Education CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by Ofqual

Background

GCSE results were announced on 23 August 2012. On 25 August Ofqual announced that we would look closely at concerns raised by schools and colleges into outcomes in GCSE English and English Language. On 28 August we published a list of questions and answers about GCSE English 2012 which set out the concerns being expressed, the work we intended to do, and provided additional background information.

Ofqual worked with representatives of schools and colleges, exam boards and other stakeholders to gather and analyse evidence to inform its work Ofqual’s findings were published on 31 August in its initial report “GCSE English Awards 2012: A Regulatory Report”.

This note sets out the actions and meetings that have taken place since the publication of the initial report.

Communications

The initial report was published on Ofqual’s website on 31 August along with a press release.

On 1 September we published Myths about Ofqual’s report into GCSE English 2012. This document deals with a number of common concerns, and misunderstandings, to help people understand better how things work.

Helpdesk

Since the release of GCSE results on 23 August, and up until 16:00 on 5 September, the Ofqual Helpdesk has received 46 phone calls and 270 emails relating to GCSE English results1. Three calls have also been received which relate specifically to the November re-sit opportunity. All calls and emails are being dealt with within our usual turnaround times.

Awarding Organisations

On Monday 3 September, we met with the chief executives and responsible officers of AQA, CCEA, Edexcel, OCR and WJEC. The purposes of this meeting were:

to give exam boards the chance to challenge our initial report and findings

to make swift progress in establishing arrangements for resits and to consider how Enquiry About Results (EARs) are being handled across awarding organisations

to discuss plans for GCSE English 2013

On Wednesday 5 September we spoke to the Chief Executives of AQA, CCEA, Edexcel, OCR and WJEC to clarify our expectations around the processing of EARs and the preparations required for re-sits in GCSE English.

Stakeholders

On Wednesday 5 September we met with representatives of NUT to allow them the opportunity to review the evidence which we used in reaching the decisions in our report, and to raise any concerns with us. Similar meetings were held with AOC, ASCL, IAA and NAHT on Thursday 6 September

Further Actions

We are continuing to oversee exam board plans for resits. We need to make some changes to the detail of the usual regulatory rules around resits.

We will reach decisions soon about whether we should make any changes to the GCSE English arrangements for 2013, to secure standards.

We are actively considering two questions:

I.GCSE English A*–C results fell by 1.5% overall, in line with expectations given changes to the student mix. But some schools and colleges have been surprised by their results—with significant and unexpected variations as against their predictions. Why?

II.These were new qualifications. They were the first full suite of modular GCSE English qualifications and the assessment included controlled assessment, a relatively new concept brought in across the range of GCSEs to replace coursework. To what extent did these factors—or other factors—mean that some schools got the results they expected and others didn’t?

We are developing hypotheses, and we will be taking advice from our Standards Advisory Group on them, and the best methodologies for getting to the root of things. This work will take a little while, perhaps 4–6 weeks. We will publish a second report.

We have made additional data and analyses requests of exam boards, to help us get to the root of things, and we expect to make more. We will continue to liaise with representative groups of schools, colleges and students.

September 2012