Grade boundaries in 2023

[Selok]

Received letter from the school/Ofqual open letter to students, extracted below parts - is this a good thing? What do you think?

Grading for GCSE, AS and A levels in 2023
Grading will be back to normal this summer. But there is some protection in place for GCSE and A level student cohorts this summer.
Broadly speaking this means that a typical student who would have achieved, say, an A grade in an A level qualification before the pandemic will be just as likely to get an A in 2023, even if their performance in the assessments is a little weaker in 2023 than it would have been before the pandemic.

Not sure what that means? How would they know which students were on course to receive a specific grade pre-pandemic - they wouldn't have even started the A-level courses?

Maybe it would make more sense if we were able to see the whole letter from Ofqual?
I suspect, though have no proof, that grade boundaries may be a little lower than 2019 levels of performance of the whole cohort demands it - ie there needs to x students getting an A*, y students getting and A etc.
Everyone can’t get lower grades than any other year.

www.gov.uk/government/publications/open-letters-arrangements-for-exams-and-assessments-in-2023/letter-to-students

Here’s the link for the letter.

@blametheparents thanks for the link for some reason I wasn't able to do it

@Selok
No problem :-)
You’re right, the wording is a bit weird.

I'd interpret that as, the same percentages of pupils getting each grade as in 2019, but lower marks required to get there.

Thanks for the link, @blametheparents It is deliberately vague. But my guess, and it is only that, is that if the cohort performance is reasonable but perhaps below the 2019 performance, some leeway may be given to keep grades in line with 2019 grades.

And this might be generously interpreted, but there are limits

This makes no sense, they always do this as you never know until after the exam how easy it will be. Each year they give a certain percentage of students each grade. How is this different?

I think they are obliquely saying they may be a bit generous, but they are disguising this heavily and are not prepared to be called to account for it. This contrasts with last year, when a formula for generosity was given

The percentage of top grades had previously been increasing year on year, so it would be reasonable to be concerned that they would slip back