Correspondence

Letter to schools and colleges October 2024

Published 3 October 2024

Applies to England

As the new academic year is now underway, I wanted to take the opportunity to thank you for your pivotal role in delivering exams and assessments over the last year, and to look ahead to 2025. 

GCSE, AS and A level 

Standards will be maintained from 2024. This means we will regulate exam boards, so they ensure that the standard of work to achieve a particular grade remains comparable to that expected in summer 2024.

As a result, Ofqual expects national results in 2025 to be broadly similar to those in summer 2024. Of course, it is not possible to know in advance precisely what results will look like overall or in particular subjects. We cannot know this until entries are made, exams are taken, and work is marked. 

It is normal for national results – and results for individual subjects – to vary a little each year. This is because there are often changes in cohorts of students taking different qualifications and differences in the performance of students in their assessments. However, the standard of performance required remains consistent. 

It is helpful when preparing students for assessment to make them aware that grade boundaries typically change each exam series and are often different between exam boards. Grade boundaries are set only after students have sat the assessments and marking is almost complete. The grade boundaries set reflect any differences in the difficulty of the assessments. This is important to ensure that students are not advantaged or disadvantaged based on the exam paper that they sit. 

Formulae and equations support

The Department for Education (DfE) has confirmed that students taking exams in 2025, 2026 and 2027 will not need to memorise the usual formulae and equations for GCSE maths, physics and combined science. DfE will confirm the longer-term expectations with the outcomes of the Curriculum and Assessment Review.

Ofqual is now consulting on the details of how these formulae and equations will be provided in assessments in 2025, 2026 and 2027. If you have a view on this, we would encourage you to respond to the consultation, which closes on 17 October 2024 at 11:45pm.

Vocational and technical qualifications (VTQs)

Arrangements to secure the timely delivery of VTQ results will continue as business as usual in 2025. Awarding organisations will continue to operate a term-time checkpoint with schools and colleges, to confirm which students need a result in August to progress to further or higher education. Awarding organisations will release results to schools and colleges in advance of results days, to give sufficient time for Exams officers to check and prepare them for final release to students. Ofqual will continue to work with awarding organisations to improve alignment of communications and exam and assessment administration more broadly.   

Well established grading arrangements for VTQs will continue, with awarding organisations adopting the same approach for the academic year 2024 to 2025 as they did previously.

This academic year will be the second year of results in the new Tech Awards that are taken alongside GCSEs. All Tech Awards now incorporate an externally assessed component, and students must sit this exam at the end of the qualification, in the series when they certificate. Non-examined assessment cannot be taken after the exam (and where a student resits a non-examined component, they will also need to resit the exam). If you have any questions about how this terminal rule applies, contact the relevant awarding organisation. 

For new qualifications, such as Tech Awards and Technical Qualifications within T Levels, awarding organisations will apply generosity in grading where appropriate. This is to reflect that students and teachers are less familiar with the qualifications.

Predicted grades for UCAS 

Predicting grades for UCAS as accurately as possible is important to support students to make informed and realistic decisions about their university choices and help them to work towards this. The stability of the well-established grading standard should support you in providing predicted grades that are aspirational but achievable, in line with UCAS guidance. 

When determining UCAS predicted grades for students applying to higher education this year, it is worth noting that most of these students would have taken GCSEs and level 2 vocational and technical qualifications in 2023, when grading had returned to the well-established pre-pandemic standard. The fact that these students’ grades reflect the longstanding and well understood standard in these qualifications should support you in making UCAS predictions that are as accurate as possible. 

Students applying for undergraduate courses in 2025 are able to see the grades that recent successful applicants to a course have achieved using UCAS’s entry grades data tool. 

I have also written to higher education admissions teams, so they understand the national context for qualifications as they consider student applications.

Resilience arrangements 

Long-term resilience arrangements also continue, and you should ensure that your school or college has appropriate arrangements in place to gather evidence of student performance that would be used to determine grades in the unlikely event that exams and assessments could not go ahead as planned.  JCQ will ask schools and colleges about the resilience arrangements in place as part of their centre inspection visits.

Evidence should be collected in line with Ofqual’s published guidance for GCSE, AS and A level, Project Qualifications and Advanced Extension Award. Schools and colleges should avoid over-assessment, with one set of mocks likely to be sufficient for evidence purposes. 

For VTQs and other qualifications used alongside or instead of GCSEs, AS and A levels, awarding organisations provide guidance where needed. If you are unsure whether evidence is needed for a specific VTQ you should check with the relevant awarding organisation.

Awarding organisations will also keep details of senior designated contacts at schools and colleges up to date.

Cyber security 

I would like to remind you of the importance of cyber security. I know many schools and colleges take the threat seriously, but there is more to be done. Please keep your own policies and procedures under review and familiarise yourself with the National Cyber Security Centre’s school resource guide to learn how to defend against cyber-attacks. 

Thank you

I know from my own experience as a school leader the amount work that you and your colleagues do to support the smooth running of exams and assessments, and I would once again like to thank you for this. Please do share this letter with your colleagues to ensure they have the latest information. 

Sir Ian Bauckham CBE, Chief Regulator