Advertisement

Exclusive: Exam Board Gave Entire Classes Of Law Students Each Other's Grades

Get the latest on coronavirus. Sign up to the Daily Brief for news, explainers, how-tos, opinion and more.

An exam board is “urgently” investigating after it scrambled the grades of entire law classes, failing students who were tipped for the best marks and giving flying colours to the lowest performers.

Pupils in at least two colleges received completely different results from the ones they had been expecting, while many others are still waiting to receive their marks – a day and a half after they were due.

The cancellation of exams due to the coronavirus pandemic has meant BTEC Nationals – vocational qualifications that can be taken in place of A-levels – are basing this year’s results on completed assessments and teachers’ predicted grades. Teachers were required to submit their students’ grades in a list, ranked in order of best to worst.

But HuffPost UK has learned the exam board, Pearson, somehow turned these lists upside down by mistake.

Pearson, the body that runs BTECs, confirmed some students had received “incorrect” results and said it was working to resolve the issue “urgently”.

One teacher told HuffPost UK the appeals process could take “several weeks” to be resolved, leaving her pupils “confused” and “upset”.

Elizabeth, who teaches applied law, knew something was wrong the moment she received the results: her class of 48 students had received an average Merit grade for their BTEC results, while her previous classes had an 83% Distinction* to Distinction grade.

“I knew there was an immediate issue, so I went into the list and I clicked on the student ranked number one and I saw she had been given a fail, then I went to number two and I realised they had been given a near pass.

Our worst students have got the best grades, and our best students have the worst grades.

“Then I went all the way down to the bottom to the student that I had ranked last, and that student had been given a Distinction* and I saw quite a few who...

Continue reading on HuffPost