Tag: A-levels

A-level results are down AND the attainment gap has increased

material deprivation still affects educational achievement!

The A-level exam boards in England decided to smackdown the 2023 A-level results this year. They are now back to the pre-pandemic levels of 2019.

line chart showing trends in A-level results 2019 to 2023, England and Wales.

For the top A and A* grades the trend looks like this:

  • 2019: 25.2%
  • 2021: 35.9%
  • 2023: 26.5%

So a slight, but not significant increase in top A-level grades in 2023 compared to 2019.

This clearly demonstrates that the 2020 and 2021 results were fantasy results. This is unsurprising given that they were awarded by teachers. The 2022 results, based on pre-release exams, were merely a half way step back to this years. Last years results now seem as ridiculous as the 2020 and 2021 results. Clearly this was an attempt to maintain credibility in the exam system by not bringing back down the results too suddenly.

None of this is the fault of the students, it’s the fault of the people running the education system. You might even argue the government and exam boards did the best they good faced with the uncertainty of the pandemic.

The problem now is that this year’s cohort are the real victims of this uncertainty and flawed responses. They are now the ones with the relatively worse grades. They now face huge competition to get into scarce university places. And they are the ones that had their schooling disrupted just as much as the previous three years of students.

What a mess!

One saving grace

The one saving grace of all this is that we can probably regard this years exam results as valid JUST FOR THIS COHORT.

What I mean by this is that individuals who achieved A grades this year are probably better at exams than those who achieved C grades.

What you can’t do is compare this years results with 2020-2022. So we have a reliability problem!

  • 2019 A-levels measured students’ ability to sit exams under ‘normal conditions’ compared to previous years.
  • 2020 and 2021 measured how far teachers were prepared to take the p*** and give their students inflated grades based on their theories of what the maximum they could possibly achieve.
  • 2022 measured student’s ability to sit exams based on having pre-release knowledge of some the material they’d be assed on.
  • 2023 exam results measured students’ ability to sit exams under ‘normal conditions’ having had significant disruption to their schooling during the pandemic.

NB please note that by ‘better at exams’ that’s all I mean. A student’s ability to get an A* doesn’t necessarily mean they are more intelligent or a better potential employee than someone who gets a B grade.

The main reason for this (IMO) is that some students are better trained for exams than others. And exam training is a very narrow skill, intelligence more generally is a much broader concept.

The attainment gap has increased

The education attainment gap between private and state schools is now wider than it was before the pandemic. 47.4% of A-level entries from private schools were awarded A or A* grades compared to just 22% from state schools.

bar chart showing that schools in richer areas get better A-level results than poorer areas, England and Wales.

To my mind this suggests privately educated students have been more shielded from the disruptive effects of the pandemic over the last three years compared to state school students.

This makes sense given the material advantages these wealthy students have. Such as:

  • smaller class sizes
  • better access to online learning
  • private tuition.

Some of these resources would have been put into exam training of course, a key part of ‘hothousing’ private school children.

The attainment gap by region has also increased

If we breakdown regions in quintiles by deprivation we find that 30.3% of A-levels in the least deprived regions were awarded A and above compared to only 22.2 in the most deprived regions.

This means parental wealth and income affects educational achievement more generally. Private schools just have a more extreme advantage at the very top end. (Private schools account for around 7% of pupils, so 1/3rd of the top quintile.)

Relevance to A-level sociology

Unfortunately this shows that material deprivation still affects educational achievement.

To return to the homepage – revisesociology.com

Sources/ Find out More

The Guardian: Equality Depends on Education

TES: A-Level Results Reveal Worsening Rich-Poor Divide

FFT Education Data Lab: 2023 A-level Results

Two ways globalisation has influenced religion’s capacity to change society

The following 10 mark outline and explain question above came up in the AQA’s November 2021 Sociology 7192/2 topics paper, as part of the beliefs in society section.

Outline and explain two ways that globalisation may have influenced the way in which religion acts as a force for change (10)

Probably the safest way to approach this question is to consider one way in which globalisation has reduced the capacity of religion to act as a force for social change and another it has increased it.

The challenge is going to be to keep the question tightly focussed on two ways, and drawing out the links, rather than drifting into discussing several ways in general.

This post on the impact of globalisation on religion more generally would be a good source to draw on for this question.

