����Vlog

This year’s GCSE results arrived alongside a now annual debate over whether the education system is setting up young people to fail.

Around one third of students tend to leave school without a grade 4 in English and maths every year.

The condition of funding rule - more often referred to as the resit policy - requires post-16 institutions to keep students studying English and maths if they fall short of the grade 4.

There is much criticism of this policy.

Writing for ����Vlog after this year’s results were released, Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said it “clearly has not worked as intended”, and the number of students passing at grade 4 “is effectively baked into the system, if not by design then by practice”.

Indeed, there has been much debate about whether this threshold is attainable for all, and whether the system itself actually prevents improvement.

New education secretary Lucy Powell pointed out on results day that GCSEs were graded using comparable outcomes rather than a fixed pass rate, and of resits.

But is there any truth in the accusation that the number of 4 and above grades is limited, and is less than a grade 4 actually a “fail”?

Is a grade 4 at GCSE deemed a pass?

Technically, only a U is actually deemed a fail - grades 1 to 3 are a pass at .

Students who get grade 4 or above at GCSE get a level 2 qualification, while AS and A levels that are graded E or above are a level 3 qualification.

However, after the 9 to 1 system was announced, the government first said grade 5 would become the new “good” pass rate, rather than a C, and later decided to set grade 4 as the agreed basic standard for avoiding English and maths resits.

The by former education secretary Nicky Morgan back in 2015 was that it would put UK students on a level with pass standards in high-performing countries like Finland, Canada, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

Then education secretary Justine Greening later announced in 2017 that for English and maths to reassure schools that a grade 4 was a “credible achievement”, and that Ofqual would ensure standards so that broadly the same proportion would achieve the grade 4 as the C.

A grade 4 became described as a standard pass, and a grade 5 is a strong pass. This language “reintroduced the cliff-edge borderline”, says Tom Middlehurst, deputy director of policy at ASCL.

“A decade on, this language has become deeply embedded in the public’s understanding of GCSEs. Coupled with the post-16 condition of funding, it’s too late to reclaim the (true) notion that grades 1-3 represent success for some young people,” he adds.

The condition of funding rule means that any 16 to 19 provider must have students without a grade 4 in English or maths studying towards this for a minimum of 100 hours for each subject.

Apprentices who are aged 16-18 at the start of their training are required to achieve English and maths qualifications to complete their apprenticeship.

To receive funding, apprenticeship providers at level 3 or higher must have apprentices working towards a level 2 in English and maths (grade 4 or above). Those who are aged over 19 when they start a level 3 apprenticeship will be funded to study for a level 2 qualification, but they do not need to actually achieve it to pass gateway.

The majority of UK employers will look for a grade 4 or above in English and maths.

Jon Hutchinson, director of curriculum and teacher development at the Reach Foundation, that it feels “pretty disingenuous” to call grades 1 to 3 a pass given the consequences of not getting a grade 4.

Is the GCSE system set up so some will always fail?

Ofqual is responsible for maintaining standards in grading over time. In a , Paul Newton, research chair at Ofqual, said the exams regulator began to implement a stricter policy on maintaining standards after several years of pass rates rising by the early 2010s.

This stricter policy has been described as the comparable outcomes approach, Newton says. Comparable outcomes is described by Ofqual as meaning that if the national cohort for a subject is similar to previous years, results should also be similar.

Newton argues that it is not true that this grading strategy automatically condemns a third of students to failure.

Technically, this is right - there are no quotas for the proportion of students achieving each grade.

When it comes to setting grade boundaries, ����Vlog understands that senior examiners will look at the typical features of grade 4 papers from a sample of current and archive papers for a subject, and whether the boundaries set mostly capture those people within a grade 4. ����Vlog understands there is no set number of scripts considered.

Ofqual considers evidence of the ability of the cohort from key stage 2 data, Middlehurst explains, and the National Reference ����Vlogt (NRT), which provides evidence on how performance in GCSE English and maths has changed over time.

National Reference ����Vlogt results

The NRT is taken by a sample of around in 330 schools between late February and early March. Up to 30 randomly selected students from each school will be selected to sit the English test and a separate group of up to 30 to sit maths.

The NRT has shown a small rise in attainment at grade 7 in recent years for maths (ie, more students are performing at grade 7 level in maths).

Exam boards have been instructed by Ofqual to reflect in their setting of grade boundaries to make them lower than they otherwise would have been based on comparable outcomes to previous years - essentially in an attempt to capture the NRT reflecting that this cohort performs more strongly in maths than previous ones.

However, in English language, there is some indication attainment has fallen at grade 4 since 2017. But Ofqual said this has not yet been consistent enough to take any action.

“In theory, if every student in the country performed at a grade 4 level - genuinely - then this would be reflected in the national grading profile,” Middlehurst says.

“However, in practice, we don’t see this level of system-wide improvement, and so predictably every year around 30 per cent of the Year 11 cohort don’t achieve a grade 4.”

