I am sure that you will have seen that, today, Ofqual and the Department for Education decided to award grades on the basis of what teachers submitted, what we have been calling the Centre Assessed Grades (CAGs). The switch to centre assessed grades will apply to both AS and A levels. You can see the statement here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/statement-from-roger-taylor-chair-ofqual. As a result, students will be awarded the higher of their CAGs (centre assessed grade) or calculated grade (the grade you received on results day).
We are pleased that the Department of Education has come to the realisation that these grades are a much better reflection of the grades that our students could have achieved should they have had the opportunity to sit the examinations and complete their coursework and practicals.
We are yet to see the guidance or process for the awarding of these new grades. When we have received this, we will communicate with you again about how we will ‘officially’ release the grades to you as a statement of results.
There will be significant media ‘hype’ around this over the next few days, but please await further communication from us. As soon as we are in possession of the advice and guidance and have formulated a process, we will communicate this with you.
University Applications
Many of you will have questions about how this impacts on your university place. Our team is here to support you through this, but we suggest that your initial first step is to contact the university directly and get advice and guidance from them. Similar to us, they will be having to respond to this significant change and may not be able to give you an immediate response.
Centre Assessed Grades
All CAGs are available on the student portal, along with all formal assessment data and collection information (these can be found under the menu ‘Achievement and Reviews’ > ‘Assessments’ > ‘CAG’ assessment option). These are the CAGs that we submitted to the boards. Please do not ask for confirmation of your final grade at the moment as we are awaiting the exam boards to tell us how they will send the confirmed awarded grades.
All CAGs were awarded as part of a rigorous process and no one teacher is responsible for the CAG for any individual.
Our teachers generated the CAGs on the basis of all the assessment evidence each department had collected over the duration of the course. This could include, but is not limited to: formal classroom assessments, non-examined units, coursework, formal college assessments, class and homework tasks that had been graded and practical or verbal elements already assessed. These grades then went through several quality assurance processes as detailed here. We are confident that no bias or discrimination has entered the process and that our quality assurance measures were robust and provided our students with the fairest assessment of their possible outcomes should they have sat the final examinations.
You are not able to appeal the CAGs that we have provided. Please do not ask for this or email teachers asking them why you were awarded the CAG as the process is detailed here and they will only be able to signpost you to this. Should you believe that there has been an administrative error in your CAGs, reply to this email or send a query to cag@wyke.ac.uk.
We understand that a small number of students will be unhappy with the CAG they have received. If this is the case, your only option to improve your grade is to enter for the autumn exam. You are not able to appeal your CAG nor are we able to change them.
We are still currently waiting any further guidance on how this might affect BTEC qualifications, Criminology and Extended Projects. We will communicate more when we get information.
We recognise that many of you will still be frustrated, and some will still have questions. At the moment, we are not in possession of all of the guidance that we need to be able to respond to all queries. We will communicate this with you once we have it.
Your year group has had significant upheaval. However, through our collective effort, we are now in a position where all students will receive a grade that fairly reflects, to the best of our ability, the grade they were most likely to achieve had they sat the examinations. We hope that this announcement allows you to feel positive about the effort you have put into your A Level studies.
I do hope everything now gets resolved with you progressing on to your next step,
Paul
