Results fiasco is symptom of the lack of trust inbuilt in the way England’s schools system has been set up

In slides made available for a presentation by the exams regulator Ofqual last month, one set of statistics stood out.

A page entitled “The distribution of Centre Assessment Grades compared to last year’s grades” saw Ofqual showing what grades teachers had submitted for their students at A-level, AS Level and GCSE, in this unprecedented year when these grades were to given weight, in the absence of students taking exams.

Ofqual’s statistics showed that, if grades were to be awarded based on these figures, national results would have soared, with the proportion of candidates awarded A*s at A-level, for example, nearly doubling from 7.8 to 13.8 per cent; double-digit percentage point increases at grades A to B at A-level and dramatic rises, too at the key GCSE comparison points of grades 7 and 4.

Ofqual, therefore, reacted by using a statistical model to downgrade many results, pulling the overall national statistics more in line with those of previous years, as has been its defining mission under the “comparable outcomes” policy.

This has resulted in many very concerning tales in terms of the impact on individuals, with reports of students downgraded by Ofqual’s algorism to grade Us seemingly particularly staggering. And at first reading there seemed a strong claim that this new system might be institutionally biased in favour of private schools running subjects with small numbers of pupils, where teacher judgments were given more weight.