Replace GCSE grades with scores, says exam board
Teenagers should be awarded GCSE scores rather than grades, the international exams group Cambridge Assessment says.
CA, which runs three exam boards, including GCSE provider OCR, says the eight-point scale of A*-G produces "arbitrary categories".
Instead, pupils should be given a score that would show how they ranked in comparison with other candidates.
CA says this would "future-proof" exams, removing the need for additional grades such as A**.
GCSE scores, CA argues, would avoid the situation where two people can have scores some distance apart, yet receive the same grade, while two other people can have scores very close together, but receive different grades because they are either side of a grade boundary.
It would also mean that any unavoidable measurement error has a similar impact along the whole spectrum of marks, rather than being concentrated around grade boundaries.
League table changes
Tim Oates, director of assessment research and development at CA, said: "Grades are arbitrary categories imposed on an underlying continuum of achievement.
"Reporting scale scores would more faithfully capture this idea of a continuum."
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... (BBC News - 9 May)