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• The Additional Assessment Materials presented in this booklet are an optional part of the range of evidence teachers may use when deciding on a candidate’s grade. • 2021 Additional Assessment Materials have been drawn from previous examination materials, namely past papers. • Additional Assessment Materials have come from past papers both
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Additional Assessment Materials • Awarding organisations’ existing assessment materials (including past papers and examiners’ reports) will all be available as normal. In addition, the following materials have been made available to centres: • 31st March, additional assessment materials including sets of questions, mark
The additional assessment materials are sets of questions across all subjects (except art and design) made up of a range of exam questions and past papers over a minimum of three years. The sets of questions allow you to focus on areas of a specification that you have taught. Alongside the questions, there are relevant mark schemes and also ...
- Background
- Introduction
- Incidents
- Phase 1: Planning
- Phase 2: Delivery
- Phase 3: Quality assurance
- Phase 4: Post results
- Conclusions and next steps
Ofqual regulates the 4 exam boards that award GCSEs, AS and A levels in England. The exam boards – AQA, OCR, Pearson and WJEC (Eduqas) – provide these qualifications to schools and colleges.
In January 2021, the government decided that it would not be fair for GCSE, AS and A level exams to take place in summer 2021 because of the disruption to students’ education caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Instead, students received grades based on assessments by their teachers: Teacher Assessed Grades or TAGs. We aimed to make sure that students had the greatest opportunity to show the full breadth of their knowledge and understanding based on what they had been taught.
The cancellation of exams changed the way we monitored exam boards as they delivered students’ grades. We focused on ensuring that GCSE, AS and A levels were issued on time with results that were, as far as possible, accurate and indicative of student performance, in the absence of external assessments.
Following a joint consultation with the Department for Education (DfE) on how grades should be awarded, we put in place our regulatory framework for general qualifications for 2021 (the General Qualifications Alternative Awarding Framework). This required the exam boards to support teachers to assess their students using a range of evidence to make a judgement about the grade at which they had performed, focusing on the content they had been taught.
This year a total of 1.2 million students received grades for GCSE, AS and A levels.
Staff at school, college and other exam centres submitted 5.7 million TAGs for students taking GCSE, AS and A level qualifications in England this summer. These constituted:
This report includes a summary of the actions that Ofqual took as the qualifications regulator and the resulting actions by exam boards. These include issues identified in the lead up to, during and immediately after results were issued for summer 2021. This report focuses only on GCSE, AS and A level qualifications offered in England, and all monitoring data concerns centres in England only.
Given the cancellation of exams, our regulation and the resulting work of the exam boards had a different focus to that in a normal year. In place of the usual distribution and processing of scripts, DfE policy and our regulations required the 4 GCSE, AS and A level exam boards to:
•issue guidance to support teachers in determining TAGs
•provide materials centres could adapt to create their own assessments
•review centre policies to help teachers adopt a consistent approach to determining TAGs
•collect Head of Centre declarations stating that students and learners had been assessed in line with the guidance
Exam boards must promptly notify Ofqual of any existing or potential incident which could have an impact on standards, public confidence in qualifications, or their ability to develop, deliver or award qualifications in a way which complies with our rules (these instances are referred to as Adverse Effects under Condition B3 of our General Conditions of Recognition). We call these reports ‘event notifications’, of which we received fewer this year compared to the number in pre-pandemic exam series. Exam boards made 83 event notifications in relation to summer 2021, compared to 232 notifications in summer 2019.
This reflects the different arrangements this year. Many of the processes in a pre-pandemic series – that would usually present significant risks to exam boards’ delivery of qualifications – did not take place. For example, as there were no formal exams, there was no confidential assessment material and therefore no risk of the security of such materials being breached. Instead, this year all reported security breaches related to students being given their results early.
Chart 1 shows an overview of event notifications for summer 2021. These categories are explained in more detail later in this report.
Chart 1. Types of issues reported
None of these issues was substantial enough to threaten the timely release of GCSE, AS and A level results this year, and nearly all students received their grades on results day. Most notifications from exam boards reflected aspects of the awarding arrangements outside of their direct control, so they had fewer opportunities to prevent them.
The external quality assurance carried out by the exam boards resulted in changes to the grades submitted by centres in only a small proportion of cases. This reflects the fact that overall, where exam board subject specialists looked at the samples of evidence on which teachers had based their judgments, they found that for most centres the evidence supported the grades awarded.
