'Disheartened' Essex student criticises A-level system after disappointing grades
An Essex student said he was “disheartened and angry” after coming away with two C-grades and one D for his A-levels.
Charlie Heron, from Shenfield High School in Essex, said he will not be allowed to appeal so will sit exams in October.
Charlie, 18, said his mock exam results were “not the best”, but feels a better system should have been put in place.
Across the country teachers were told to submit the grades they thought each student would have received if they had sat the papers, alongside a rank order of students, after exams were cancelled amid the pandemic.
Exam boards then moderated these grades to ensure this year's results were not significantly higher than previous years and the value of students' grades were not undermined.
Boards downgraded nearly 40% of school leavers' grades in England, according to data from Ofqual – which amounts to around 280,000 entries being adjusted down.
Sixth-form students at the Ark Globe Academy in Elephant and Castle, south London, questioned the approach, saying it made “no sense”.
However, the school’s headteacher said it had been a “good year”, with three students achieving the grades to secure places at Oxbridge universities in September.
Brenda Irabor, 18, who plans to study history, politics and economics at University College London said she was “happy” with her grades.
"With the way they were calculating our grades, it felt like it was constantly changing and sometimes things were very vague and that made it more stressful. It made me feel like ‘if I don’t get the grades I want, it’s not a true representation of my abilities’," she said.
Brenda added: "I know a lot of people aren’t going to be happy and it’s going to be hard for them because they can’t show what they really could have done if they had been given the opportunity."
Ark Globe Academy headteacher Matt Jones said: "We just tried to block the noise out, we knew the circumstances that we faced. It’s a very difficult situation for anybody to try and manage such an extensive exam system in such a short period of time, to pivot and do something else. It is what it is; we’ve made the best of it for our students as best we possibly could, so they can secure great destinations."