Some thoughts following the A level results last week
The media has made much of the ‘first overall drop in A level results for 30 years’. It seems quite a story, at first sight, but I feel I should add a voice of reason. The fall in passes at …
A levels and GCSEs
Waiting for results
A level results come out next week, with GCSEs the week after, and many thousands of young people and their families are waiting in nervous anticipation. In recent years, we at Ofqual have made a conscious decision to use this …
Creative subjects do have a place in education
It’s been a week since we released our consultation on the reform of remaining subjects at GCSE and A level. Commentary on social media and in the news suggests that many still believe we want to ‘scrap’ qualifications in the …
Practical Science
Practical work and experimentation is at the heart of science. It matters to science students, their teachers and their future universities and employers. But A level students do not always have the chance to do enough of it. Practical work …
Setting standards
Students will be sitting exams for some new GCSEs in summer 2017. We want to be clear with them, ahead of 2017, about the new grading system and the levels of performance expected.
Making a mark…
We published our final report into exam marking last week. It’s a good piece of work, worth a read to get a full sense of what is going on. Perhaps inevitably however, the media focused fairly narrowly on what we …
Happy New Year – and an outlook for 2014
Hello all and Happy New Year. I wish you all the best for 2014. Like many of you, we are facing another busy and challenging year. Qualifications reform will continue to be a major priority, of course. We will begin …
Our A level consultation
Last week we launched our latest consultation on A level reform. It covers a number of important issues, including our proposals for the role of non-exam assessment in the subjects going forward for teaching in 2015, and the design of …
Our announcement on speaking and listening assessments
As we expected, our decision to stop speaking and listening assessments from counting towards final marks in GCSE English and English language has disappointed many teachers. We understand this. It was not a decision we made lightly. We considered carefully …
GCSE Results – a view from the Chief Regulator
Looking back on last week, the story around GCSE results feels different this year. I hope people think that Ofqual and the exam boards did a good job setting out what it all meant, and what was behind the headline …