Ofqual Chief Regulator writes to school and college heads about grading arrangements

Dr Jo Saxton, Chief Regulator, has written the following letter to school and college heads about grading arrangements for 2024.

Dear Headteacher / Executive Leader,

Now that the new academic year is underway, I want to thank you for your role in delivering exams and assessments this summer and to look ahead to 2024.

Grading for GCSEs, AS and A levels

The 2-year transition to pre-pandemic grading is now complete. Normal grading arrangements will continue for GCSEs, AS and A levels in 2024. Ofqual expects national results in 2024 to be broadly similar to this year. Precise outcomes may vary a little, for example if the cohort of students taking a qualification is stronger or weaker than in previous years. As such, overall national results may change slightly year on year, just as they did before the pandemic.

As you prepare your students to take their qualifications next year, including through mock exams, you should take into account that approaches to grading were exceptional during the pandemic. This affects the use of past papers taken by a small number of students in the additional autumn exam series of 2020 and 2021 and in summer 2022. Given there was leniency in grading that is not applied in normal exam years, you should disregard grade boundaries from these years when providing an indicative grade for students.

Instead, you should use papers taken in and before 2019, as well as in 2023, when considering the standard of work expected at each grade. Of course, grade boundaries for a qualification can vary from year to year. This is because boundaries are set according to the demand of papers. It is the underlying content, knowledge and skills that returned each grade in these years that it makes most sense to focus upon.

Grading arrangements for vocational and technical qualifications (VTQs) and T Levels

Grading arrangements for VTQs (such as Pearson’s BTEC Nationals and OCR’s Cambridge Technicals) will continue as normal with awarding organisations adopting the same approach for the academic year 2023 to 2024 as they did previously.

VTQs are varied and many students take assessments throughout their course of study. Awarding organisations will continue to use suitable grading for their qualifications.

Technical Awards, which are taken alongside GCSEs, have been reformed and the first students to complete these new qualifications will do so in 2024. We have asked awarding organisations to take into account the fact that teachers and students may be less familiar with new assessments when setting grade boundaries for new Technical Awards, as has happened with other new qualifications previously.

As in 2023, awarding organisations will be generous when awarding the Technical Qualifications within T Levels in the first years of awards. This is to reflect that these are new qualifications that students and teachers are less familiar with.

Predicted grades for UCAS

The stability of the well-established, and now reinstated, pre-pandemic standard should support you to provide predicted grades for your students that are aspirational but achievable, in line with UCAS guidance. It is important to remember that only around 20% of placed students meet or exceed the grades they were predicted. We have found that, since the exceptional arrangements of the pandemic, students are now more likely to expect to be awarded their predicted grades. Predicting as accurately as possible in line with pre-pandemic standards is, therefore, increasingly important to avoid disappointment and to support students to make informed and realistic decisions about their university choices, and help them work towards this.

I will again write to university admissions teams, so they understand the national context for qualifications as they consider student applications.

Issuing results for VTQs

Following the successful delivery of VTQ level 3 results to students by 17 August this summer, Ofqual will be putting in place a similar approach for 2024. Awarding organisations will again collect data about students from schools and colleges through a term-time confirmation process, and will release results to schools and colleges in advance of results days. Ofqual will announce further details in October once we have been able to reflect fully on feedback from schools, colleges and awarding organisations.

Resilience arrangements

Ofqual and the Department for Education have recently published joint consultation decisions on long-term resilience arrangements. As in 2023, Ofqual has provided guidance for GCSE, AS and A levels, Project Qualifications and Advanced Extension Awards. This covers how to gather evidence of student performance that would be used to determine grades in the unlikely event that exams and assessments could not go ahead as planned. Schools and colleges are encouraged to gather evidence in line with existing assessment arrangements. Schools and colleges should avoid over-assessment, with one set of mocks likely to be sufficient for evidence purposes.

For VTQs and other qualifications used alongside or instead of GCSEs, AS and A levels, awarding organisations will provide guidance where needed and will contact schools and colleges with more information.

These arrangements are now in place on a long-term basis. It is important to make sure that appropriate evidence is available so that qualifications could be awarded even in the most unlikely of circumstances.

Artificial intelligence

It is important to be aware of the risks posed by the use of artificial intelligence (AI) relating to non-exam assessments. The Joint Council for Qualifications’ guidance on AI use in assessments: protecting the integrity of qualifications provides reminders about the responsibilities of schools and colleges. This includes ensuring the authenticity of student work, that students must not misuse AI tools and that they must acknowledge any use of such tools to avoid malpractice.

Thank you

Finally, I’d like to thank you, and your colleagues, for all that you have done over these past 2 years to support students preparing for qualifications as we underwent the 2-year, 2-step plan to reinstate normal exams and grading. I recognise the efforts of each leader, teacher, exams officer and member of support staff in delivering a qualifications system of such scale.

Dr Jo Saxton,

Chief Regulator