A Havering college has said it will review its A Level moderation process following numerous appeals from students and protests outside its gates.
Crowds gathered at Havering Sixth Form this morning (August 16), following a protest last week over the college’s decision to give some students lower grades than what their teachers had predicted.
The sixth form is run by New City College (NCC) and principal Janet Smith took over in January.
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Protest organiser Sara Bissagar said she believes her son, who got top grades at GCSE level, did not get the results he deserved.
She said: “The college isn’t giving us any answers, they’re not telling us why this has happened.”
Husband David added: “I’m gutted for my son, absolutely devastated.
“He’s a bright lad and worked so hard.”
Ms Smith said the college is "completely sympathetic" with disappointed students.
She added: “Some appeals we will look at individually but there are some courses where we are going to relook at the moderation process, just to make sure the results were accurate.
“If there is anything that has gone wrong, we will put that right very quickly.”
One woman, who did not want to give her name, was furious about her grandchild’s grades.
She explained: “These students have worked hard and it’s gone in the bin.
“They’ve had Covid to deal with, they’ve had no social contact, they’ve been isolated and working on their own at home.
“What’s their future now?”
Lisa Reader was at the protest with her husband Steve, and three sons - college student Max, Zac, 15 and eight-year-old James.
“I’m also here for the younger ones, because they’ll be coming here themselves," she said.
“Something's got to be changed.”
Steve added: “We think it’s relevant for us to come out and show support for our children.
“We’ve been to our local MPs, and they said they’re going to put as much pressure on the college as possible.”
Ms Smith agreed to speak to the Recorder about the backlash her college was facing.
She said that certain courses which had received unexpected numbers of appeals would be reviewed as a whole, rather than on an individual basis, including maths, history and philosophy.
Ms Smith explained the college’s moderation process involved teachers setting work and providing results in the form of raw scores.
These scores then went through two further processes, whereby curriculum managers and the college’s quality team, who are also teachers, looked at the grades to see if they were “representative”.
Students were then given results within the set grade boundaries, and finally these were reviewed by the NCC senior leadership, made up of college principals, to make sure it “didn’t look too much out of kilter from historical profiles”.
Ms Smith added: “We did an awful lot of work as a management team to get a process in place that we felt was robust and gave students the grades they deserved.
“What we’ve seen nationally is wholesale grade inflation, and that really wasn’t meant to happen.
“It didn’t happen for us because we had those processes in place.
“There are a great deal of students who did get the results they wanted, and sadly the disappointment of some students has overshadowed the mass achievement of others.
“We feel we did our best, and what was right.
“Our real focus now is the students and ensuring our appeals system supports students with their next steps.”
The college said it would now be prioritising students who have missed out on university places, and have sent letters to universities on behalf of students letting them know that students’ grades may change.
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