Ofqual uses a number of mechanisms and statistical data to maintain standards over time, Middlehurst explains, but any increase in the percentage of students getting a grade 4 or above or a 7 and above would be “extremely cautious and conservative”.

Under this approach, we can say with some confidence that around a third will continue not to get the grade 4 unless we have “unprecedented system improvement”, he adds.

An Ofqual spokesperson said: “The standard of work needed to achieve a grade is a consistent measure, and that consistency is what gives GCSE grades their public credibility. Whatever a student’s exam year, if their work meets that standard, they get the grade.

“This year, we saw more students achieving higher grades in GCSE maths. This was a direct reflection of higher student attainment. Where there is evidence for stronger student attainment, grades rise to reflect it. The standard itself does not change; more students simply meet it.”

Also to consider is the reliability of the grade a student receives.

An into marking suggested that the probability of receiving the “definitive” (used to mean the mark that would be given by a senior examiner) grade in English qualifications is around 0.52, compared with 0.96 for maths qualifications.

In 2020, then Ofqual chief regulator Dame Glenys Stacey that grades “are reliable to one grade either way”.

Based on this, the Observer and Dennis Sherwood, author of a book on this topic, suggested around 40,000 students who received a grade 3 in English language this year could have had a grade 4 if marked by a senior examiner (Ofqual says students can have “complete confidence” in the grades they achieve).

Considering this makes the grade 4 cliff edge feel particularly unfair, Sherwood told ����Vlog.

How do we decide what students ‘should know’ for a grade 4?

So, if grade 4 is the standard most employers expect - how do we decide what knowledge and skills are needed for that standard?

����Vlog has asked the Department for Education if any research has been done into whether a grade 4 in English and maths actually maps onto a good level of literacy and numeracy for adulthood.

Figures from 2023-24 show that around 85.4 per cent of students who achieved the grade 4 in both English and maths went on to further study, training or employment at 16 to 18, compared with 63 per cent who did not.

“The problem is that we use a grade 4 in English and maths as a proxy for having adult levels of literacy and numeracy,” Middlehurst says.

This doesn’t quite add up though, he adds. For example, England’s Programme for International Student Assessment results suggest roughly four in five teens are functionally literate and numerate at an international standard, a “clear disconnect” from the two-thirds in GCSEs.

Preparing students for adult literacy and numeracy

Under a criterion-referenced qualification, students’ performance is measured against clear criteria of what they should know and be able to do.

However, , Ofqual has previously emphasised. The closest thing we have are grade descriptors, but not every statement in a grade descriptor needs to be met to get the grade as they would be if they were fully criterion-referenced.

GCSEs are instead - this means doing better in one area can compensate for doing less well in another. That means you can reach a grade 4 in a number of ways, and in some cases, may do very well in some aspects of an exam, and not answer any questions on another aspect.

“For example, a candidate could, in theory, get a grade 4 in maths without answering a single question on graphs correctly,” Middlehurst points out. “Does that mean they’re functionally numerate?”

But others disagree.

It is fair to say not everyone who manages to achieve the grade 4 in maths actually has learned all the numeracy skills they will need in life, says David Thomas, CEO of Axiom Maths and former DfE adviser, as some will have simply managed to pick up enough marks across the paper to pass.

But, he adds, “if you go through exam scripts and look at people who are getting a grade 3, and look at their working out and the answers they’re giving, I think it is very clear that the vast majority of those young people do not have a grasp of maths that you would need to go out into the adult world.”

What are critics advocating in terms of change?

ASCL’s Di’Iasio and several others have advocated for alternative assessments with an expected pass/fail standard that students simply have to meet, like a driving test.

“One solution to this may be a new, universal, pre-16 assessment of literacy and numeracy, which would be pinned to international literacy and numeracy standards, and would provide a more exacting, more accurate profile of the cohort and allow more young people to progress,” Middlehurst recommends.

However, Hutchinson points out that having only a pass/fail distinction would make it difficult to motivate a large number of children who will not see why they should do any more than the bare minimum to get that pass.

As part of the reforms announced last year, the government pledged to bring in new level 1 English and maths qualifications for 16- to 19-year-olds who currently hold a grade 2 or below to help them make progress towards the GCSE.

Education secretary Powell has since said she will look again at the curriculum reforms introduced by her predecessor, and told The Times she wants to stop the “conveyor belt” of resits.

No More Marking’s Daisy Christodoulou, however, has argued we should be setting a within 15 to 20 years, saying there are few alternative policy options.

She points to that there have been some improvements in numeracy over the past decade, among both lower-and higher-attainers, and the handful of non-selective schools that have been able to go far above the averages for getting students to the grade 4.

Thomas adds: “You do not solve the problem by lowering the standard or putting a different label on it or saying they don’t need to know these things. They do need to know these things, and they’re going to live worse lives not knowing it.

“I would be spending all of the energy that we’re spending arguing about the qualification on thinking about how we make sure there is a brilliantly qualified maths teacher in front of all these children.”