Education CommitteeFurther written evidence submitted by Ofqual

In March 2013, the Minister for Education and Skills in Wales, Leighton Andrews, wrote to the Education Select Committee reporting a fall in 2012 in the overall outcomes for GCSE English and English Language in England. He stated that there was a drop of five percentage points from 2011 to 2012. A report that we published in November 20121 said that like-for-like results went down by only 0.3 percentage points.

This note explains the apparent difference between the analysis we published and that referred to by the Minister.

The results referred to in our November report are the results for candidates in England, Wales and Northern Ireland who were awarded GCSE English or English Language in summer 2012. These results were collated by JCQ and published in August 2012. This was the first time that qualification awards had been made in these new specifications and included all those who had taken units in any of the four series: January and June 2011, January and June 2012. The summer 2012 results we reported on included students of all ages who completed qualifications in summer 2012. This included those who had completed their qualifications in year 11 (at the end of the Key Stage 4), and also those from years 9 or 10 and older students (for example, in further education colleges).

The letter written by Leighton Andrews AM, refers to data that was published by the Department for Education (DfE) in January 20132. The DfE’s data is published each year for students that have reached the end of Key Stage 4 in that year, whereas JCQ’s results data, published in August each year, reflects candidates that were awarded in that exam series. As well as this, the DfE’s data reflects results for students in England only and JCQ’s data is for students from England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

It is therefore not straightforward to compare results that are based on the different data sources.

In our report into GCSE English in November 2012, we explained that the 0.3 percentage point drop from outcomes in 2011 to 2012 referred to ‘like-for-like’ candidates. The initial results that JCQ published in August reported a drop of 1.5 percentage points. Included in these results were a new GCSE in Digital Communications, which supressed overall results by 0.2 percentage points.

It should be noted that there was a significant difference in the student cohorts in 2011 and 2012. There was a loss to the cohort of about 23,000 students from the independent and selective sectors—students that would typically perform rather better than average. We estimated that the impact of this change to the cohort would affect results by a fall of about 1 percentage point.

Taking these factors into consideration, we therefore concluded that, on a ‘like-for-like’ basis, in GCSE English and English language in England there had been about a 0.3 percentage point drop from 2011 to 2012.

The data referred to by the Minister also does not account for results for iGCSE English language. Between 2011 and 2012 the number of students at the end of Key Stage 4 that had taken an iGCSE in English language had risen from 5,574 to 22,254—an increase of 16,680 students3. Over 90% of these students achieved at least a grade C. This represents about 1.5% of all students that achieved at least a grade C in either a GCSE or iGCSE in English/English language.

April 2013