The exams watchdog described the quality of GCSE and A-level marking as not good enough as it announced plans to overhaul the oversight of results.
Revealing that one in 100 A-level and GCSE grades were changed after challenges by schools and pupils this summer, Ofqual said it was particularly concerned with the upsurge in challenges and warned of “significant implications” for schools of changes to the systems of marking and re-marking for the exams.
This follows evidence of deterioration in the reliability of results, which some blame on poorly trained markers employed by the exam boards.
There have already been concerns within the Department for Education about the quality of marking. The DfE is said to fear that erratic marking could damage the credibility of the exams.
Figures released by Ofqual show the number of challenges resulting in changes to GCSE or A-level grades has more than doubled in the past four years, despite a fall in the overall number of grades awarded by the examination boards in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
In exams taken this summer, the number of grades challenged rose by 26% compared with 2013, to 414,000; and 77,000 of those challenges resulted in grades being revised, a 42% increase on 2013.
With about 8m A-level and GCSE grades certified in 2014, that meant that nearly one in every 100 was changed as a result of challenges. In 2013, it was one in every 180; in 2011, fewer than one in every 200.
In commentary on the results, Ofqual said: “We are particularly concerned about the increases in the number of inquiries about results. The data suggest that very serious errors are relatively rare, but schools and colleges tell us otherwise.
It added: “We know that these qualifications are hugely significant for students, their parents and for schools and colleges. Marking quality is generally good but it is not yet good enough, and we will continue to require exam boards to improve their training and monitoring of examiners.”
The sharp rise in grade changes was partly owing to increased numbers of successful challenges to GCSE results. In previous years A-level grades were more likely to be changed as a result of challenges, but in 2014 there was a jump in the number of GCSE challenges and re-marks issued, as schools and exam candidates grappled with changes to GCSE examination formats.
Ofqual said: “We also plan to overhaul the inquiries about results system in future, so that it can better distinguish between marking errors and differences of opinion between equally skilled professionals, particularly in those subjects where more subjective judgments of the quality of student work are necessary. As any changes will have significant implications for schools and colleges, we are considering very carefully the feasibility of possible options.”
The watchdog said it had started work on efforts to improve marking quality and evaluate the examiner training provided by examination boards. “We are already discussing with exam boards the arrangements for 2015, including additional checks they can put in place to improve marking quality.”
Although re-marking can see candidates’ grades go down as well as up, in practice the vast majority resulted in higher awards. Out of 54,000 changes at GCSE, only 400 went down, while only 600 out of 23,000 A-level grades went down.
In a report issued alongside the statistics, Ofqual said: “Changes as a result of post-results inquiries are more likely to be upward because schools are much more likely to challenge results that are just below a grade boundary than other results. Examiners carrying out reviews of marking will be aware that students are often just below a grade boundary and so are more likely to give students the benefit of the doubt and award additional marks.”
The AQA examination board’s GCSE English and English language unit attracted the most challenges overall, although OCR’s GCSE French saw inquiries by nearly one out of every 10 entries. At A-level, music units taken through the Pearson and AQA boards attracted the highest proportion of complaints, with 750 inquiries out of nearly 6,000 entries.The head of English at one school in England has previously told the Guardian: “I have experienced awful exam marking this summer. We used AQA and sent back more scripts than ever before. The re-marked scores have, on the whole, gone up, sometimes by 12 marks or more.”
