Disadvantaged students to bear brunt of grade deflation, say experts

Disadvantaged students are likely to bear the brunt of grade deflation when this year’s A-level and GCSE grades are published, according to experts, who said the government’s decision to impose pre-pandemic grading in England was premature.

This week hundreds of thousands of sixth-formers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland will receive the results of their A-level, BTec and other exams. But a survey of students by the Social Mobility Foundation (SMF) found that those from disadvantaged or low-income backgrounds in England were less likely to have received the help they needed to restore learning lost during the pandemic.

As a result, the gap in top grades received by disadvantaged students compared with their better-off peers is expected to widen for the second year in a row, after examination boards were ordered to return to grading standards last seen in 2019.

“We all feel the desire to say that the impact of Covid needs to be over. But all the evidence shows that it is premature to say that its impact has ended on this generation of young people,” said Sarah Atkinson, the SMF’s chief executive.

“Many young people will be celebrating on Thursday and that’s how it should be. But we are afraid that too many young people on low incomes will not get the outcome they deserve.

“These are young people who have done everything that was asked of them. They’ve worked hard, shown resilience and determination, and they should get the opportunities that they deserve at this stage. There is a risk that they are bearing the burden of this policy.

“We’re expecting the attainment gap based on income to grow, and we also saw last year that the regional gaps, the north-east compared with London, for example, were wider in terms of top grades. And we are worried that is going to happen again this year.”

The 2022 A-level results had the widest “disadvantage gap” since statistics were first published seven years ago, with average point scores between disadvantaged and wealthier pupils wider than in 2019, when formal exams were last sat before the onset of the pandemic.

In 2020 and 2021, formal exams were scrapped and grades were awarded instead by teacher assessment. The numbers of higher grades for both A-levels and GCSEs increased sharply.

The government attempted to repair learning gaps through its national tutoring programme, intended to fund extra tuition for the pupils most affected by disruption. But the SMF’s survey of nearly 2,000 students taking A-levels found that 46% of those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds had no access to the programme, compared with 28% of students from higher income backgrounds.

Some forecasters expect that up to 50,000 students taking A-levels this summer will miss out on A* or A grades that they would have received last year, when more generous grading was the norm.

Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, has admitted that parents and students “might wonder why” exam grades are lower than last year.

Writing in the Sunday Times, Keegan said: “Ultimately this is about fairness, and making sure we have a system that treats pupils fairly compared with previous years, and equally, whatever background they come from, school they attend, or part of the country the grow up in.”

But England’s decision to “disinflate” GCSE and A-level grades in just two years was in stark contrast to the more gentle approach taken by regulators in Wales and Scotland.

Scotland’s government opted to take the Equality Act into account, while Qualification Wales said exams would be graded more generously this year to reflect the “long-term impact” of the pandemic before returning to pre-pandemic levels in 2024.

“The fact that England has taken a different decision to Scotland and Wales shows you how finely balanced that decision was. But in England it has been pushed too fast, and the effects are going to be felt by a small – we hope – group of young people,” Atkinson said.

Lee Elliot Major, professor of social mobility at the University of Exeter, said he feared educational inequality could be entrenched for the next decade, based on research currently under way.

“What we’re finding is that it’s not just the most disadvantaged pupils who have been set back profoundly, it’s a broad range of children. We think it’s affected all, other than perhaps the [wealthiest] 20% of children who have been insulated from the pandemic,” he said.

“What the results this year will show is that the profound legacy of the pandemic is to exacerbate the educational inequalities that were already there. I’m absolutely sure that we’ll see a widening of those inequalities, but I think that it’s also going to affect middle-income pupils as well as low-income pupils.”

Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said the post-Covid recovery programme had been “woefully inadequate” and that he supported calls for a better national strategy.

“It was always going to be necessary to return to pre-pandemic grading at some point. Although this will likely have an impact on grades, it will be applied across the board and not change the number of university places available,” Barton said.

“This is always an anxious time of year, but schools and colleges will be doing all they can to provide support and guidance for students as they take their next steps.”