A-levels row: Oxford college to honour all offers despite results

An Oxford college said it will accept all students with offers regardless of their A-level results, as thousands of Oxbridge alumni call on others to show equal “kindness and generosity” to downgraded pupils.

Laura Ashe, the tutor for admissions at Worcester College, Oxford, said it had decided to honour all UK offers this year because it is the “morally right thing to do”.

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It comes after Oxbridge applicants who received lower grades than expected on Thursday were told they may have to wait a year before they can start degree courses after successfully appealing against their results.

About 39% of A-level results were downgraded by the exam regulator Ofqual’s algorithm, with disadvantaged pupils worst affected.

Ashe told BBC Radio 4: “For us, at a very simple level, it was clear to us before results came out that these students were not going to have sat exams and therefore we took the view that there wasn’t going to be any new information there that could justify rejecting someone to whom we’d made an offer.

“And, of course, when we did get the results … we discovered something much more disturbing, which was quite how much already disadvantaged students were being further disadvantaged by the way these grades were being given.”

Responding to claims that teachers’ assessments were “much too high” she added: “But then the algorithm that they [Ofqual] applied to pull those [results] down literally copied the inequalities that are currently existing in our education system.”

Worcester College made 83% of its offers to state schools this year, Ashe said. She added that nearly a quarter of those offer holders had their results downgraded compared with a tenth of those from private schools.

She said: “It was clear that Ofqual felt it had to end up with a grade distribution that looked right. So they did something that made the grade distribution over the whole country look right, but they can’t possibly tell us that they gave the right grades to the right people.”

Meanwhile, more than 8,000 Cambridge and Oxford alumni are estimated to have signed petitions calling on their former universities to make all their 2020 offers unconditional.

“Brilliant pupils from economically disadvantaged schools have seen their dreams dashed – while others from wealthy backgrounds saw their predicted grades confirmed,” reads the petition from Oxford alumni.

“It cannot be right that bright, hardworking young people from poorer backgrounds have been denied their chance to overcome odds that were already stacked against them.”