Letter to governors and trustees about qualification results in 2023

The Chief Regulator at Ofqual, the regulator of qualifications, exams and assessments in England has written to governors and trustees via the Ofqual website.

The letter from Dr. Jo Saxton, Chief Regulator at Ofqual, explains the 2023 grading arrangements and the national context for results.

When students began their GCSE and A level courses in 2021, Ofqual set out a two-year plan to return to pre-pandemic grading after the exceptional arrangements during Covid.

Student work will be marked and graded in the normal way and will mean that this year’s national results will be lower than in 2022. It follows, therefore, that it is highly likely that school or college’s headline results will be lower than last year and as such, it will be more meaningful to compare this year’s results with 2019, which was the last year that exams took place before the pandemic.

Dr Saxton is clear that a lower results profile in 2023 does not indicate any change to the underlying performance of the school or college.