021 they won’t sit exactly midway between the two.
Ms Richards said reliance on past papers to assess results when exams were cancelled had "made grading less fair and may have widened gaps between learners from advantaged and disadvantaged backgrounds". A study based on pre-pandemic exam results, published earlier this week shows the poorest pupils in Wales are "significantly" behind their better off peers and there has been almost no improvement in this disadvantage over the last decade.
A recent report published by Qualifications Wales, based on interviews with school and college staff about how they assessed students' GCSE, AS and A level results when exams were cancelled found that more than half who responded had used the adapted past papers or assessment tasks provided by WJEC (or other awarding bodies) to make grading decisions for summer 2021.
Just under a third (32%) used exam papers or assessments from previous years and made their own adaptations to them, whilst a similar proportion (31%) used past papers without adaptations. Around a quarter (27%) used the assessment tasks provided by the awarding bodies after further adapting them for their own learners.
"The report showed that school and college staff felt that reliance on past papers made grading less fair and may have widened gaps between learners from advantaged and disadvantaged backgrounds. The staff also noted that many learners were behind and lacked maturity as they’d missed large chunks of their education," Jo Richards said.
This is what Qualifications Wales says Wales can expect from this summer's exam results
After two years of disruption for learners, this year has been the first-time since 2019 that externally assessed exams have been held in schools and colleges. But what can we expect when the results are announced next month?
The straight answer to that question is that results will be different this year – different from the results of 2020 and 2021 when no formal exams took place – and different to pre-pandemic results when national examinations were sat.
The last two years have been challenging for many professions, and education. Professionals have been on the front line working hard and adapting to provide the best possible education for learners in difficult circumstances. Learners have suffered significant disruption.
Schools and colleges were closed for most learners between March and June 2020. Many then had regional or local lockdowns between September and December of that year, followed by another national lockdown from January until mid-March in 2021.
This disruption led Welsh Government to cancel both the 2020 and 2021 exam series. This meant that schools and colleges awarded grades. Alternative arrangements were put in place to provide flexibility for schools and colleges to determine grades rather than have learners complete standardised assessments in an exam series.
In a recent report published by us at Qualifications Wales, Perceptions and experiences of grading in summer 2021: Research with education professionals in Wales, school and college staff members were interviewed about the process that they used to assess learners in 2021 for GCSE, AS and A Levels.
In that report, we saw that striving to ensure fairness and consistency for learners was at the heart of the school and college’s approach throughout the summer 2021 grading process. More than half of respondents stated that they had used the adapted past papers or assessment tasks provided by WJEC (or other awarding bodies) to make grading decisions for summer 2021.
Just less than a third (32%) of respondents reported using exam papers or assessments from previous years and making their own adaptations to them, whilst a similar proportion (31%) used past papers without adaptations. Around a quarter (27%) had used the assessment tasks provided by the awarding bodies after further adapting them for their own learners.
The report showed that school and college staff felt that reliance on past papers made grading less fair and may have widened gaps between learners from advantaged and disadvantaged backgrounds. The staff also noted that many learners were behind and lacked maturity as they’d missed large chunks of their education.
Staff noted that they worked many additional hours to ensure that their learners received grades. There was a sense that providing centre determined grades (CDGs) had been implemented as a one-off commitment under exceptional circumstances, but that staff could not, and should not, be expected to handle that volume of additional work again.
National results seen in the ‘pandemic years’ were substantially higher than normal results. The flexible approach to assessment arrangements that was put in place to support schools, colleges and learners meant that many schools and colleges used past papers with known mark schemes, which learners were able to prepare for.
The system was designed to be flexible to allow schools and colleges to adapt to their circumstances, but we know this led to inconsistencies in approach and variation in results. With the return to exams this summer, additional support was put in place to offset some of the disruption experienced and the transition back to normal processes.
Changes this year to support learners and to recognise this lost teaching and learning time included reducing the amount of content that could be assessed this year allowing learners to focus on less material as they prepared for the exams and a grading approach whereby the outcomes will be broadly midway between 2019 and 2021 results.
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