Pupils get record GCSE grades as BTecs are pulled

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Protests from A-level students prompted a U-turn on how grades were decided

GCSE passes for England's pupils, in the most disrupted academic year in UK history, have risen dramatically.

Grades have been awarded by schools, after exams were cancelled, and data shows 78.8% of papers were rated grade 4 or above. It was 69.9% in 2019.

There was a rise of a quarter in the top grades - a 7 or above, which is equivalent to an A in the old system.

The exams season has been dogged by chaos, with policy changes leading to grades being altered at the 11th hour.

In the latest debacle BTec grades were pulled hours before pupils were to receive them although some schools are giving out grades, which were assessed by schools, anyway.

England exams watchdog, Ofqual is clear that the two years cannot be compared but its efforts to maintain standards through a now discredited algorithm have led to huge problems in the education system and stress for students.

'Unprecedented disruption'

Geoff Barton, head of the head teachers' union ASCL, said students and teachers should be congratulated.

"These have been extraordinarily difficult circumstances, and this generation of young people has suffered a degree of uncertainty and disruption that is without precedent.

"They lost out on the normal rites of passage of leaving school, and on the chance to show what they could do in a set of exams.

"And they must have been watching the news anxiously following last week's A-level results to see if they were going to lose out again because a computer algorithm might downgrade them - before the government and Ofqual performed a U-turn and reverted to centre-assessed grades."

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