Despite all the difficulties, most students in Barking and Dagenham have secured places at their chosen destinations.
There were celebrations at Robert Clack School of Science, where over 100 pupils will be taking up places in their first-choice university including offers at Russell Group universities with three of them securing places to study medicine.
Both Sydney Russell and Riverside schools reported that most students secured their chosen destinations including to highly competitive universities such as Oxford, Warwick, Durham, London School of Economics, Nottingham, Imperial, Bath and Southampton.
Councillor Evelyn Carpenter, Cabinet Member for Education and Schools Improvement, said: “Our schools staff have followed the advice and drawn on a range of evidence including completed work, marked assignment and mock examination results - grades in every subject were agreed following a robust internal quality assurance process.
“Despite the hard work and dedication of both teachers and pupils I feel our young people have been dealt a bad card. However, I am proud to say a large number of our young people have achieved their desired outcomes. Well done to everyone.”
Roger Leighton, Barking and Dagenham representative of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), said: “Local schools have worked hard to provide accurate and fair grades to the exam boards, but the statistical model used by the boards to adjust these grades has resulted in far too many being lowered, often without any clear logic. This is unfair on the individual students affected.
“The Association of School and College Leaders is calling on the government, and the exam regulator Ofqual, to review the situation as a matter of urgency, and not to simply dig in their heels and insist all is well.”
This year the Department for Education are not publishing performance tables so there will be no overall Barking and Dagenham figures or any individual school results published. Whilst overall outcomes were in many cases slightly up on last year, all schools have seen the impact of their results being downgraded. Some schools report that they will be supporting students whose mock grades were higher than their final examination grade in their appeal. Therefore, it will be some time before the final picture of results is known.
Information for students who are disappointed with their results is available here:
The Government have published information regarding how your grades were calculated as well as information regarding possible next steps if you didn’t get the grades you were expecting.
If you wish to look into appealing the grades you have received, the Government's student guide to appeal, malpractice and / or maladministration.