We are starting this petition to express our concerns over the management of this year’s Core Paper B issued under the exam board NCFE.

It is with strong intention that I bring your attention to mine and my peers’ personal experience under the poorly executed T-level. When entering this new tier of education, the T-level was branded as a new, modern and next-step experience of learning. I and my peers can account for how starkly different this experience has been.

Since the start of the year, taking charge of our own learning has been very difficult, as little support has been provided by the exam board for our grades. With the minimum passing grade set so high, we all had to work painstakingly hard to do well academically. 

On 22/06/2023, we were set to take our Core Paper B, and only a few minutes after, the system crashed. On this day we were given a promise. We were promised that this would not be a disadvantage to us. We were promised that we would get the grade that we deserved. However, is this really how it worked out? Over the summer, we have waited and waited for a clear answer. One of my peers wrote to NCFE, in which they replied to ‘continue to liase with our college’. The college hadn’t received a reply at all. There was no clear answer. There was no solution provided. 

On 14/09/2023, we were finally updated. NCFE had decided our grades off an algorithm based on the performance of the rest of the country. From this algorithm, I understand that learners were allocated grades based on the statistics that nationally learners performed better on Core Paper A and worse on Core Paper B.

While I understand that this is systematically correct, is this inclusive to all learners? When challenged, NCFE stated that they had allocated their grades correctly, as they had followed the rules that Ofqual has set for regulating exams that could not be taken, but in between these facts and figures, where is the regard for students’ personal experience? At the start of the year, I was earning low grades on all my mocks, however Core Paper B was always my stronger grade. My progress continued to rise like this proportionally throughout the year, however this has not been reflected in the grades that have been allocated for me, and we don’t even have the chance to prove it. Instead, this opportunity has been taken away from me and so many others. Furthermore, The information provided by our lecturer in charge of delivering Core Paper B content has also been completely disregarded. 

This has drastically dragged down our overall grade we can receive for our first year. There are so many strong, capable, determined students that I know who have also taken this course, whose future is now uncertain because appropriate actions were not taken to prevent this, as the grades we can reach at the end of the year is now limited, which prevents us from getting into our university courses (please refer to the image to understand more).

The disappointment that we feel as a collective is so indescribable that I am failing to put it into words.

To conclude, I would like to reiterate my point to you again. My point is not just about whether using an algorithm is factually correct, but also if you feel that this brings justice to students or not.

Please help us get the attention from the appropriate roles and governing bodies to help change our grades by signing this petition! Your help is very much appreciated.

Sincerely,

T-level students.