Some students have been questioning the fairness of these exams as they reportedly been on the receiving end of harsher grading since the pandemic.
Finn Macdiarmid reports.
Finn Macdiarmid reports.
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00:00Sitting the exams is hard enough, but only a flimsy envelope separating students from
00:05their results is enough to give anyone butterflies in their stomach.
00:08Over the years, General Certificates of Secondary Education, or GCSEs, have undergone many changes,
00:14from their introduction back in the 1980s to the addition of the A-star grade, then
00:19to adopting the numbers 1-9 for marks in England.
00:22Well now, 16-year-olds from Blackpool to Bournemouth are opening their GCSE results that will determine
00:27whether they pursue sixth form, apprenticeships or college, and here in Kent, some of North
00:32Fleet Technology Centre's bravest pupils opened their results on camera.
00:57These students might remember the difficult periods during and after Covid, where exams
01:07were cancelled in 2020 and based on teachers' predicted grades.
01:12Now back in my student days, I got easier exams thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, but
01:17apparently grade boundaries have now reverted back to what they were like in 2019.
01:23Now some believe this might be potentially harsher, but it doesn't seem to have bothered
01:26the students here at North Fleet Technology College who are collecting their GCSE results.
01:31But the question remains, is that fair on this year's students?
01:36I think that we've got to look at central government and we have to think about what
01:40is actually best for the students sitting in our schools, giving them more security
01:45with regards to their results. And I will give you a clear example, we've just gone
01:50through a series of BTEC results here for the first time, which have been marked quite
01:56harshly and I think that's not going to help students move forward. So I think that we
02:02do need to reset and look at the whole curriculum and the whole assessment process to make it
02:07fairer for all students.
02:09Despite the reset, statistics have released that the results are similar to the previous
02:13year, with more than a fifth of entries awarded top marks. On the other hand however, the
02:19total pass rate has fallen this year, at a 1% drop in students receiving above a grade
02:244 or C.
02:25The attitudes of the students here at North Fleet have been positive, with many looking
02:29forward to the future, and their teachers happy to see them succeed.
02:33Finn McDermott for KMTV in North Fleet.