“The Governor View” – A levels “grade inflation” and the impact on Clearing and admissions

Teacher assessed A-levels grades have seen 45 per cent of entries awarded A*/A grades this summer and prompted warnings that the so-called “gold standard” qualification is no longer fit for purpose.

For universities, the rise in top grades means more applicants meeting the conditions of their offer. While some institutions rowed back on the number of offers they made after last year’s admissions challenges, the extent of the A/A* upturn has “taken everyone by surprise”, according to a governor at one Russell Group university.

On results day, UCAS figures showed that 395,770 students had a confirmed place on their first choice full-time undergraduate course in the UK – up by 8 per cent on last year. 

Potentially overshooting by hundreds of students in admissions has implications across numerous areas of university governance, from estates and accommodation to staffing, teaching and learning and student satisfaction.

The move to online teaching last year avoided a scenario of overcrowded lecture halls and classrooms. In the coming academic year, however, students are expecting more in-person teaching. That expectation, coupled with government warnings that face-to-face must be a priority, has to be set against space pressures and means that for some universities, striking the right blended learning balance may be a challenge.

Student accommodation and housing is also a particular concern and, from a governance perspective, can present a reputational risk. Young people, understandably, feel strongly about where they have to live and stories appear in the media every year about undergraduates languishing in unsuitable lodgings.

One governor described how his university was taking rooms in a nearby city with undergraduates having to travel to campus: “We’re being stretched by the sheer numbers alone and the geographical location will make it harder to provide the support we want for every student,” he said.

Universities in these situations are offering travel bursaries and reduced accommodation costs.

If selective institutions are upping undergraduate numbers, mid and lower-ranking universities could see high achieving applicants being creamed off. A governor at a large modern university in the south of England predicts that better know universities will be “predatory” in their pursuit of the best candidates.

“If the nearest Russell Group institution decides it would like another 100 or 200 entrants because it can, then it will take them and they will come from universities like ours,” he said.

Concerns about numbers this year are dwarfed by fears on the near horizon that the government will introduce minimum tariff requirements for students to be eligible for loans: “That could make it difficult for institutions such as ours which recruit students from a wide range of backgrounds,” said one governor.

Competition and logistics are not the only problems in a year of record-breaking results: ubiquitous A*/A grades can have a negative impact on widening participation (WP) rates, a key performance indicator at many universities, particularly when a disproportionate number of them are awarded to sixth formers from independent schools.

In normal years, applicants who slip a grade can be given the benefit of the doubt and talented WP candidates can come up through adjustment in Clearing. This year, however, there is little room for borderline cases.

Given bumper intakes, some institutions are asking students to defer and are offering financial incentives to do so. News coverage has mentioned £10,000 for medics who agree to start next year and other “deferral packages” which include rent reductions and bursaries worth thousands of pounds. Putting to one side the drain on scarce resources this represents, it could simply shift the problem of oversubscription to next year’s admission round.

Maintaining the quality of courses when there are unplanned increases in undergraduate numbers could be amber issue, with highly qualified staff hard to recruit in some subjects, according to one governor.  

Allied to this are concerns about just how prepared the new crop of students will be for the academic demands of higher education, given the severe disruption to their schooling caused by the pandemic.

As always, student mental health is also a touchstone issue for governing bodies. A student governor at a Russell Group university makes the point that this year’s intake of students is unlikely to have much experience of going to pubs and clubs and consuming alcohol, making friends outside their immediate circle and pursuing interpersonal relationships. All this adds up to a particularly fraught Freshers Week and first few months.

“There is a real student support and wellbeing issue looming,” she said. “And that has the potential to impact academic performance as well, as young people won’t have had the experience of negotiating these social areas of life alongside the demands of studying.”

The relationship between universities and student unions (SU) needed to be strengthened, she said, to ensure SU staff and volunteers, who are the first point of contact for students, can deal with these pressures.

“The issue is that student unions are run on a shoestring and not funded well enough to train their staff to handle these things. I’ve often said to my university that from a reputational point of view, it is not the student union that is on the front page when there’s a sexual assault in the student bar, it is the name of the university. It is in the interest of the university to take the role of the SU in dealing with these issues seriously.”

She believes all university campuses should have an independent sexual advisor, and that this year, in particular, SUs funding should reflect their vital frontline role.

“If I was sitting in a committee signing off the budget for the year, I’d be ring-fencing a huge amount of money for student wellbeing and welfare, giving it to the SU and saying ‘go out and look out for the safety of all these 18-year-olds,” she said.

Going forward, the government has strongly hinted that reform of A-levels is on the cards but has yet to indicate what is under consideration.

Experts have suggested that universities may set their own entrance exams. But other than Oxbridge and medicine and law, where a subject test has long been in place at many selective institutions, no substantive plans for new entrance exams have emerged. Critics point out that such test often favour private school pupils who are coached to pass them.

Governors predict an overhaul of the A-level grading system rather than wholesale reform of the qualification, even though there is agreement that it is now “absolutely useless as a differentiator”. 

For one governor, this summer’s results demonstrate that the all or nothing, final year examination model is vulnerable to circumstance and a flawed measure of ability and potential. She argues that continual assessment, coursework and the use of technology-driven mediums and formats were better indicators and more related to how employees are judged in the real world.

“Many exams are set up around a combative point scoring model but that is not how business is run,” she said. “Businesses are moving towards more collaborate ways of working and actually a point-scoring employee is not necessarily someone that they would want to hire.”