A-level and GCSE grades awarded in 2023 will be lower on average than this summer, the Department for Education has announced, as it confirmed plans to return grades to pre-pandemic levels.
While the DfE and Ofqual, the exam regulator for England, said some help would stay in place for those whose learning was disrupted, school leaders and experts warned that those student most badly affected by Covid were most likely to suffer from the downward adjustment.
Natalie Perera, chief executive of the Education Policy Institute, said she remained concerned about the impact on disadvantaged students, especially those in the north of England, who experienced the greatest learning loss during the pandemic.
“Although their course of study for their qualifications may not have been affected by national closures, the years leading up to them – and providing the foundations for their courses – were significantly disrupted,” she said.
Sarah Hannafin, a senior policy adviser for the National Association of Head Teachers, said: “Next year’s exam cohort have experienced disruption to their learning over the past three years. For those taking A-levels, these will be the first formal exams they sit. It is right that this is recognised and steps are taken to ensure the cohort is not disadvantaged as a result of their experiences.”
National exams including A-levels, GCSEs and BTECs were abandoned by the government in 2020 and 2021, with grades awarded using a more generous system of local assessment that led to record levels of top grades.
Jo Saxton, Ofqual’s chief regulator, said: “We expect that overall results in 2023 will be much closer to pre-pandemic years than results since 2020. This decision means that results in 2023 will be lower than in 2022.”
The government had previously announced that grading would return to pre-pandemic levels through a two-year process, with exams in summer 2022 to be graded midway between those of 2019 and those assessed by teachers in 2021.
But Saxton said senior examiners would make adjustments if next year’s exam performance was “a little lower” when compared with students who sat exams before the pandemic.
“Broadly speaking … a typical student who would have achieved an A grade in their A-level geography before the pandemic will be just as likely to get an A next summer, even if their performance in the assessments is a little weaker in 2023 than it would have been before the pandemic,” Saxton said.
Next summer’s candidates will not be supplied with advance notice of exam topics, but those taking GCSE mathematics, physics and combined science will be given formulae and equation sheets. Fieldwork, non-exam assessment and science practicals have also been reinstated.
The return to normality in the exam hall has been matched by a return to classrooms, according to new figures released by the DfE. The DfE’s survey of schools in England found that the national attendance rate was 95% for the week ending 12 September, back to the levels last seen before the pandemic outbreak.
The figures will be a relief to MPs and policymakers, who feared that pandemic-related school closures had caused high levels of persistent absence and truancy.
