Why did teenagers entered for one of the UK's most widely taken English GCSEs need to score 54% for a C in January but 66% if they took it in June? It's a seemingly arcane question, but one on which hangs the prospects not only of many pupils but also, seemingly, their schools.
Nearly 500,000 pupils sat an English language GCSE this year, most of them with the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA), England's largest GCSE board. England's exams regime has become fiendishly complicated, with pupils now able to take parts of the assessment at various intervals during their two-year course. Crucially, not only can they sit papers and submit coursework early but they are given grades on individual modules at this stage, too.
This year, with new types of English exam, the structure seems to have created problems. Ofqual, the regulator, has been taking a tough line against "grade inflation", expecting boards to ensure that the proportion of pupils gaining A*-C overall is roughly the same as in the past. The trouble seems to be the apparently last-minute nature of corrections. Ofqual told AQA and other boardsin late June to ensure their "subject outcomes" – the overall results – were comparable to those of earlier years.
The obvious answer to the question above is that AQA gave too many pupils C grades earlier in the year – perhaps understandably, some say, because of the new exam's complexity – for it to have met Ofqual's subsequent order to halt grade inflation. Therefore, the board had to push up the marks needed in later papers to ensure the target was met.
All of which leaves some teachers making the point that this may be right from the point of view of curbing grade inflation, but how can it be fair to pupils? The difficulty level of individual papers is not thought to have changed markedly during the year, and boards are not supposed to push up grade boundaries later in a course to reflect pupils having more time to prepare. So have early-entry candidates had it easier than others? And have some schools that chose to enter their pupils early been advantaged over the rest?
Other boards are thought to have been affected, too. The added twist is that English grades are crucial not just to pupils but to schools, with institutions held to account for the proportion of their candidates gaining five grades at C or better including in English and maths. Schools failing to hit targets of passing 40% of pupils at that level now face being closed or turned into academies, under a directive overseen by Michael Gove, the education secretary..
Some now speculate that Gove has forced down English results to make it harder for schools to meet the threshold, and thus to bolster his academies project. Gove does appear to be using targets to push a particular vision of schooling on an often reluctant profession, but from what we know now this saga reeks more of cock-up than conspiracy.
• Warwick Mansell is an educational journalist and the author of Education by Numbers