Labour has called for an urgent inquiry into the way A-level results were awarded last year, after reports that private schools in England gave out more than eight times as many top grades compared with before the Covid pandemic.
The government scrapped exams in England in 2021 and told teachers to award A-level and GCSE results by assessment, but figures collected by the Sunday Times suggest some schools took undue advantage by massively increasing the rate of top grades awarded to their pupils.
A staff member at a school identified as one of the worst offenders told the Guardian that teachers felt pressurised into awarding the highest grades, while the school’s leaders orchestrated internal assessments to show evidence if queried by Ofqual, the exam regulator, or the exam boards tasked with overseeing the process.
Read the full story in the Guardian here.
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