Today, 18 August, there were some inaccurate reports in the media and on social media that students that received their vocational and technical qualifications (VTQ’s) last week, have been treated unfairly.
Reports suggested that after the Education Secretary announced yesterday that students receiving their A Level and GCSE results will be reissued with their assessed centre grades, that VTQ students had been forgotten about.
This is not true. DfE and Ofqual have been focused on delivering results fairly for VTQ students. VTQs are assessed very differently to A levels and GCSEs. VTQ results generally took into account coursework already completed and centre assessment grades formed only a small part of the final results. This has meant that results this year have remained stable and as expected, which is great news for these students.
A DfE spokesperson said:
Our priority is to ensure all students are treated fairly, including those who received vocational and technical results last week, such as BTECs and Cambridge Technicals.
These subjects are rightly assessed differently to A levels, and the overwhelming majority of results are in line with centre assessment grades.
A minority of vocational and technical qualifications used a statistical model similar to the one Ofqual used for A levels and GCSEs, and Ofqual has asked these awarding organisations to review their approaches to make sure no student is disadvantaged.