This year's A level results were accompanied, as usual, by pictures of joyously jumping teenagers, and searching analyses of lots of numbers, such as why 28.4% of the grades awarded to boys were A and A*, but only 28.2% to girls. Much the same is likely to be reported about the GCSE grades when they are announced on Thursday. All good, and importan...

In the context of GCSE, AS and A level exams in England, two important events took place shortly before the holidays, on 12 December. One was Ofqual's publication of their statistics concerning the numbers of grades challenged and changed following the summer 2024 awards in England, of which more shortly; the other was the pre-appointment hearing b...

A few weeks ago, Ofqual introduced six new principles within their "General Conditions of Recognition", the rules with which awarding organisations must comply. Two of these new principles are: Principle 1 – An awarding organisation must act with honesty and integrity.Principle 5 – An awarding organisation must act in an open, transparent and co-op...

In my blog last August, posted shortly before the exam results, I suggested that there "may be more marking errors than you think". That all depends, of course, on what you might think; but now that Ofqual have published their statistics on reviews of marking following challenges to the results, we know exactly how many marking errors were discover...