Exam board readiness
The role of the boards was very different this year due to the cancellation of exams. As a consequence, we adapted our regulatory requirements for summer 2021 via the General Qualifications Alternative Awarding Framework and accompanying guidance. These publications outlined the expectations of exam boards involved in the awarding of GCSE, AS, A level, Advanced Extension Awards and Project Qualifications in 2021 in the context of the pandemic. In response to this, the exam boards published guidance in March 2021 that set out the approach they would require centres to take to determine GCSE, AS and A level grades in summer 2021. The was supplemented by additional guidance on other aspects of the arrangements this year such as grading and appeals. JCQ also produced guidance aimed at students and parents to help address the anxiety that may have been felt by students not able to take exams as they had planned. This sat alongside Ofqual’s Student Guide to Awarding: Summer 2021. All of these documents were written to be as accessible as possible to students, to keep them informed about the alternative arrangements in place this year. The exam boards collaborated through the Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ) to devise an alternative way for students to receive grades and to provide consistent guidance and support to centres, in line with government policy and our regulatory requirements. Exam boards worked together to plan how new processes required this year such as quality assurance and appeals would be delivered, and to ensure there was sufficient capacity and expertise in place to do so. The exam boards tried as far as possible to ensure that centres had to engage with only one exam board at a time, to minimise burden. In April 2021, once the General Qualifications Alternative Awarding Framework had come into effect, we met with each exam board to assess their readiness to award grades to students. In these meetings we focused on the extent to which they had identified and were managing the risks to the safe delivery of results. This included new processes which exam boards put in place to support centres to determine TAGs. We also sought assurances that they were on track to recruit, train and supervise sufficient subject specialists and other staff to deliver the quality assurance and appeals arrangements. We identified no serious concerns but used this opportunity to confirm our view of the key areas of risk for the summer series that they would need to manage. We met with each exam board regularly throughout the spring and summer to discuss their preparations and progress. Due to the amount of collaboration required between exam boards to deliver the assessment arrangements this year we also met regularly with the exam boards on a collective basis as JCQ.
Entries
Schools and colleges submit entries to the exam boards for each qualification their students will take. In May 2021 we published statistics on provisional entries for GCSE, AS and A level qualifications in summer 2021. These showed that: overall, GCSE entries remained stable (approximately 5.3 million) this year (an increase of 0.4% on 2020), though a rise in entries from year 11 students masked decreases in entries from lower year groups and from candidates older than 16 there were small increases in the proportion of entries for the higher tier in most tiered GCSEs compared to 2020 (ranging from 2 to 5 percentage points) A level entries for summer 2021 increased by 3% on 2020 (756,230 in 2021 compared to 731,855 in 2020), partly reflecting a change in the size of the overall cohort AS entries for summer 2021 decreased by 33% on 2020 (58,300 in 2021 compared to 86,970 in 2020), continuing a trend seen in these qualifications since reforms decoupling them from A levels Note that the number of GCSE entries recorded in the Official Statistics is greater than the number of GCSE TAGs submitted. This is because teachers submitted a single TAG for GCSE combined science but this qualification counts as 2 GCSEs. Entries reflect the information submitted to the exam boards at that time, but the final entries are always expected to vary. Information on final entry numbers for GCSE, AS and A level subjects in England in summer 2021 can be found in the results tables published by JCQ.
