“You shall not pass”: the Gandolfian problem with GCSE results

Over the past week a lot has been written about the number of pupils failing or passing their GCSEs compared to recent years. The government has rejected the language of ‘fail’, so where has this come from, and what does it mean – if anything – in practice?

Can you fail a GCSE?
Yes. But the only fail grade is a U, meaning that students have not got enough marks to achieve a Grade 1. This summer, 98% of qualifications were awarded at a Grade 1 or above – this is a pass.

So why are Grades 1 – 3 sometimes described as a fail by the media?
The Department for Education describes a Grade 4 as a ‘standard pass’ and a Grade 5 as a ‘good pass’ at GCSE. It is therefore unsurprising that media outlets, schools, colleges, and other stakeholders perceive something less than a Grade 4 as not a pass, i.e. a fail. But they are technically not a fail; Grades 1 to 3 are a pass.

This misconception is compounded by the fact that students who don’t achieve a Grade 4 or above in English and / or maths are required to resit the qualification as a condition of post-16 funding. In pre-pandemic years, less than a third of those students actually improved their grade during sixth form with one in ten achieving a lower grade than they did in Year 11.