GCSE English and the great Welsh regrades
So. if you took your GCSE English exam in January, you had an easier time of it than your friends who took it in June.
If you took it in Wales you’ll now get a regrade. If you sat it over the border in England, you won’t. It’s hard to see how this situation could ever be regarded as fair – or how it can remain unchanged.
The decision by the Welsh Education Minister, Leighton Andrews, to demand a regrade of GCSE English results for Welsh students, now means that they may well end up getting a better grade than their English counterparts who received the same marks, sitting exactly the same exams.
Ofqual continue to insist that the final results handed out last month are the right ones.
They acknowledge that when grade boundaries were changed in the middle of last year it did create an inherent inequality. Students needed fewer marks to get a crucial C grade if they took the exam in January than students who took the same exam in June. The chief regulator explained it away like this: “A small number of students in January got lucky.”
Now a much larger number of students in Wales have perhaps also “got lucky”, with every chance that their D grades will change into that all important C.
Education Secretary Michael Gove has already conceded that students were treated unfairly but says it would be wrong of him to interfere.
Will he be able to hold that line? Hard to see how.
The Welsh regrade will be complete within seven days. Then the boundary between a C grade and a D grade may become as much about the border between England and Wales.
The talk of judicial review can only get louder.
There are 6 comments on this post
If Ofqual are saying that the summer sitting were given the ‘right’ grades, what message does that give to potential employers or higher educational institutes about the students who sat the same exams early in the year? Or for that matter the previous years?
Wow, Channel 4 news in reporting on devolution in Wales shocker.
Nice to see you recognise that life exists beyond Offas dyke.
I’m no fan of the Welsh Government at all, but if you acknowledge it’s unfair, then Leighton Andrews is right to order a regrade. The difference between a C and a D can have a material impact on people’s lives..it’s right to do them justice.
Jackie,
You had your answer today.
Gove has not only refused to “interfere,” he has attacked the responsible Welsh minister.
Now why am I not surprised?
Which political party is the Welsh Education minister a part of, oh Labour, funny that doesn’t get a mention in two days of coverage by Jackie…..
THIS IS NOT FAIR!, l took the GCSE English exam in June. l was doing the foundation tier so that means l was aiming for a C so a got a D. l did well in my course work and as well in the final exam. they have absolutely no idea how we feel about this, after the effort we have been putting, not only us (students) and the teachers as well. The government should do something. l mean JUSTICE..
Except we’ll now get the WORST of both worlds. If the June grades were seen as fair (as is claimed), then the lucky few from January would have been something to kid about, but wouldn’t have undermined confidence in grades as a whole.
This whole — they were lucky, so we should all be lucky as well — thing means that, if regraded, ANY grade C from this year is just going to be discredited, and treated as if everyone getting a C had to be ‘lucky’.
So rather than a C in english this year being something where you might get a little dig about it (were you one of the lucky few then eh?), now it’s going to be — you don’t sound welsh, perhaps your C is a proper one then — and if regraded it would be — you were ALL lucky.