All A-Level students will get a place at their first choice university if they have the grades and the caps on medical degrees will now be scrapped, ministers have announced today.
Thousands of students have this week been scrambling to get places at their first choice university after after Education Secretary Gavin Williamson scrapped the controversial algorithm system for A-level results after outcry.
Today the revised A level results were released and showed that the proportion of exam entries receiving an A grade or higher has increased to a record high for England, with 38.1% awarded the top grades – up from 25.2% on the original algorithm grades.
Universities had been struggling with the sheer volume of demand as 55,000 pupils who accepted a place at another university or got a new course at clearing tried to get into their top choice.
Today, the government has confirmed that students who did receive sufficient grades will be able to take up their place. If the school is full then students can be offered an alternative course or deferment to 2021.
The government had tried to ease the pressure on universities by removing the cap on admissions, but excluded medicine, dentistry and veterinary sciences, leaving medics uncertain if they would be able to claim their place this year.
However they have now agreed to lift the cap on medicine, dentistry, veterinary science and teaching courses following the U-turn.
The Department for Education (DfE) has also announced additional funding to increase capacity in medical, nursing, STEM and other high-cost subjects.
The proportion of A-level entries receiving an A grade or higher has increased to a record high for England, with 38.1% awarded the top grades (pictured)
Dr Tim Bradshaw, CEO of the Russell Group, said: ‘The Government’s decision today to provide additional funding for high cost courses, such and chemistry and physics, and to lift the number caps on specialist courses, including medicine and dentistry, is a very positive step, which will allow us to increase capacity and help more students to benefit from a high quality education.
‘Russell Group universities are working with government and will do everything they can to accommodate as many students as possible on their preferred courses this year and will continue to do so wherever this is practically possible. Where this isn’t possible, our universities will look to offer deferred places or explore places on alternative courses where the student meets the entry requirements.’
A number top universities, such as Cambridge and Oxford, warned earlier this week they were already reaching capacity. It is expected a large number of students who did receive their top choice university may have to defer their place.
The University of Durham is offering a bursary and ‘guaranteed college accommodation’ to students who volunteer to defer a year due to capacity issues caused by the U-turn.
The Government’s Higher Education Taskforce – made up of university sector leaders – agreed on Wednesday to honour all offers across courses to students who meet their conditions this coming year wherever possible, or if maximum capacity is reached to offer an alternative course or a deferred place.
Alistair Jarvis, chief executive of Universities UK, said: ‘The policy U-turn on A-levels has created significant challenges for universities caused by late movement of students between institutions.
‘The welcome additional medicine and dentistry places and confirmation of the additional teaching grant for high-costs subjects will help to support capacity.
‘Government now needs to urgently confirm funding both to ensure the financial stability of institutions suffering from a loss of students and to offer further support to maintain and build capacity where needed.’
It comes as more than ten per cent of A-level students results have been upgraded to an A or higher after the algorithm was ditched for teacher assessed marks following an outcry.
The proportion of A-level entries receiving an A grade or higher has increased to a record high for England, with 38.1% awarded the top grades.
A number of A-Level subjects have seen large jumps in pupils receiving A or higher compared to 2019 results
Youth protests in front of the Department for Education as a new exam rating system has been introduced
When this year’s results were first released last week under the controversial moderation system, some 27.6% of entries achieved an A or above.
Meanwhile, the overall pass rate for grades A* to E has also risen to an all-time high at 99.7% for England, up from the 98.2% who achieved the same in last Thursday’s results, figures provided by the exams regulator Ofqual show.
It comes after the Government announced students would be able to receive grades based on teacher assessments, rather than an algorithm, after thousands of results were downgraded last Thursday.
The exams fiasco has piled pressure on Education Secretary Gavin Williamson, who is now under intense scrutiny to ensure students get back to school in September.
Prior to the Government’s U-turn, exam boards had downgraded nearly two-in-five (39.1%) grades in England, according to data from Qfqual – equating to about 280,000 entries being adjusted down after moderation.
A total of 35.6% of grades were adjusted down by one grade, 3.3% were brought down by two grades and 0.2% came down by three grades.
Teachers were told to submit the grades they thought each student would have received if they had sat the papers, alongside a rank order of students, after exams were cancelled amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
However, exam boards moderated the grades to ensure this year’s results were not significantly higher than previously and the value of students’ grades were not undermined.
Meanwhile, approximately 15,000 students who were rejected by their first-choice university will now meet the offer conditions set for them to study after the grading U-turn.
Ucas (the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service) said universities had ‘exercised flexibility’ after it analysed the results from the four largest awarding bodies for 160,000 students who received upgraded A-level marks in England.
They showed that around 100,000 of those students had already secured a place at their first-choice university on results day last Thursday.
Of the remaining 60,000 students, around one in four, approximately 15,000, will now meet the A-level offer conditions of their original first choice university, Ucas said.
It comes as the proportion of GCSE entries in England awarded top grades has surged to a record high after a U-turn meant results could be based on teachers’ estimated grades amid cancelled exams.
Universities Minister Michelle Donelan said: ‘This has been an incredibly difficult time for students and I want to reassure them that every effort is being made to make sure all those who planned to, can move on to higher education.
‘I am delighted that the Government and the higher education sector have agreed that all students who achieved the required grades will be offered a place at their first choice university. I want universities to do all they can to take them on this year or offer alternative courses or deferred places where required.
‘This pandemic has highlighted more than ever the importance of our fantastic healthcare services and the need to invest in them.
‘So I am pleased we are removing the cap on these courses and providing additional funding so more students can take up their places now and become our future doctors and healthcare professionals. We’re working closely with universities to support them, helping them to be flexible for students.
Students receiving GCSE results this summer will get numerical grades for all their subjects as all courses have now moved over to the new grading system.
Btec grades were not included in the original U-turn, but at 4.30pm yesterday – with just hours to go until results were released at 8am today – Pearson said it would regrade Btecs to ‘address concerns about unfairness’.
The exam board told schools and colleges not to publish level 1 and 2 results in the vocational qualifications on Thursday to give them more time to recalculate the grades.
Schools minister Nick Gibb has apologised to students for the ‘pain and the anxiety’ they felt before this week’s grading U-turn.
He told BBC Breakfast: ‘To those hundreds of thousands of young people receiving their GCSE grades and the A level students receiving recalculated grades, I will say this to them, congratulations on what you have achieved.
This graph shows the proportion of students in England achieving an A/7 or above – and a C/4 or above – has shot up this year
Performing/expressive arts, engineering and economics saw the biggest increase in A grades in this year’s GCSE results
‘But also how sorry I am for the pain, the anxiety and the uncertainty that they will have suffered as a consequence of the grading issues we encountered last week. And to reassure them that we are doing everything we can to put these matters right.’
One headmaster likened the handling of the current results crisis to that of the post-Second World War education system.
Gavin Horgan, of Millfield School in Somerset, said: ‘It is wonderful that in GCSEs today, and at A-level, students will now gain the best grades possible in the circumstances.
‘They absolutely deserve that, and they never deserved the shameful approach that was taken to get to this point by the Government and exam boards.
‘However, bigger hurdles are ahead. The results received by students and the hiatus in education for many across the country, means that we will have legacy issues which will, in all likelihood, last a generation.
‘The pressure on the university system, the threat to post-92 universities, which are a vital element of our further education tapestry, and the knock-on implications of grade inflation for Year 11 students going into A-level studies this year and for those same students next year when they look to apply to university, cannot simply be written off in the same way that results have been this year. Sadly, we are just at the very start of the problem.’