Globalisation and religion for social change

  • One aspect of globalisation is the increased use of the internet for global communications which makes it easier for people to access information about religion.
  • This means it is easier for fundamentalist groups to gain access to a wide audience via setting up their own websites and through social media, increasing their global reach, meaning that groups such as ISIS have managed to radicalise individuals in countries thousands of miles away from their main base such as England.
  • Fundamentalism may appeal to people living in postmodern society as there is more anomie, and the simple messages which appeal to traditional values offer a sense of certainty and identity to people who may feel lost and without purpose.
  • In some cases radicalised individuals have travelled to countries like Syria in order to become part of fundamentalist movements.
  • The internet has also made it easier for fundamentalist groups to gain funding through cryptocurrency, meaning it is harder for governments to cut off funding for them, giving them more power.
  • Such groups can make use of encrypted apps such as Telegram to discuss strategy and recruit members making it more difficult for governments to prevent terrorist attacks, and this is such a serious matter there is currently an online privacy bill going through parliament that may make Whatsapp illegal in the UK.
  • Another indicator of how serious a threat to social change fundamentalism may be is the PREVENT agenda in schools, designed to protect British Values from radicalisation.

Globalisation undermining religion and social change

  • one aspect of globalisation is increasing amounts of cultural diversity as ideas and people migrate from country to country.
  • This means in the UK for example that we now have several religions rather than one.
  • This undermines the capacity of the Church of England to claim that it has a monopoly on the truth and thus undermines its ability to compel people to act in its name.
  • We saw this in the attitude of religion during the King’s Coronation, with all of the religious aspects looking outdated and a little bit silly which was broadcast to a global audience via the media.
  • State religion now seems like something that is for entertainment and a choice rather than something with the power to change society.
  • When there are many religions competing with each other it becomes more obvious that there are religious truths rather than one truth and the State increasingly focuses on how to create a society in which multiple religions can get along without conflicting rather than the state allying with one religion as a powerful source for social change.
Signposting and Sources

Mark Scheme for AQA Sociology Paper 2 November 2021.

Sociology Exam Dates 2023

Mon 15th May, Friday 9th June and Weds 14 June!

The A-Level Sociology exam dates for spring/ summer 2023 are:

  • Monday 22nd May: Education with Theory and Methods (morning)
  • Friday 9th June: Topics in Sociology (morning)
  • Wednesday 14th June: Crime and Deviance with Theory and Methods (afternoon).

To make it easier on the head I’ve put these dates into calendar form:

So as of today, Wednesday 3rd of May the first exam is not that far away, so students should be revising in full force RIGHT NOW!

Of course the downer for the first exam is you need to revise both the entire education topic and the entirety of theory and methods!

You’ve then got a nice 2 and a half week break until topics, which is usually families and religion for most centres, but topics will vary depending on what you’ve been taught.

And then a reasonable five days until the final exam!

Overall, not a bad spread of time between exams.

Do double check the above dates using the The AQA Timetable, don’t rely on me, always double and treble check these things for yourself, you as a student are responsible, after all!

Good luck to anyone sitting these exams, and don’t be gutted when you get worse results than students did during lockdown: this is probably going to be the year when the exam boards adjust marks back down so they are much closer to what they were in 2019, to try and wash clear the memory of the suspiciously high teacher predicted grades awarded in 2020 and 2021, and the ‘half way house’ results from 2022 which I think were placed at half way between 2019 and 2021 in order to make those two years of Teacher Results seem more credible.

At the end of the day it doesn’t matter too much if your cohort gets worse results than the lockdown students, you are mostly going to be competing against your cohort for university places!

Please see my exam and revision advice page for hints and tips on how to answer the different styles of exam questions on these three papers!

A-Level Sociology Growing in Popularity!

A-level sociology entries increased by 23% between 2018 and 2022.

The number of students studying A-level sociology has increased significantly over the past few years. In summer 2022 there were 43 590 A-level sociology exam entries, compared to only 33, 420 in summer 2018. This represents a 23% increase over four years.

Sociology is now the fifth most popular A-level sociology subject, more popular than history!

Why is sociology growing in popularity?

This isn’t just because there are more people studying A-levels in general. Some other subjects have also been growing in popularity, most notably psychology, but OFQUAL notes that most other high demand subjects have seen stable numbers over the past four years.

So my working theory is that young people are increasingly looking at contemporary society, seeing the many and increasingly urgent amount social problems facing us and they want answers, and these are maybe answers that the regular school curriculum cannot provide.

