A-level grades this year will be based on an assessment made by teachers combined with other relevant data, including prior attainment.
Teachers will be asked to submit judgments about the grades they think their A-level students would have received if this year’s exams had not been cancelled due to coronavirus.
Universities have said they have accepted they will have to be “flexible” when it comes to admissions this year.
Teachers will make their judgements based on “a range of evidence and data including performance on mock exams and non-exam assessment”, the Department for Education said in a statement.
It said guidance on how to do this “fairly and robustly” would be provided to schools and colleges. The changes will ensure “GCSE, A- and AS-level students are awarded a grade which fairly reflects the work that they have put in”, the statement said.
There will also be an option to sit an exam early in the next academic year for students who wish to, along with the option of sitting the exams in summer 2021.
The exam regulator Ofqual and the exam boards will discuss the plans with teachers’ representatives before finalising an approach, but they said that students should expect to receive their grades at the end of July. Usually, grades are published at the end of August.
The government said it would also aim to ensure that the distribution of grades follows a similar pattern to that of other years, “so that this year’s students do not face a systematic disadvantage as a consequence of these extraordinary circumstances”.
The news means that university admissions will not be based solely on predicted grades, which have been widely criticised as inaccurate, particularly for less-advantaged students who are often underpredicted.
However, Johnny Rich, chief executive of the Engineering Professors’ Council and a higher education consultant, tweeted that while “the approach proposed is not the same as predictions, it is similar and so the biases are likely to persist”.
“This means that university access, if based on the July grades, will be biased towards the socially advantaged students, deepening the inequities in the system at a time when so many are working hard to improve,” he said.
The announcement also said that students would have the ability to appeal their grades if they feel they have been treated unfairly.
In a joint statement, university leaders said that they “are committed to doing all they can to support students and applicants and ensure they can progress to university. This will involve being flexible and responsive in their admissions processes.”
“We want to reassure students who have applied to university, or are thinking of doing so through clearing, that every effort will be made to ensure they are not disadvantaged in any way by the decision not to go ahead with exams this summer,” said the statement, which was signed by the leaders of the university mission groups: the Russell Group, MillionPlus, University Alliance and GuildHE.
NUS vice-president for further education Juliana Mohamad Noor said it was “heartening” to see that the approach was not based solely on one set of predicted grades.
“We hope they will be working on an approach which reflects the achievement of students fairly, takes into account this disrupted and stressful year and supports them to achieve their potential. We would like to see young people and those affected brought further into the conversation about the exact process which will be used to determine the grades: it is their attainment and work at stake, and it is vital they are represented in this process,” she said.
