Young people’s inability to appeal exam grades directly this year is “grossly unfair and must be overturned”, says the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People Koulla Yiasouma.

This follows CCEA Regulation’s recent publication outlining its key decisions regarding the principles upon which an alternative appeals process for the Summer 2020 GCSE, AS and A Level qualifications should be developed by CCEA awarding organisation (AO). Decisions taken were informed by the outcomes and analysis of a recent two week public consultation on the issue.

On April 16, the Education Minister, Peter Weir MLA, outlined the awarding arrangements for GCSE, AS and A Level qualifications in response to the cancellation of exams as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. As part of this statement, the Minister instructed CCEA to develop an appropriate and robust appeals process.

CCEA Chief Executive, Justin Edwards, explained: “Under normal circumstances, after the issue of results, a school or college can request the marking of a script to be reviewed. If after the review of marking, the school or college feels that the issue is not resolved it can use the appeals process. With no examination scripts to mark this year, this process will not be possible. The Minister asked us to develop an alternative appeals approach to address this exceptional situation and one that would be in line with similar processes being developed by Ofqual and Qualifications Wales. In order to inform this work, we carried out a two week public consultation to gather as much commentary as possible on a number of principles being considered to determine a final appeals approach.”

In line with other awarding organisations and in keeping with normal practice, CCEA has decided that appeals will only be accepted from exam centres (schools/colleges) and not directly from students. It was felt that centres would be the best informed to register an appeal on behalf of a student.

Mrs. Yiasouma commented that not allowing young people to appeal their grades directly with CCEA on the basis they are unhappy with the grade their teacher and school has given them must be overturned: “While young people can approach their school to make a complaint on the basis of an ‘administrative error’ either on the school’s or CCEA’s part, they would be doing so fully aware that it may have been the teacher/school they are actually approaching that awarded them the grade they are unhappy with. Young people are telling me that they are very unlikely to do that, especially if pupil/teacher relationships have been strained.”

“CCEA have not provided clarity, and therefore little comfort, to young people that they are putting anything in place to mitigate against teacher bias or address the variation and range in evidence upon which teachers and schools will make their assessments. Nor has sufficient information or reassurance been provided on how schools and CCEA will standardise grades and whether the final grades will be a fair and accurate representation of what students would have achieved, had they been able to sit their exams.

“In fact on the issue of potential teacher bias, while CCEA recognised this could occur, they have offered no avenue for young people to raise this with them and instead are asking pupils to raise any concerns directly with the school.

“I’m calling on a complete overhaul of these arrangements and will be addressing this with CCEA directly,” concluded Mrs. Yiasouma.