Issuing grades for qualifications summer 2020

Message from Ian Morgan, Chief Executive

You will already be aware of the decision not to proceed with the summer examinations in England this summer, following the announcement made by the Secretary of State for Education and the statement provided by Ofqual on Wednesday March 18.

We are committed to ensuring that learners receive a fair grade for their GCSE and A level qualifications this summer, and are working with Ofqual to agree the process to meet this key objective. 

Today, the Secretary of State for Education has published a statement outlining the key aspects of the process, which will involve the use of teacher judgements.

Teacher judgements will be based on the overall qualification grade each learner is likely to achieve at the end of their course of study, based on their performance on a range of formative and summative assessments. We will consider the full range of evidence, including teacher judgements, to produce a final calculated grade to award to each learner.

We will be in contact with schools and colleges in April to provide further details on how and when to submit these teacher assessed grades to us.

We also offer a range of entry level, level 1/2 and level 3 qualifications. We are currently working with regulators on how we will award those qualifications this summer and will provide further information in due course.

We understand that this a particularly stressful time for our teachers and learners and that many of you have further questions you wish us to answer.  We can assure you that we are working tirelessly to finalise our approaches and to ensure that learners, who have worked hard in preparing for their qualifications over a number of years, are treated fairly. We will publish some FAQs as soon as possible, which we will build on over the coming weeks to provide as much clarity as possible in these challenging times. 

We wish to thank you for your patience and continued support.