Over the past four years while in secondary school students have lived through several unforeseen and tumultuous events such as Brexit, the mega-corruption within the Tory part, the covid-19 pandemic and all of this in the context of global warming and climate change and the continued failure of governments around the world to do anything significant about this global crisis.

Also, increasing amounts of teenagers would have lived through declining living standards as their parents’ real term wages have been eaten into because of inflation, which has a much longer history than just the previous year when inflation went into overdrive.

All of this means young people are probably increasingly looking at the world and their future prospects and are worried, and want answers, and sociology really can help with his.

Of course it is also understandable that A-level psychology numbers are increasing more rapidly. Young people today have been socialised into an individualistic world view and they probably think psychology can help them understand their heightened sense of anxiety, which is a totally understandable response to our crisis ridden world and the inaction of practically every adult in power.

The problem is psychology can only go so far in its ability to explain social problems and the mental health ‘pandemic’ among young people. They need good old sociology to understand the material conditions which are the root cause of their declining prospects!

Sources

OFQUAL Official Statistics (26 May 2022) Provisional entries for GCSE, AS and A level: summer 2022 exam series.

Gender and Subject Choice

The most female dominated subjects are performing arts, health and social care and sociology, the most male dominated subjects are computer science and I.T., construction and engineering.

Subject choice in post-16 education remains heavily influenced by gender in 2022.

If we look at the total numbers of students taking A-level and BTEC subjects we find that girls and young women are still more likely to choose subjects which conform to the norms and roles associated with females, such as performing arts and health and social care.Boys and young men on the other hand are more likely to choose subjects which align with traditionally male gender norms and roles such as physics and computing.

However these trends are just generalisations and there are of course exceptions, and the ‘traditional gender-divide’ in subject choice has been reducing over time.

This post explores some of the differences in subject choice by gender in 2021-2022, focusing on A-levels, BTECs, higher education and apprenticeships. (I don’t look at GCSE level or below because students do not have freedom of subject choice until they pass their GCSEs and pursue post-16 education.

  1. Computer Science: 80% of pupils are male
  2. Physics: 75% male
  3. Further Mathematics: 65% male
  4. Design and Technology: 64% male
  5. Economics: 63% male.

The most female dominated subjects at A-level are:

  1. Performing arts: 90% of students are female
  2. English Literature: 78% female
  3. Sociology: 77% female
  4. Art and Design subjections: 75% female
  5. Psychology: 74% female
  6. Spanish and French: 74% female.

Most other subjects have a much more equal gender balance, so are best characterised as gender neutral.

Gender and Subject Choice at BTEC

Subject choices at BTEC also remain heavily gendered in some subjects. For example:

    • 90% of students choosing health and social care are female.
    • 85% of students choosing Information Technology are male.
    • 75% of students choosing Sport BTEC are male.

Business BTEC is more gender neutral with nearer a 60-40 split in favour of males and Applied Science is the most gender neutral subject with almost equal numbers of male and female students in 2022.

The gender divide continues into Higher Education, once again with subjects broadly divided along stereotypical gender lines:

The top five degree subjects for females are:

  • Subjects allied to medicine
  • Social Sciences and psychology
  • Veterinary sciences
  • Education and Teaching
  • Design and Creative and Performing Arts.

    Five subjects where there are more males studying them than females are:

  • Engineering and Technology
  • Computing
  • Architecture
  • Physical Sciences
  • Mathematical Sciences.

Gender and Apprenticeships

The traditional gender divide is somewhat apparent when it comes to the types of apprenticeship men and women choose, but it less dramatic than with subject choices at A-Level, BTEC and University.

    Females dominate in health and social care and education apprenticeships. Males dominate in construction, manufacturing and transportation. But many apprenticeships are gender neutral such as retail and public administration.

Signposting

This material is relevant to the gender and subject choice topic within the Education topic of A-level Sociology

You might also like to read this post on why males and females choose different subjects in education.

Sources

Name Gender, Achievement and Subject Choice in English EducationHESA Student Enrolments by Gender Gov.uk Apprenticeship Data by enterprise and learner characteristics

2022’s A-level Grades aren’t real, but then again they never were….

Unsurprisingly this year’s 2022 A-Level results are considerably worse than the previous two years with only 82.1% of entries gaining a grade C or above compared to 88.2% in 2021.

