'I feel cheated': Rotherham students struggle to make sense of exam grades

In the small sports hall of Wales high school in Rotherham, confusion turned to frustration and anger as students and staff, many in tears, struggled to make sense of grades produced by an obscure computer model for exams that never took place.

“In years to come we’re always going to be the year that didn’t count. The pandemic year,” said Anna Hogarth, 18, sitting despondent after trying for hours to get through to Nottingham University where she hopes to study chemistry and molecular physics.

She needed an A in maths, and Bs in chemistry and in physics, which her teachers had assessed her as being able to achieve. The grades assigned to her by the exam regulator’s algorithm were ACD, a two-grade downgrade in physics, leaving her future uncertain.

“I’m disappointed, confused. The idea that we’d just be given grades, I didn’t think it was real. I wanted to be able to prove myself. Something so simple for the government, that they will never think about again, will affect the rest of my life,” she said.

Eighty-four per cent of Wales high school’s 130-plus A-level students had at least one grade moderated down by the regulator Ofqual. The comprehensive of nearly 1,200 pupils has a relatively large sixth form. It sits south-east of Rotherham, in one of Yorkshire’s less affluent boroughs.

Pepe Di’lasio, the headteacher, said there was “an injustice and unfairness that is clinically cold” in the government’s “absolutely chaotic” handling of this year’s A-levels. His students had been disproportionately affected, he said, because of where the school is, its larger class sizes, and because its results last year were only average.

A private school a stone’s throw away would be less affected by the algorithm’s grading, he said. “As someone who went into teaching to make a difference for young people and for those students from disadvantaged backgrounds, this is heart-wrenching. You feel like you’re fighting against a tide. It can’t be justified that our most disadvantaged are the ones hurt most by this algorithm.”

On a table bearing tissues as well as Covid-compliant hand sanitiser and disinfectant, Abigail Camber, 18, was using two phones to try get through to Leeds and Manchester universities. She had been rejected from philosophy courses at both after receiving Bs in French and maths and a D in religious education, significantly below her teacher-assessed grades of ABB.

“When they said in March that I couldn’t do my exams, I just burst out crying,” she said. “It’s been a really long wait, five months, to find out. This last week was very stressful. It’s just filled my head the whole week.”

Kieran Street, 18, was predicted an AAB in economics, maths and physics, which would have met the requirement to study economics at Newcastle University. Instead he received an ACB.

“The most frustrating thing is the fact it’s just been given to me – ‘you are an ACB student’ – but I haven’t had chance to prove myself,” he said, checking his phone for any messages from the university. “I feel puzzled, a bit cheated, obviously disappointed, but I’ve not given up yet. If it goes south, it’s going to change my whole path in the next few years.”

Teachers said their assessed grades for students in smaller subjects such as theatre studies, music and computer science were mostly accepted or even upgraded. But in bigger subjects such as English, maths and sociology, students were more likely to have been marked down.

That quirk of the algorithm was welcome news for James Clark, 17, who had been predicted an A*, two As and a B across history, theatre, an extended project qualification (EPQ) and film. Ofqual gave him three A*s and an A. “It’s ludicrous, I’m ecstatic,” he laughed. “I feel like I’m about to fall over.”

Having turned down an offer from Oxford – “I looked at it and it wasn’t for me” – Clark will be starting an art history and curating degree at York University on 1 October. “One of the advantages for me was that we were small cohorts. Anything under 15 students is being biased more towards teachers’ evaluations. If I was in a class of over 30, I might not have got the grades that I got.”

The school’s head of sixth-form, Charlotte Cooper, was trying to help students speak to their universities and access the Ucas website, which temporarily went offline. “It feels like they’ve had nothing but barriers to overcome in the last few months and this has compounded the situation that they’re in,” she said.

“They’re just being treated as faceless students, not individuals. And you can’t even put your arms around them.”