Exam boards bear the brunt of the GCSE marking debacle

750 and rising – that’s the number of schools so far which believe their pupils have been unfairly affected by the GCSE marking issue.

They’ve contacted the headteachers’ union, The Association of School and College Leaders, which is gathering “evidence” of how boundary changes were changed mid-school year, leaving possibly as many as 10,000 pupils with lower grades than expected.

It’s one prong of a many faceted attack against not just the exam boards but the exam regulator, Ofqual, and of course the Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove.

He took the very unusual step of actually doing an interview on GSCE results day this year – normal etiquette is to leave the TV cameras to squealing girls jumping up and down for joy. He insisted that there had been no political pressure on the exam boards to bring down grades.

Is Gove ‘bovvered’?

And of course he may be entirely correct – there may well have been no direct political influence on the boards, no directive or memo insisting they moved in that direction. But this is a secretary of state who has been relentless in his demand for pushing up standards and pushing down the sort of grade inflation which saw GCSE results rise every year since their inception.

MPs say he created the “mood music” which left the exam boards with absolutely no question about what he wanted them to do.

The issue is now perhaps how it was done. Was it fair to change grade boundaries between sets of exams taken in January and the same exams sat at the end of the school year?

Mr Gove has been called to appear before the Education Select Committee next week. Is he “bovvered”? I doubt it.

Already beleaguered exam boards

The most likely victims of all of this – aside of course from the students themselves – will be the already beleaguered exam boards.

This is the latest in a string of problems for the boards. Earlier this year we reported on terrible blunders made in the marking of papers by examiners who, it appeared, couldn’t even add up.

There were issues about boards running conferences to help teachers brief their students about exam papers coming up.

So for the exam boards it will be a massive fight to restore their reputation – particularly if, as it increasingly looks, Ofqual ends up changing some of this year’s final assessments.

But for Ofqual too, this in itself is a test. If it changes the grades it has questions to answer about how it has overseen all of this. Even before its review of the grades has officially started, already there are calls that there should be some form of external investigation.

So, just when they thought the exam season was over for another year, the pressure’s on…and this time it’s on them, not the students.

Follow Jackie on Twitter via @JackieLongc4