Fighting for Fairness Alongside GCSE Students in the High Court

You may have seen some of the coverage in the national press about the GCSE English grading fiasco overseen by national regulator Ofqual and exam boards AQA and Edexcel. Thousands of students suffered at the hands of a drastic shifting of the grade boundaries for GCSE English between papers sat in January and then in the summer, in spite of the fact that there was no corresponding increase in the standard of the papers sat.

Young people in the Borough have been caught up in what looks like a crude attempt to keep a lid on C grades awarded with no regard to fairness or the fact that students taking the exam in June were judged to a completely different standard than their peers who took the same exam just a few months earlier.

This move has harmed the prospects of young people through no fault of their own, and will have found that their ability to access the college or sixth form courses, apprenticeships or employment they were aiming for has suffered or even been removed altogether.

This unfairness is why Bedford Borough Council joined the alliance of pupils, schools, professional teaching bodies and other local authorities from across the country who have taken the fight for fairness to the High Court.

We are asking the High Court to declare unlawful the actions of Ofqual and the exam boards to increase grade boundaries so dramatically between the January and June sittings, despite there being no corresponding change in the difficulty of the papers. In one AQA exam paper, for example, the mark needed to achieve a C rose from 43 to 53 marks out of 80 from January to June, yet there was no change whatsoever in the difficulty of the paper.

The hearing in the High Court took place over three days last week. I am very pleased that the young people have had their day in court, and that the case has been put powerfully that these crude, unjustifiable in-year changes to GCSE grade boundaries should not stand.

The fairest outcome would of course be a regarding of the exams on fair boundaries, comparable to those which applied in January this year.

A judgment is due in January. We can only hope fairness for the young people who have been affected will prevail.