Exam changes dash hopes of apprenticeship

For many of the cohort of 2012 it threatens to go on beyond Christmas.

The Yorkshire Post today reveals the scale of the exam controversy in the region with about 2,000 pupils being awarded a D when schools believe they should have achieved a C.

The row centres on the way in which grade boundaries were shifted by exam boards between January and June resulting in some schools recording much worse results than they were expecting.

The situation meant students scoring the same marks in an English language GCSE test could receive different grades depending on when the work was marked.

Ofqual the exam regulator has produced two reports into the situation since the results were published.

The first concluded that grade boundaries used by exam boards in January were too lenient but those in the summer were fair.

Its second report blamed poor design of GCSEs and over marking of coursework for “grade variations” this summer.

Ofqual say there was significant over-marking of coursework to ensure pupils met grade boundary targets. Because pupils were being marked more generously in June than in January exam boards moved the grade boundaries up to reflect that. This claim has been rejected by teachers.

Manor CE Academy in York saw between 10 to 14 per cent of pupils miss out on expected C grades in English. It had been expecting up to 80 per cent of its pupils to achieve at least a C while in fact only 66 per cent did.

Head teacher Brian Crosby said: “When you get figures like these there can be no other explanation than the grade boundaries being moved.” He said his school’s marking and moderation had been praised by exam boards. He told the Yorkshire Post that the flawed GCSE results affected pupils’ life chances, Ofsted’s ability to assess a school and a school’s ability to assess its own staff performance.

Nick Weller, the chief executive of the Bradford Partnership of secondary schools said the drop in English results had been felt by strong performing schools as well as those close or below minimum GCSE floor targets.

He said: “One of the features of the campaign in Yorkshire has been the number of successful schools which have been involved.

“There are some high-performing schools that have been very hard hit. Drops in the number of pupils getting five A* to C grades including English and maths are as large as 15 per cent.”

He said much of the improved performance was down to the increased pressure on schools to deliver adding: “The Government is prepared to sit on its hands because it will get the end result that it wants from all of this which is reform of the GCSEs.

“The schools and pupils affected in this are being treated as collateral damage for their bigger cause.”

The legal challenge taking place in December calling for GCSEs to be regraded not only includes 11 councils and 23 schools from Yorkshire but also names individual students affected.

One is Sheridan Sidlow from Middleton, Leeds, who went into his GCSEs knowing he had secured a pharmacy apprenticeship providing he achieved Cs in the core subjects of English, maths and science. His school predicted he was on the B/C borderline, but when he opened his results it came with a slip from the school telling him there was an issue with this year’s GCSE English.

Sheridan had got a D meaning the apprenticeship had gone.

His father, Mark, said: “What you have got to remember is that for people like Sheridan this is their first taste of what adult life is like. You try to teach children to be fair and that hard work will be rewarded and then this happens to them.”