Head hits out over exams regulator warning

Ofqual said there is likely to be “variability” in grades this summer following significant changes to the qualifications. Chris Walsh, the headteacher at Boston Spa School, said he saw this as an admission that Government reforms had meant it was impossible for the regulator to protect the integrity of the exams.

He also told The Yorkshire Post he feared a focus on controlling “grade inflation” would be the deciding factor in pupils’ results rather than the quality of their work.

He said: “Ofqual’s job is to maintain the integrity of qualifications from one year to the next for sake of pupils. I see this letter as an admission from Ofqual that the scale of the change to exams that has been pushed through has meant that it is impossible for them to do this.”

Mr Walsh was an outspoken critic of Ofqual during the results row of 2012 which saw exam boards changing the grade boundaries during the academic year in English GCSEs amid concerns about the potential for a sharp increase in the numbers earning good grades.

Ofqual’s “comparable outcomes” approach says if a cohort of students taking a qualification is similar in terms of ability, then it expects the outcomes – the proportions of students achieving each grade – to be similar.

But Mr Walsh says this actually results Ofqual in ensuring grades standstill rather than fairly marking work. “What some people call grade inflation I would call school improvement. Why shouldn’t standards improve?” he added.

In the letter to schools Ofqual says its aims to make sure that no students are advantaged or disadvantaged by the changes being made to exams. It also says students getting results this summer “is quite different” to last year due to more schools turning to international GCSE qualifications which it does not regulate.