At her recent Education Committee appearance (14 October), our Chief Regulator, Glenys Stacey, noted that under our current approach to monitoring awarding exam boards have the opportunity to put the case for an award being higher, or for that matter lower, than is predicted by attainment at Key Stage 2.
As shown in the table below, this summer we accepted 50 cases for awarding out of tolerance. These were mostly above predictions, but some were below, and we accepted every one of the requests. The number of out of tolerance awards this summer was very similar to that in 2014 (52), but quite a bit lower than in 2013 (70). The number of cases accepted where the award was above the reporting tolerance was the same this summer as in 2014, and lower than in 2013. And the number of cases where the award was below the reporting tolerance was lower this year than in 2014 and 2013.
| Overall | A level | AS level | GCSE | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number of awards reviewed against reporting tolerances | 517 | 140 | 157 | 220 |
| Number of awards outside reporting tolerances | 50* | 9 | 5* | 36 |
| Number above | 40 | 8 | 5 | 27 |
| Number below | 11 | 1 | 0 | 10 |
*The AS number was originally reported as 6 and the total 51.
| Overall | A level | AS level | GCSE | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number of awards reviewed against reporting tolerances | 538 | 140 | 156 | 242 |
| Number of awards outside reporting tolerances | 52 | 11 | 10 | 31 |
| Number above | 40 | 9 | 8 | 23 |
| Number below | 21 | 4 | 2 | 10 |
| Overall | A level | AS level | GCSE | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number of awards reviewed against reporting tolerances | 476 | 196 | n/a | 280 |
| Number of awards outside reporting tolerances | 70 | 15 | n/a | 55 |
| Number above | 48 | 12 | n/a | 36 |
| Number below | 23 | 4 | n/a | 19 |
Notes
- Wherever actual and predicted outcomes differ beyond a given reporting tolerance depending on entry size, the relevant exam board informs the regulators and other exam boards of the details.
- Outcomes can be outside the reporting tolerance at more than one grade per award. As such, the sum of out of tolerance instances (above and below) may be greater than the total number of out of tolerance awards.
- More information can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/out-of-tolerance-report-gcse-as-and-a-level-summer-2015
- An earlier version of this post incorrectly said there were 57 awards reviewed for AS level in 2015. The figure should have been 157. This has been corrected above.