Ofqual guidance on 2021 grading

FAO: Secondary Schools

Ofqual guidance on 2021 grading
On Wednesday, Ofqual published its response to the technical consultation which closed earlier this month, along with a large number of regulatory documents, all of which can be found here.

The most useful of these for schools and colleges is probably the centre guidance, which gives a high level overview of the process of grading students for general and some vocational qualifications.

The key changes are as follow:

  • Centres should be prepared to explain any significant change in submitted results from historical exam data patterns.
  • Any evidence used to reach the final grade, which was produced after 24 March, should be retained by the centre (but marking records before this date are fine).
  • The Head of Centre declaration has changed from a requirement that content coverage must be sufficient to ensure progression in that subject, to a requirement that content coverage must be sufficient to award a grade.
  • Undue pressure on teachers by students or parents must be avoided, and should be reported to the exam board as potential malpractice