GCSE English (Marking) Debate

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Department: Department for Education

GCSE English (Marking)

Kevin Brennan Excerpts
Tuesday 18th September 2012

(12 years, 1 month ago)

Westminster Hall
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Nicholas Dakin Portrait Nic Dakin
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My right hon. Friend makes a salient and pertinent point. What is important is that young people in Scunthorpe, in Southampton and indeed throughout the land are treated fairly. The regulators recognise their own incompetence when one of them comes out with comments such as some students “got lucky”, but that is not good enough, is it? The incompetence that they recognise should not stand in the way of young people being treated fairly.

It is worth noting that, nationally, 26.7% of students doing the foundation paper in June 2011 got a C grade, while only 10.2% got a C grade in June 2012. Those statistics corroborate my local head teachers’ view that students taking the exam in June 2012 were disadvantaged compared with similar students who took the exam in June 2011.

Kevin Brennan Portrait Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
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Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the conditions on which Ofqual was set up by my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr Denham) and the now shadow Chancellor was that its duty was to maintain confidence in the exam system? How does a comment from the chief executive of Ofqual that some kids “got lucky” maintain such confidence?