Universities told to keep places open for A-level appeals

Universities in England are being told to keep places open for college students in the event that they attraction towards A-level outcomes.

Amid uncertainty about alternative examination grades, Universities Minister Michelle Donelan has urged college heads to be as “versatile as doable”.

It means if college students miss the required grades however efficiently attraction, they might nonetheless begin subsequent time period.

“No one ought to have to put their future on maintain due to the virus,” mentioned Ms Donelan.

With A-levels cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic, college students will obtain estimated outcomes on Thursday, which shall be used to determine college places.

But when college students get disappointing outcomes that they assume are unfair, universities are being told to go away the door open for places till appeals have been thought-about by examination boards.

Appeals, which have to be submitted by way of colleges, ought to be accomplished by 7 September, permitting college students who get improved grades to take up places this autumn.

The most important elements figuring out the alternative examination grades shall be how college students are ranked in means and the earlier examination outcomes of their college or school.

Because the row over Scottish examination outcomes has proven, this may imply that high-achieving kids in colleges with poor outcomes might be marked down.

Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon apologised on Monday after accepting her authorities “didn’t get it proper” over examination outcomes.

Schooling Secretary John Swinney will set out the Scottish authorities’s plan to repair the problem later.

Ms Donelan mentioned she recognised the necessity for universities to be honest in the direction of “college students who’re extremely gifted in colleges or faculties that haven’t prior to now had robust outcomes”.

She mentioned the “overwhelming majority of grades” had been anticipated to be correct, however added it was “important” to have the appeals “security internet” for “younger individuals who might in any other case be held again from transferring on to their chosen route”.

Calling on universities to present “flexibility” in admissions choices, she known as on them to maintain the places of scholars whose “grade might change as the results of an attraction”.

However regardless of these issues – and the change of coronary heart in Scotland – there are not any indicators of any change in utilizing an analogous strategy to moderating leads to England.

That is nonetheless anticipated to be a very good 12 months for candidates, with an anticipated discount in abroad college students which means that universities can have extra places to fill.

The examination regulator Ofqual has already mentioned there shall be a extra lenient strategy to grades this 12 months, with a two-percentage-points improve anticipated in prime grades at A-level.

However outcomes is not going to be as beneficiant as academics’ predictions, which might have pushed up outcomes by 12 share factors – with these predictions ready to be shared with pupils after the outcomes are revealed.

The outcomes to be issued this week are designed to preserve continuity with earlier years, however there have been issues about whether or not particular person college students may very well be handled unfairly.

A survey of 500 A-level college students in England, carried out by the College of Birmingham and the College of Nottingham, prompt virtually twice as many college students would have most popular to have taken their exams, fairly than depend on estimated grades.

Schooling Secretary Gavin Williamson defended the system for calculating grades this 12 months as “basically a good one”.

“We all know that, with out exams, even the most effective system shouldn’t be excellent,” he mentioned.

“That’s the reason I welcome the truth that Ofqual has launched a sturdy attraction system, so each single pupil might be handled pretty – and right now we’re asking universities to do their half to guarantee each younger individual can progress to the vacation spot they deserve.”

However Larissa Kennedy, president of the Nationwide Union of College students, mentioned there was “completely no benefit” in colleges’ prior general efficiency to decide college students’ outcomes this 12 months, criticising it as “baking inequality into the system”.

She told BBC Newsnight: “They’re simply making an attempt to match college students’ attainment towards a previous 12 months, which suggests you are simply assuming and reproducing the truth that college students from low socio-economic backgrounds are – as this technique would say – due to get decrease grades.”

She described the algorithm getting used to decide grades as a “lazy transfer”, main to “people being let down by an unjust system”, which she mentioned was “fully improper”.