Grade inflation warning from the Government

Grade inflation warning from the Government

Over the weekend Dominic Raab, during a TV interview said the A level and GCSE standardisation process had been imperfect and lessons needed to be learnt.

Raab said that "the one thing we had wanted to avoid was grade inflation" after this year's exams were cancelled because of Covid-19.

Mr Raab claimed the government should be judged on how successfully getting schools to return this month, September.

GRADE INFLATION

Mr Raab was asked about this during the interview on the BBC's The Andrew Marr Show on Sunday.

Raab said: "The one thing we wanted to avoid was the grade inflation that comes in relying exclusively on projected grades, but we got to the point at which it was very clear that the algorithm would create unfairness and we had to respond to that and we did.

"I accept it was an imperfect process, we understand that – nobody wants that for the children and parents and families.  We will get it right next time. What I would say is that we have learned a lot along the way."

Ofqual and the DoE standardisation process had planned to give pupils an assessed moderated grade that took into account assessed grades submitted by schools and colleges, a student's ranking in their school and the school's past performance.

The mess was predicted by the exam blog here.

Andrew Marr asked Mr Raab whether he accepted that damage to the public's trust in this government because of the handling of the exams.

Mr Raab, who is a former member of the Commons Education Select Committee, went on: "What I would say is judge us by our results. We got schools back this week. We protected 12 million jobs. If you look at the hospitalisation rate, it's gone from a peak of 3,000 per day to 100 per day."

EDWARD WEBSTERSEPTEMBER 9, 2020