Tom Hill, a 19-year-old Marlburian (and son of parents with deep pockets, we hope), is suing the Oxford, Cambridge and RSA exam board (commonly known as OCR) that marked his A-levels for damages of up to £100,000. Now here’s an odder thing. If many more follow suit – and there is evidence they will – Oxbridge would have a good case for countersuing the Secretary of State for Education for undermining its own balance sheet and damaging its reputation. Isn’t the law fun!
Yes. Believe it or not, Oxford and Cambridge are enjoying what the City calls a ‘Ratner moment’, unique in their long and gilded history, and all because the introduction and marking of the new A-levels was an absolute horlicks. (If you don’t believe me, you can read up on the sorry mess on the Qualifications Curriculum Authority’s own website on www.qca.org.uk.)
But first, Tom Hill. As we now know, one exam board artificially lowered grades by hoiking the standards expected of candidates in the second part of A-levels, called A2. The board has admitted that it used a model in which the A-level standard was set a grade above the old exam in the second part, while for AS-levels – the first part – the standard was set a grade below. Teachers were informed of neither change in ‘demand’, which is education-speak for difficulty. But the net result was that just under 2,000 students were awarded final grades lower than they deserved, in order to head off a politically unwelcome rise in grade inflation. And poor Tom got a B in English and a U in one of his history modules.
The examining board at the receiving end of this lawsuit – and the one that has generated most gripes about downgrading – is, of course, the blue-chip OCR board, which Tom accuses of not marking these two papers ‘honestly and competently’.
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