This is because this year’s results are based on students having sat actual exams rather than the results from 2021 and 2020 when the results were simply taken from what is euphemistically referred to as ‘Teacher Predicted Grades’, although maybe ‘Teacher Fantasy Grades’ would be a more accurate term.

The overall results haven’t slumped all the way back down to the pre-pandemic levels of 2019, the last time students sat actual exams under normal conditions, but they are around half way back to where they were…

I want to say this ‘feels’ about right – it feels right that we are now back to half way between 2019 and the ‘fantasy grades’ of 2020-2021 which were gifted by teachers – and it feels right because students had ‘advanced information’ this year so that they knew some of the specific topics they would be tested on in their exams.

So it makes sense that the grades are better than the previous norm.

But one of the most interesting quotes surrounding this year’s results is from Dr Jo Saxton, the chief regulator of Ofqual….

To my mind this implies that Ofqual has simply set the grade boundaries for this year so that they fall midway between last year’s fantasy results and the last set of pre-pandemic results.

NB – this setting of grade boundaries is done AFTER all the papers have been marked in terms of number grades and the A* to E boundaries are stretched to broadly fit last year’s percentages, so in normal years we’re unlikely to see a radical spike or fall in the amount of any students getting certain grades.

And what they’ve done here seems to be pretty much the only thing they could have done to stop the whole exam system losing credibility – bring them crashing back down to 2019 levels and it makes the Teacher Predicted Grades into literal Teacher Fantasy Grades (which they are but us humans are quite good at kidding ourselves), keep them the same as last year and it makes a total mockery out of the pre-pandemic standards.

So they are left with a ‘staging year’ – bring the results 50% back down and then next year we’ll be back probably to within 1% of 2019 levels with ‘credibility restored’.

Do A-level Results lack validity..?

Well clearly YES, SOME of the teacher-given results from 2020 and 2022 are just false – they are NOT what some students would have achieved under regular exam conditions and the teachers and students probably knew this.

This year’s results have more validity than the previous two years because at least students sat some kind of test – in fact I’m inclined to say that maybe the 2022 results have MORE validity because students had an idea what was coming up – meaning they could be better prepared for the exams, rather than having to take a broad-based approach and revise EVERYTHING less thoroughly.

If we look at the last FOUR years of results taken together what they really lack is RELIABILITY – students not being assessed in the same way across any of the four years 2019-2022 means we can’t compare results fairly from across these four years.

But is this a problem….?

It most certainly is for universities who will currently have students on their courses who shouldn’t be because of TFGs – and I think this years’ cohort who just got their 2022 results will be negatively affected too as they are having to compete probably harder with a higher proportion of students with TFGs who would have deferred from last year.

And employers are going to have a mess with figuring out who the best candidates actually are because they can’t make accurate comparisons between 2019-2022 A-level graduates based on their grades which are measuring different things.

However let’s not forget that education has a value in itself, an intrinsic value and exam results are only a small factor, and in the grand scheme of things the important thing is that all of these students over the last four years would have learnt hopefully some useful knowledge, it’s only their paper results that are messed up, and that’s not the end of the world!

Advanced Information for the AQA A-level Sociology exam 2022: Education Paper 1

The [pre-release information](https://filestore.aqa.org.uk/content/summer-2022/AQA-7192-AI-22.PDF) for Paper 1 has selected the broad topic of education policies as the one which students will DEFINITELY be tested on…

the significance of educational policies, including problems of selection, marketisation and privatisation, and policies to achieve greater equality of opportunity or outcome, for an understanding of the structure, role, impact and experience of and access to education; the impact of globalisation on educational policy’.

The problem is, this is very broad topic, probably best further broken down into a number of separate bullet points:

There are FOUR broad types of policy:

  • selection policies
  • marketisation policies
  • privatisation policies
  • policies to achieve greater equality of opportunity or outcome,

You need to be able to consider all of the above policies have affected the social structure and other institutions, the way in which (different types of) student experience school, and how they have affected equality of access to education, and educational outcomes (who gets what results.

In addition to all of the above you also need to be able to discuss and evaluate the impact of globalisation on educational policy!

Phew!

NB I don’t think there are any quick fixes with this topic area, it’s just going to be a hard grind of revision trying to cover all the material!

