GCSEs should be branded to indicate whether they are awarded in England, Wales or Northern Ireland, to reflect growing differences in national exams, according to an education professor.
Around 800,000 16-year-olds are awaiting their GCSE results on Thursday, and Prof Alan Smithers, from the University of Buckingham, said there could be significant variation in exam results across countries this year.
Mr Smithers said his best guess was that while overall performance might be lower than last year, top grades in England would be similar to 2023 and top grades in Wales and Northern Ireland would decline, repeating the pattern of last week’s A-level results.
Exam boards and administrators in the three countries are in talks to make GCSEs broadly the same, but differences in course content, assessment and marking methods have led them to move in different directions.
GCSEs in England have in recent years scrapped or downgraded the use of coursework assessments, with the country’s numerical scale now having a highest grade of 9 and a lowest of 1. Exams in Wales and Northern Ireland use letter grades ranging from A* to G, with Northern Ireland adding an additional C* grade.
Education funding and policy making are almost entirely delegated to national executive branches. Scotland has its own qualifications system.and most students received their results earlier this month.
Mr Smithers said that while national results were broadly similar, it was difficult for employers and educators to make accurate comparisons, and his solution would be to rename or rebrand GCSEs with national identifiers to avoid confusion.
“When employers or sixth-form colleges look at GCSEs, at the moment they have to look very carefully at the details to distinguish them from one another,” Smithers said. “It would be difficult to change, but there needs to be separate branding and at the very least an indication of where the GCSEs were taken.”
In terms of this year’s results, Smithers predicts there will be up to 71,000 fewer top grades awarded across all age groups across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, including re-exams, as regulators seek to align with pre-pandemic results.
Predictions that top A-level grades would fall proved wrong last week, with the highest proportion of A* grades awarded in England since they were first introduced.
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Ofqual said it used the 2023 A-levels as a benchmark to set this year’s grade boundaries. The authority’s chief inspector, Ian Buckham, said there had been no inflated grades and that the improvement in results was “mainly due to the ability of students taking this year’s exams”.
“Top class,” Smithers said. [GCSE] The number of students in the 2024 school year will be higher than in 2023, but the Ministry of Education is not sure how many there will be. [in England] Now they give the impression that they are hoping for a “feel good” outcome.”
He also said England should end the requirement that teenagers who fail GCSE English and maths have to retake those exams multiple times during their time at school.
“Having to repeatedly retake English and maths must be mentally tough. There is no doubt that a review of the policy is urgently needed,” he said.
