Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what discussions he has had with the International Baccalaureate Organisation on using predicted grades for International Baccalaureate qualifications.

Ofqual had discussions with all awarding organisations, including the International Baccalaureate Organisation (IBO), about their approach to summer 2020 examination results.

These discussions included how the awarding organisations intended to award grades where the examinations or assessments could not be adapted. While Ofqual had a degree of oversight of awarding organisations’ approaches, it did not mandate or validate the approach that each awarding organisation took.

The awarding approach for International Baccalaureate (IB) qualifications did not rely solely on using predicted grades from schools and colleges. The IBO also requested completed coursework from students that their external assessors marked and fed into their awarding process. In response to concerns raised by some schools following release of the IB grades in early July, the IBO announced the introduction of a ‘results review service’ whereby schools and colleges could provide further evidence if an individual student result, subject or cohort results were not in line with expected results based on student performance.