Where I covered these topics on ReviseSociology.com

NB the exam board has been asking students to focus on policies ‘since 1988 for several years’ so I think it’s reasonable to expect the same

  • Every student should know in depth the 1988 Education Reform Act – which introduced Marketisation.
  • New Labour’s policies carried on with Marketisation (choice) and introduced more policies to do with equality of opportunity
  • The Coalition’s Policies included Free Schools (more choice) and the Pupil Premium – the later an attempt at
  • Selection Policies include the tripartite system from the 1940s, but the linked post in this bullet point covers more recent selection policies and concepts such as ‘selection by mortgage’
  • Privatisation polices come in two ‘broad types’ – endogenous and exogenous, covered in this linked post.
  • Globalisation and Education is covered here

You will find more links to posts on education policies on my sociology of education page.

Good luck with the 2022 exams and happy revising!

Advanced Information for the June 2022 A-Level Sociology Exams – what should you focus on…?

The AQA recently released its advanced information for the June 2022 A-level Exams, and for A-level Sociology this means telling students what the big essay questions are going to be on in each of the three main papers

  • (Paper 1 Education, 30 mark essay): Education policies – including policies of selection, privatisation, marketisation, improvement of outcome or equality of opportunity AND globalisation (few!)
  • (Paper 2 Families Topics, 20 mark essay): The family and social change, in relation to the economy and state policies
  • (Paper 2: Beliefs in Society, 20 mark essay): Ideology, science and religion
  • (Paper 3): Crime with Theory and Methods. 30 mark crime essay): Crime, deviance, social order and social control
  • (Paper 3, 20 mark theory or methods essay): Consensus, conflict, structural and social action theories.

NB These are ONLY the essays, the shorter (4/6/10 mark) questions can be on anything, and there is NO advance guidance on Methods in Context.

In short, the AQA are telling you content for about HALF of exams over all, so by all means spend a bit more time revising the above topics but you still need to revise EVERYTHING!

What should your revision strategy be given this advanced information?

This isn’t a typical year, now that you’ve been gifted the topics for the questions in advance, as this means many students will change their revision practices to focus on these ‘five known topics’.

This means that it’s advisable to spend proportionately more time on these topics to make sure you’re at the same level.

HOWEVER, I would personally (and humbly) suggest that you should also be practicing essay technique – focussing on how to USE the knowledge in these chosen sub-topics to answer specific questions precisely – this is what’s going to give you the edge.

Think about it – EVERYONE is going to know these topics better than in the typical year, so the standard student will be going into the exam ready to splurge all that knowledge down on paper – but if that’s all they do, they’ll get no more than a C grade (even though they’ll walk out thinking they’ve earned an ‘A’.

The mark schemes only give around half the marks in those essays for knowledge, the rest of the marks are for analysis and evaluation, actually using that knowledge to answer the question.

So make sure to practice those higher order skills too.

ANOTHER VERY IMPORTANT POINT….

When I say spend more time revising the topics above, I mean like spend about another 5-10% of the time on them – DO NOT sacrifice revising the other topics – collectively everything else is still worth half the marks, you simply have to devote almost as much time to these as well, because it’s still the case that anything else can come up in those shorter questions.

So personally I’d spend a fraction more time revising the above topics, but don’t shift ore than 10% away from all the other topics, and focus a lot on exam technique.

In short, don’t change much and do mostly what you’d usually do anyway!

Sources

Advanced information for the June 2022 A-level from the AQA.

Why has the Achievement Gap Between Private and State Schools Increased?

Possible explanations include less disruption to schooling, more parental pressure and higher prior attainment

Teachers in private schools awarded 70% of A-level entries A or A* grades in 2021, compared to just 45% for all exam entries across both state and private schools.

And the proportion of top grades awarded to candidates from private schools increased at a faster rate than for state schools – the A/ A* rate rose by 9% in 2021 compared to 2020 in private schools, but only by 6% elsewhere.

Why have private school candidates improved at a faster rate than state school candidates?

This article from The Guardian suggests that there are three possible reasons for the rapid improvement of private school pupils.

  • Private school students’ learning may have been less disrupted by school closures and forced isolation for individual students than was the case with state schools – private schools generally have smaller class sizes than state schools and so it would be easier for teachers to manage online learning and classroom learning at the same time.
  • Middle class parents may have been better able to home-school their children during school closures due to their higher levels of cultural capital.
  • Teachers in private schools may have been under more pressure from paying parents to inflate their children’s grades – this may not even be conscious, but parents are paying for a service, and if the teachers don’t deliver when they have the opportunity to do so (when THEY determine the grades, not the examiners), this could make the parents question what they are spending their money on?!?
  • The difference might also be due to the higher prior levels of learning among privately schooled students – state school students simply may have got further behind because of year 1 of disruption the year before, and this is an accumulative affect.

