School will not grade my external son at A level due to lockdown. HELP!

[Jemma1972]

My son has entered for an A level exam this summer in Biology as an external student. He is retaking the exam to try to up his grade so is entering independently via a private tutor he's been having this year. He has an offer at uni but needs to up his grade to an A.
The school is now saying it has chosen not to grade anyone who is being entered externally at its centre. (He is an ex student of the School.). His tutor has lots of evidence that he is likely to gain an A grade this year.
He is devastated and is losing the will to continue. I am beside myself.
Is anyone else going through this and what advice can they give? He doesn't want to wait till next summer as he will be nearly 20 by then.
And why has the government given schools the choice as to whether they allow eternal candidates to be graded or not? Surely it should be the same for all. This fudge has got me very angry and my son very despondent. I am worried that he is losing his motivation.
Any advice?

“ Where centres have accepted entries from private candidates (students who they have not taught themselves, because they have been home-schooled, following distance-learning programmes or studying independently) those students should be included where the Head of Centre is confident that they and their staff have seen sufficient evidence of the student’s achievement to make an objective judgement.

Official guidance

Just found this from the official documentation.

Maybe you need to get the evidence from the tutor, and then go back to the school, perhaps quoting from above.

If that fails, contact the uni directly with the evidence from the tutor. A letter from the school documenting why they don’t feel able to grade dc may be useful also.

perhaps Also contact Ifquel directly for their advice?

Ofquel,

where the Head of Centre is confident that they and their staff have seen sufficient evidence of the student’s achievement to make an objective judgement.

The key part is in this quote. If they haven’t been seeing any of his work or been testing him, giving him mocks etc. (you mention the private tutor which means the school hasn’t been) then they cannot just ‘give him a grade’. He is going to have to sit the exam in Autumn.

exam thread

This thread may be of interest to you also.

It's not just evidence for a likely grade. Its evidence for ranking him within that grade alongside the school's own candidates. That's the sticking point.

If that fails, contact the uni directly with the evidence from the tutor. A letter from the school documenting why they don’t feel able to grade dc may be useful also

This sounds like good advice. The posts above are correct in explaining why the school can't put a grade forward for him. I hope you can get something sorted., it sounds like a really tough situation.

Hi Jemma1972! Sorry to hear of your son's travails!

I really would contact the Uni and ask for their guidance. They may themselves review Tutor and other evidence of progress and of recent performance, e.g. Mocks.

They want to know that he knows Biology well enough, that's all; they don't want him to struggle unduly at Uni and they also want to fair to all entrants overall in these unique circumstances.

I reckon they will then take him as they 'half' took him the first time and they know he will have learned his lesson. And because all faculties and Unis are now desperate for Tuition fee income and also rental-and-food spend from students.

@hkirsx

You will help grade OP's son who you have never had any contact with?

Hmm.

In English, too...when he's studying biology
Nice to know English graduates can read...

I work in a school sixth form. We offer external candidates the chance to sit mock exams with our internal students. Those that sat the mocks will get a prediction and be included on our rank order. We aren’t predicting grades for the students who chose not to come in and do the mocks. It’s a shame but we just don’t have the evidence.
We aren’t being asked just to predict a grade but to put them in a rank order with the rest of our students. How can departments do that when they haven’t seen the students’ work this year? We would risk compromising the grades of other students if we put an external student above them in the rank order based on the say so of a private tutor that we don’t know and can’t moderate.
It’s a real shame but he’ll have to sit the exam in the Autumn, which I sincerely hope the DfE will make the exam boards run, even if they won’t be profitable.