Students wait for ‘exam’ results without sitting exams

STUDENTS anxiously waiting for their A-level, AS and GCSE exam results next month will have to follow different procedures this year, due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Some schools are allowing students to collect their results in  restricted numbers, but others are emailing students’ results only. At the time of going to press, Melksham Oak was unable to say which process they are using 

This year, exams were forced to be cancelled across the country and instead, grades will be calculated by the schools themselves.

In a letter to schools, Sally Collier, the chief regulator of  the government department Ofqual said, “Our over-riding aim in this is to be fair to students this summer and to make sure you are not disadvantaged in your progress to sixth form, college, university, apprenticeships, training or work because of these unprecedented conditions.

How will grades be 

calculated?

“Your school or college will be asked to send exam boards two pieces of information for each of your subjects, based on what they know about your work and achievements:

• the grade they believe you were most likely to get if teaching, learning and exams had happened as planned

• within each subject, the order of students at your school or college, by performance, for each grade. This information will be used to standardise judgements – allowing fine tuning of the standard applied across schools and colleges

“Your school or college will consider a range of things like your classwork and homework; your results in assignments and any mock exams; any non-exam assessment or coursework you might have done; and your general progress during your course.

“This information will allow us, with exam boards, to standardise grades across schools and colleges, to make sure that, as far as possible, results are fair and that students are not advantaged or disadvantaged because their schools or colleges are more generous or harsh than others.”

On receiving their results, if a student feels that they have been undermarked, they are advised to speak to the school who will check whether there was a data error when submitting the information to the exam boards or if in fact the exam board has made a mistake.  Although the school will have entered grades and ranking, the result outcome may be changed by the exam board based on the school outcomes from previous years.

 It was recently announced that if they wish to “re-sit” students may do this in the autumn:  GCSEs from Monday 5th October to the Friday 23rd October and GCSEs from Monday 2nd November to Monday 23rd November.

However if there are only a small amount of students who wish to sit a particular subject in the country, then the exam boards have the right to withdraw the sitting.  This will be a quick turn around so any students wishing to sit an exam must inform the school as soon as possible after result days.