Furious heads demand exams are re-marked

There was widespread anger among teachers in the region yesterday over exam boards changing their marking schemes meaning the same piece of work could receive two different grades depending on when it was submitted.

The level of GCSE exams being graded at A* to C has fallen for the first time in the qualification’s history this year with schools across Yorkshire reporting unexpected drops in their English results.

The Government is facing calls to investigate the issue from head teachers’ unions and the national body which represents council education bosses.

North Yorkshire County Council has confirmed that it will work with other authorities to challenge the results. The Yorkshire Post reported yesterday that both Bradford and Leeds Council were exploring legal action.

East Riding Council has said it will support four of its schools to get English papers remarked after they were hit by worse-than-expected results.

Wakefield Council has also said it could take part in a national effort to challenge the English grades.

Beverley High, Bridlington School, Driffield School and South Holderness Technology College have all been hit by the change in grade boundaries this year.

Last year 75 per cent of pupils achieved five A* to C grades including English and maths at Beverley High but this year that had dropped to 49 per cent.

Head teacher Sharon Japp said: “We are extremely disappointed, but will be asking for a quarter of our English papers to be re-marked and support a national investigation into what went wrong with the marking this year.”

Driffield School head Simon Jones said: “Both of our English papers have significantly fewer A* to C grades than we expected, all other subjects have done well. This national problem with English is extremely disappointing but we will be submitting large numbers of papers to be re-marked.”

Andrew Webb, the vice president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, has called for an investigation. He said there were particular problems with the exam board AQA.

“It is right that the Government takes steps to ensure that exams are rigorous, but they must also be fair – this means that results are comparable over time and across different schools,” he said.

“This does not appear to be the case this year with particular problems concerning the English GCSE course issued by AQA. A change in grade boundaries between January and July appears to have resulted in young people following the same syllabus and with similar marks getting lower grades than those who took the exam six months earlier.”

He urged Ofqual and the Department for Education to investigate AQA English as “a matter of urgency”. 

Russell Hobby, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said: “English Language GCSE results in particular were down as a result of a different mark scheme being used in June, a mark scheme which increased the score required for a grade C by 10 marks.”

He has also called for an investigation and warned that the situation could leave young people with question marks over their future.

Gareth Dawkins, principal of Bradford Academy, said: “The majority of our English work was submitted in January so in a way we have actually benefited from this but it is grossly unfair.

“We have situation where the same piece of work could get two different grades in the same year depending on when it was assessed. This is preposterous.”