Government U-turn on school results will create chaos for British universities

The government has announced that all students in England will now be receiving the GCSE and A-Level grades predicted for them by their teachers. The use of predicted grades will mean massive grade inflation for the class of Covid-19 and herald a logistical nightmare for universities which will have to handle the fallout of a glut in incoming students.

Speaking earlier today on Radio 4 Professor Jo-Anne Baird, Ofqual Standing Advisory Group member and Director of the Department of Education at Oxford University, stated that, if one used predicted grades, then roughly 35% of exam results were grade A or above. By comparison, in 2019 just 25.2% of results in England were A or above.

So, it seems that most students will meet their university offers which the universities are contractually obliged to honour, even if they don’t have the resources to receive them. Under the predicted grades system, the University of Cambridge alone will probably have to teach and accommodate around 30% more students than normal.

On a national level, the university system accepted 541,240 undergraduates in 2019. If we assume that most of 652,790 students who applied for university by 30 June 2020 are now successful, then the entire system will have to absorb tens, if not hundreds, of thousands more applicants than normal.

The most obvious challenge this poses is that many universities simply do not have the facilities to for such sharp increases in student numbers. Larger class sizes could have an impact on teaching standards. Accommodation is another challenge – one tactic sometimes used by oversubscribed universities, forcing some students to share rooms like in American dorms, is likely to be a hazard in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

The result is that universities will have to cope with an incoming storm of administrative chaos. Right now, the key question is what happens to students who were awarded places at their second-choice universities, or got places at other universities through clearing, only to now see their grades rise. When interviewed on Radio 4 Mary Curnock Cook, ex-CEO of UCAS, stated some 55,000 students – over 10% of 2020’s entire student intake – had already been enrolled into universities this way.

Is there going to be a mass enrolment and enrolment into different universities? Or might some universities, looking for ways to try and limit the massive influx of students they now face, refuse to accept students who were officially enrolled in other universities, even if they now meet their offers?

These inevitable spikes in student numbers have already forced the government into yet another U-turn. Shortly after the announcement on the move to predicted grades Education Secretary Gavin Williamson also announced the government was abolishing the cap on the number of domestic students universities could accept, having reintroduced it earlier this year.

Having abolished the cap on student numbers for universities in 2015 the government reintroduced the policy earlier this year. Universities were only allowed to increase the number of domestic students they admit by 5%. The move was designed to stop top universities compensating for the reduction in the number of international students as a result of the pandemic by hoovering up large numbers of domestic students.

Given how the use of predicted grades looks set to massively inflate student admission numbers this year the government had little choice but to scrap the cap. Yet, this seems to bring the government back to square one vis-à-vis the problem with lower-ranked universities potentially facing a dearth of incoming students, even as top universities are now facing a difficult to manage glut.

Finally, there is no guarantee that the chaos will be confined to this year. A likely solution many universities will reach for to deal with the glut will be encouraging students to defer until 2021.

However, this could see students taking exams next year disadvantaged in applications to university by large numbers of places being already promised to students who finished secondary school in 2020. The problem will be further exacerbated by the large numbers of students who had already deferred, or were considering doing so, not wanting to start university in the middle of the pandemic.

Then there is also the question of GCSE results. With AS Levels now abolished, these form a vital part of university assessment of student’s UCAS applications. Yet these too are set to be subject to massive inflation this year.

By failing to think through the practical implications of how it was awarding marks this year, the government created an injustice which was bound to cause public outrage. Now, in a bid to dodge the anger, it is reversing course, preferring instead to shovel chaos onto the already beleaguered university sector. In this case, it seems inevitable this chaos too will in due course land back in the government’s lap.