In England, every year, more than a million high school students take GCSE (age 16), AS (age 17) and A level (age 18) exams. The grades those students are awarded are important. Good grades open doors. Poor grades slam them shut. So it's vital that those grades are reliable, and can be trusted. The truth, however, is that about 1 grade in every 4 is wrong. Without any right of appeal. That means that of the approximately 6 million grades awarded each summer, about 1.5 million

In 2020 and 2021, formal 'sit-down' school exams in England were cancelled because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Students, though, still needed to be recognised for their learning over many years of schooling, and to be able to progress to their next stage of education, or employment. How could students be awarded fair grades? That's a question that, with hindsight, the government botched. Many of the problems, though, were evident at the time, and far better answers were quite p

Over the last few weeks, I've been working on a document that tells the full story about grade (un)reliability, including * why grade...

In principle, the exam appeals process should right inadvertent wrongs; in practice, the process is deeply unfair, as is the process by...