A document from the exams regulator seen by The Independent newspaper says: “If necessary we will require exam boards to change their grade boundaries.... [so that] roughly the same proportion of students will achieve each grade as in the previous year.”
Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment at Buckingham University, argued that it is a sensible temporary measure to stop A-level results becoming meaningless before the exam system is improved overall.
The awarding bodies are going to be asked to account for any big deviation upwards. I think it is a useful interim measure to tackle the gross inflation in A-level results," he said.
This was the policy up until 1987, when just 10 per cent of pupils, won A-Grades each year.
A Department for Education spokesman said: “Ministers are clear it is only fair to every hard working young person that there is no grade inflation or dumbing down in the exam system.”
But Adrian Prandle, education policy adviser at the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said there were concerns about the approach.
“If exam boards can ensure that pupils who sit an exam this year won’t get lower grades than they deserve then we welcome it,” he said. “However, if as a consequence of tougher rules on grade boundaries, pupils are denied the opportunity to gain the highest grade of which they are capable and which they would have got in another year, then they will be unfairly disadvantaged," he told The Independent.
"In these tough economic circumstances, that will hit pupils’ future chances hard.”
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