Students this year achieved a bumper crop of A-level results, with 20 per cent more A*s than in pre-pandemic 2019.
So does this means the students this year were smarter than 2019, or that there has been no Covid learning loss, or that grades are more generous?
Schools Week investigates …
1. Not all grade inflation was wiped out …
After more generous teacher grades were awarded due to cancelled exams during the pandemic, Ofqual rolled out a two-year plan to wind back standards to the same level as 2019.
The standard was supposed to be achieved last year, but results were still slightly higher. In 2023, 26.5 per cent of grades were A and above, compared to 25.2 in 2019.
Essentially – Ofqual didn’t quite get there. Grades remained a bit more generous. And given they’d committed to only rolling back grade inflation over two years, they accepted the 2023 level as the new standard.
To muddy things a little, A-level students last year also benefited from some in-built mechanisms meaning grades couldn’t fall below 2019.
As former chief regulator Dr Jo Saxton put it at the time, this meant a typical student who would have achieved an A grade in their A-level geography before the pandemic was just as likely to get an A in 2023 “even if their performance… is a little weaker in 2023 than it would have been before the pandemic”.
2. And that grade inflation is now baked in
Ofqual used the 2023 grading standard for this year’s A-level grading. This meant that the “standard of work needed for any particular grade was maintained this year” compared to 2023.
Results nonetheless rose for pupils this year, particularly at the top grades. The proportion of A*s awarded were 20 per cent higher this year than in pre-pandemic 2019.
The number of students getting three A*s also rose by 50 per cent over that time, despite entries rising by just 11 per cent. That’s a big shift.
These students were in year 9 when lockdown hit. They were the first cohort to return to GCSE exams after Covid cancellations, which could explain the improved attainment since 2023.
Ofqual said any rise in results this year compared to last year are “largely due to the ability of the cohort”.
Ofqual has since confirmed to Schools Week that grading standards in 2023 will now be the baseline for all exams going forward – suggesting that the small amount of grade inflation seen between 2019 and 2023 is now baked into the system.
Essentially, this is the “new normal” post-Covid grading standard.
3. How can results be higher given Covid disruption?
This all raises the question of how results for students this year can be higher given the huge concerns over Covid disruption?
One of the explanations is that Covid learning loss – at least in terms of passing exams – isn’t as big as feared. Essentially – this year’s pupils *are* smarter than pre-pandemic.
This may have been partially backed up by the national reference test, which a sample of pupils take each year. It allows Ofqual to monitor over time how cohorts of students are performing, and is meant to act as a guide for increases or decreases in that cohort’s GCSE grades.
Last year’s NRT showed while there was a “statistically significant downward change” at grade 4 in English, compared to 2017, there was no such differences in results at any of the other key grades in English or maths.
Next week’s NRT for the GCSE cohort will be an important indicator as to whether this may be a reason. And importantly, achievement in exams doesn’t mean lockdown hasn’t had a wider impact elsewhere.
Another explanation may be that, given the impartial grade inflation windback, results are just more generous – essentially, grade inflation. Particularly given last year’s cohort also had extra grading protections built in.
Lastly, the 2019 pre-pandemic cohort achieved the lowest proportion of top grades for 12 years, so that year could be the anomalous one and results this year would always have been higher due to random variation. However, A* grades this year are still the highest since at least 2010.
An issue complicating all this is that A-levels are taken by students who choose just a few subjects, and usually the ones they achieve highest in. The rise is also mostly in top grades.
Again, next week’s GCSE results may be more telling about whether this is a wider trend or something related to the selective nature of A-level.
4. Ofqual doesn’t want to talk about it
Schools Week asked Ofqual if they could explain why results are higher this year than 2019 – was it down to smarter pupils, grade inflation, or something else?
But the regulator repeatedly refused to compare results across the five-year period.
“Direct comparisons between A-levels in 2024 and those taken five or more years earlier, before the pandemic, may be misleading,” a spokesperson said.
“This is because A levels in the years before the pandemic were in a period of reform, and performance standards had not yet been fully established.”
This suggestion that results in 2019 were somehow shaky is *not* a line that Ofqual has used previously.
Schools Week asked chief regulator Sir Ian Bauckham during an interview if he could explain the difference too, but he repeatedly refused to answer.
He said: “I’m just going to resist making direct comparisons with grades that are now over five years and more old. I think what we’re talking about here is the importance of maintaining standards now and we did that from 2023 to 24 and we will do it going forward from there.”
Perhaps one reason for the silence is that grade inflation is quite a politically-loaded phrase. Former education secretary Michael Gove said he had “reversed the tide” of results rising each year under the last Labour government – saying “the truth is we were lying to children”.
Tom Middlehurst, assessment specialist at ASCL school leaders’ union, said Ofqual are clear grades are determined by student performance and that experienced senior examiners set the grade boundaries using expertise, statistical data and evidence of students’ work.
However, he said the process “remains opaque and it is hard for students, parents and teachers to understand exactly how these decisions are made.
“Our association has suggested to Ofqual and the exam boards that, in an age of Zoom and Teams, the way these decisions are arrived at are made public and recorded, so that the process of grading is more transparent and open.”
5. What does this mean for grades going forward?
Given future cohorts may be less impacted by Covid, because they had more time to catch up, does this mean results might continue to rise?
That very much hinges on the level of Covid learning loss and whether this year’s cohort were just a particularly bright lot.
Bauckham said he cannot predict how well students will do next year, but added: “I will reiterate that in order to achieve any particular grade at A-level the standard of work required will remain the same [as in 2023].
“You will always get in any given year and in any given qualification slightly more or slightly fewer students meeting any particular threshold that you are clear about, but the threshold won’t be changing. The same standard of work will be required.”
The regulator said it was not possible to predict how students would perform in the future, but the value of A-level grades will be maintained.
“There will always be small shifts in numbers achieving any particular standard or grade, owing to differences in the student cohort and the combinations of subjects they take.”