Access arrangements and reasonable adjustments
In a standard examination series, exam boards adjust some exam arrangements for students, or allow centres to make the necessary adjustments. Ofqual does not prescribe what arrangements exam boards should provide, but requires all exam boards to have clear, published details about who qualifies for these arrangements and what arrangements may be given. Access arrangements Access arrangements are provisions made for students, agreed before they take an assessment, to ensure that they can be validly assessed and are not unfairly disadvantaged due to a disability, temporary illness, or injury or if their first language is not English. Access arrangements can be provided for any students taking exams or non-exam assessments who meet the eligibility criteria. Individual students may require more than one form of access arrangement. Reasonable adjustments Access arrangements granted for disabled students are known as reasonable adjustments. If a student has a disability (defined by the Equality Act 2010 as meaning the student has a physical or mental impairment that has a substantial and long-term negative effect on their ability to do normal daily activities) they are legally entitled to reasonable adjustments. Modified Papers Access arrangements also cover the provision of modified papers. These are papers or tasks which have been adapted to make them more accessible for particular students. For example, enlarging font size for candidates who may have a visual impairment or providing papers in braille. Access arrangement statistics In November 2021 we published statistics on applications for access arrangements during the 2020 to 2021 academic year. When exams were cancelled on 4 January 2021, the deadlines for requesting modified papers and other forms of reasonable adjustment were imminent. Centres were encouraged to continue to submit applications despite the cancellation of exams. For the 2020 to 2021 academic year there were 447,555 access arrangements approved. The majority of schools and colleges (88.2%) requested access arrangements for one or more of their students. However, for summer 2021 centres themselves administered adjustments for students, when they assessed them to determine their TAGs. We do not know how many adjustments centres made for their students.
The normal risks to safe delivery did not apply this year. There were, however, new risks for centres and the exam boards to manage. We monitored exam board delivery and where these risks were realised, made sure that they managed issues effectively and quickly to minimise any negative impact on students.
Overall, there were far fewer event notifications in relation to qualification delivery than usual.
Our regulatory requirements for 2021 reflected government policy that teachers should assess their students and decide on the grade that best reflected their performance in assessments based only on the parts of their courses they had been taught.
Centres were given discretion to decide how to assess their students, because they had been affected in different ways by the pandemic. This allowed them to:
•take into account relevant work already undertaken, including coursework or non-exam assessments
•set new assessments written by teachers or using questions provided by the exam boards
•vary the approach used for individual students where that was appropriate for their individual circumstances (for instance those lacking the same range of existing evidence as their peers, or who may not have received a reasonable adjustment they were entitled to at the time that an assessment was undertaken)
Exam boards were responsible for quality assurance of the process followed by centres for teachers to determine grades, but not for the accuracy of each individual TAG assigned by a teacher.
When we published our decisions on how grades for GCSEs, AS and A levels should be determined in summer 2021, we confirmed that students would have the right to appeal. As there was no marking, the usual arrangements relating to Reviews of Marking, Moderation and Appeals could not be used. We therefore consulted on the Appeals Guidance to which the...
The summer 2021 series saw more than 6 million results issued on time to 1.2 million students, despite the cancellation of exams. Between them these students received qualifications in 385 different GCSE, AS and A levels, allowing them to move on to the next stage of their lives.
Under normal circumstances exams are the fairest form of assessment. The government is firmly committed to GCSE, AS and A level exams going ahead in England in summer 2022, and we and the exam boards are working towards this aim. However, we have also consulted on and confirmed that TAGs would be used in summer 2022 in the unlikely event that exams do not proceed as planned. While the number of issues was small this series, and those that arose would not occur if exams take place, there may be steps that could be taken to better manage them or prevent reoccurrence if TAGs are used again.
We are now looking ahead to the exam boards’ delivery of summer 2022. We have confirmed some changes to the exam and wider assessment arrangements. We have also published guidance for teachers to help them prepare for the unlikely event that exams are cancelled. We will next discuss with the exam boards the work we had expected them to do following the 2019 summer series, had the pandemic not happened. We will review the expectations we had at that time to prepare for the subsequent exam series and consider the focus of our regulatory activity in summer 2022.
In doing so, we will be mindful of the extra demands on the exam boards this year as they deliver assessments with advance information and other adaptations made to GCSE, AS and A levels while also preparing for the delivery of contingency arrangements should the need for them arise.
• The Additional Assessment materials presented in this booklet are an optional part of the range of evidence you may use when deciding on a candidate’s grade. • 2021 Additional Assessment Materials have been drawn from previous examination materials, namely past papers.
The Enhanced Tiering Support for Pearson Edexcel GCSE (9–1) Mathematics provides several tools to help you determine a suitable tier of entry for mock examinations. The Enhanced Tiering Support comprises: Tiering guidance to show the key diferences in content and assessment between the two tiers. Exemplification of performance at grade 4 and ...
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The Additional Assessment Materials presented in this booklet are an optional part of the range of evidence teachers may use when deciding on a candidate’s grade. • 2021 Additional Assessment Materials have been drawn from previous examination materials, namely past papers. • Additional Assessment Materials have come from past papers both
