Wed 05 Aug 2020
Year 11/13 Students/parents and carers, please see the letter below regarding arrangements for GCSE & A Level Exam results days .
Dear Year 11 / 13 Student and your parents/carers
I hope that this letter finds you and your family well. I am writing to you following the direction from the Government to cancel the external summer examinations; I wanted to update both you and your families about how grades will be awarded and how results will be received in these extraordinary times.
Grades for A Level and GCSE students will be awarded on the usual dates in August (Wednesday 12th August for A Level and Thursday 20th August for GCSE), however the calculation of these grades will be very different to usual this year. Exam Boards will be awarding a calculated grade that they will determine. They will do this using information provided by our school, combined with other data they hold, to review and moderate the data and then to determine a suitable grade to award for each subject or qualification that you have studied. The final grade awarded may therefore be different to the centre assessed grade that we as a school submitted to the Exam Board.
As you will be aware from my previous letter, we will be providing you with your results via secure email on the morning of Results Day; due to the restrictions on large gatherings we feel that this will be the safest option. For this reason, we need to collect an email address for each student. It is vital that this is an email address that you, the student, have access to; however, it doesn’t have to be your personal address: it could belong to a parent or carer if you prefer. We therefore ask that all students telephone us on the Academy number (01977 664555) to provide your preferred email address to us if you have not already done so. You cannot ask someone to do this on your behalf - we need you, the student, to provide this email address so we can demonstrate that we are complying with data protection law about sharing your personal data.
When you telephone, we will ask a series of security questions to confirm your identity before recording the email address you want your results sending to. After you have provided us with your preferred email address, we will send you a verification to this email address to check it is correct. You will need to reply to this email to confirm the address is correct before we can send your results to it. We will then ensure that your results come to you via this email address on the 12th (A Level) or 20th (GCSE) August. A sincere thank you to all students who have provided their email address already; if you haven’t done so, please contact school as soon as possible to ensure you get your results on time.
In compliance with the instructions from Ofqual, we are unable to share the centre assessed grades and rankings with students, parents or carers before Results Day. From Results Day onwards we will be allowed to share this information with you if you want it. The results email will explain how to request this information: our preference is to provide the information to you in person so we can answer any questions you have and help you work out your next steps. For A Level students, appointments will be available with Ms Harrap on Thursday 13th August and for GCSE students appointments will be available with Senior Staff as well as our Careers Advisor on Monday 24th and Tuesday 25th August. When you receive your grades via email, instructions on how to arrange an appointment will be included.
Once GCSE grades have been issued on 20th August, students who feel their results do not reflect their abilities may wish to consider taking their GCSE exams in an autumn examination series between the 2nd and 23rd November 2020. The deadline for students to request entry to this examination series is 11th September 2020. Requests should be made directly to the Academy and instructions on how to do this will be available from the Academy on Results Day and will be posted on Facebook and on our website.
The National Careers Service will be running the Exam Results Helpline from 13th August until Friday 28th August. The helpline is available to young people and their parents/carers to help them with advice on their next steps. You can contact the helpline on 0800 100 900 number which will be open daily from 8am to 10pm. The busiest days are expected to be A level results day on 12th August and GCSE results day on 20th August. Beyond 28th August, you will be able to access ongoing support from the National Careers Service by calling 0800 100 900, visiting nationalcareers.service.gov.uk/contact-us or searching for the National Careers Service online.
The Government and Ofqual have also published a guide for students to help them to understand their grades this summer. It can be found at https://www.gov.uk/guidance/your-results-what-next
I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate our Year 11 and Year 13 students on all their hard work and effort during what has been an extremely difficult year. If you have any questions around Results Day either before or after, please don’t hesitate to get in touch by telephone or email and we will do our very best to ensure that you are supported and that your questions are answered. Thank you again for your support and for your patience as we work together during this unprecedented time.
Yours faithfully
Miss L Proctor
Principal