Relevance to A-Level Sociology

This update has clear links to the sociology of education, especially the topic on social class and educational achievement, fitting in quite nicely as supporting evidence for how material and cultural capital advantages students from wealthier backgrounds.

It should also be of interest to any state school student who generally likes to feel enraged by social injustice.

The 2021 A-Level ‘Teacher Awarded Grades’ – Incomparable with 2019’s but more Valid?

Nearly double the amount of students received top grades in 2021 compared to 2019:

While a politician might try to convince you these two sets of results are measuring the same thing, it’s obvious to anyone that they are not.

The 2021 results are ‘Teacher Awarded Grades’, they are not the same thing as the 2019 exam results (NB this doesn’t necessarily mean the 2021 results are ‘worse’ or ‘less valid’ than 2019s, it might be the the former and all previous years’ results which lacked validity).

The 2019 results measured the actual performance of students under exam conditions, we can call those ‘exam results’.

The 2021 results were ‘teacher awarded grades’ based on some kind of in-house assessment, and marked in-house.

And this difference in assessment and marking procedures seems to be the most likely candidate which can explain the huge increase in top grades.

NB – this means there is no reliability between the results in 2020 and 2021 and all previous results, there is a ‘reliability break’ if you like, no comparison can be made because of this.

This is quite a nice example of that key research methods concept of (lack of) reliability.

The 2019 exam procedure

The 2019 results measured what students actually achieved in standardised A-level examinations –

  1. ALL students sat the same set of exams prepared by an exam-board at the same time and under broadly similar conditions.
  2. It is guaranteed that students would have sat these exams blind.
  3. All exam work was assessed independently by professional examiners
  4. The work was moderated by ‘team leaders’.

What this means is that you’ve got students all over England and Wales being subjected to standardised procedures, everyone assessed in the same way.

The 2021 Teacher Awarded Grade procedure

  1. Schools and teachers set their own series of in-house assessments, no standardisation across centres.
  2. There is no guarantee about how blind these assessments were or any knowledge about the conditions, no standardisation across centres.
  3. Teachers marked their own in-house assessments themselves – in small centres (private schools) this may well have been literally by the same teacher as taught the students, in larger centres more likely the marking was shared across several teachers in the same department, but not necessarily, we don’t know.
  4. There was no external moderation of teacher assessed work, at least not in the case of regular exam based A-levels.

You have to be a politician to be able claim the above two procedures are in the remotest bit compatible!

They are clearly so different that you can’t compare 2019’s results with 2021s, there’s been a radical shift in the means of the assessment, this is a socially constructed process of grade-inflation.

So which is the more valid set of results – 2019s or 2021s?

IF the purpose of grades is to give an indication of student’s ability in a subject then maybe this years results are more valid than 2019s?

I’m no fan of formal examinations, and the one big advantage of 2021 is that there were none, allowing more time for teaching and learning, and less time worrying about exam technique, and probably a lot less stress all round. (the later not the case in 2020).

This year’s assessment procedures would probably have been more natural (had more ecological validity) than a formal examination – it’s hard to get more artificial than an exam after all.

And of course the students are the big winners, more of them have higher grades, and no doubt those that have them are chuffed – and Ive nothing against more young people having something good happen to them, lord knows they have enough problems in their lives now and going forwards as it is!

The problem with the 2021 model is the lack of objectivity and standardisation – we simply don’t know which of those students would have actually got an A or A* under standardised conditions – certainly not all of them, so possibly we don’t know who is the best at exams.

But does the later matter? Do we really need to know who is marginally better at performing under the artificiality of exams anyway?

When it comes the job market further down the line, it’s unlikely that A-level exam performance will have that much baring on someone’s ability to do a job, so maybe it’s better that more students won’t have a string of Cs held against them as would have been the case for the 2019 and previous cohorts.

And someone’s ability to do a job can be determined with a rigorous interview procedure, after all.

The difficult decision is going to be what we do with next year’s results, assuming that exams are re-instated – IF the class of 2022 come out with a spread of results similar to 2019 rather than 2021, that doesn’t seem like a fair outcome to me.

Find out More

The Education Policy Institute has an objective analysis of the 2021 A-level results.