The government asked for the principle of "no grade inflation" to be applied.
This means that 2020 results overall had to mirror those for 2019.
Teacher assessment on its own DID result in grade inflation, ie on this basis overall students had higher grades than in the previous year.
Therefore to ensure no overall grade inflation, a method had to be found to adjust some students grades downwards from the teacher assessment.
The method used was to reference what grades each school usually attained in exams over previous years and to standardise against that.
In basic terms, if a school usually got
20% A*
20% A
10% B
10% C
10% D
10% E
20% fail
Then that's what initially happened this year under the algorithm, even if the teacher assessment was
25% A*
25% A
15% B
15% C
10% D
9% E
1% fail
So the government had unequivocally instructed ofqual that there was to be no grade inflation and what followed was inevitable and clearly foreseeable weeks if not months ahead even by a very average Joe such as myself.
The fact is that there is no obvious or fair way to award grades for exams people didn't sit. They went for no grade inflation so as not to devalue grades achieved in 2020 and to keep university admissions from being disrupted by people overall having inflated grades thus courses being unexpectedly over filled.
The government then back tracked to be more popular. Giving out higher grades makes you more popular with everyone taking the exams and their families.
There was never any complex algorithm. OFQUAL adjusted the results as the government had instructed them to, and then the government changed its mind at the last minute and tried to shift blame for this.
Historically, teacher assessment was accurate in predicting exam results for just 16% of pupils. Any estimate of grades without taking the exam would always result in inaccuracies and in winners and losers.