Exam watchdog admits a decade of data on extra time was wrong

Telegraph

2 days ago

The exams regulator has admitted that a decade of data on the number of pupils receiving extra time was wrong.
Ofqual said on Thursday it was pulling 10 years of data from 2014 onwards after revealing it had accidentally doubled the number of GCSE and A-level students receiving special arrangements, such as extra time or a laptop.
Nearly a third of all pupils in England, or around 420,000, were recorded as getting extra time last year, with the figure quadrupling over the past decade.
Private schools have also been accused of gaming the system in recent years after official data showed an eye-watering four in 10 pupils received extra time in 2024.
But the watchdog has now admitted those statistics were 'significantly overstated' and that the true figure is almost half of that, including for private schools.
The Independent Schools Council (ISC) said private schools were owed 'an apology' for the botched data which it said had seen their 'integrity questioned' for years.
Pupils are usually only eligible for extra support in exams if they have special educational needs and disabilities (Send) or a temporary injury such as a broken arm.
Ofqual said on Thursday that the real level of students receiving extra time in exams was broadly equivalent to the proportion of Send pupils across the school population.
This would mean around 19.5 per cent of pupils across all schools in England actually received extra time in their exams last year, not the 30 per cent recorded on official statistics.
It also slashes the proportion of private school pupils thought to have received extra time by around half.
In total, 41.8 per cent of fee-paying pupils were recorded as getting extra time in last summer's formal exams, but Department for Education (DfE) shows just 22.4 per cent currently receive Send support.
Critics had jumped on the disparity between private school pupils receiving extra time and those in the state sector, with 26 per cent of children in non-selective state schools granted it last summer.
Julie Robinson, the chief executive of the ISC, said: 'Ofqual is supposed to be the trusted source for exam statistics and as a result of these significant errors, independent schools have wrongly seen their results undermined and their integrity questioned.
'We are pleased that the investigation instigated by the DfE [Department for Education] will lead to a correction of the record and we hope an apology will be forthcoming.'
Ofqual blamed the data blunder on duplicate applications for the same student that were accidentally included in official statistics. It also said the inflated data wrongly counted pupils who obtained special access arrangements but did not go on to sit their exams.
The watchdog said in a statement: 'Ofqual's detailed analysis of underlying data from the boards has established that the published figures significantly overstated the number of students receiving access arrangements.'
Tom Bramley, executive director of research and analysis at Ofqual, said: 'We are correcting the record as soon as possible.
'The access arrangements process has not changed, and students who received support did so appropriately.
'This issue is limited to our access arrangements dataset and our other statistics are not affected.'
It will raise serious questions over the regulator's official data collection, as pupils await their GCSE and A-level results next month.
The exams watchdog said it will publish revised statistics later this year covering special exam arrangements for 2021 onwards, but warned they 'won't be perfect'.
It will leave a seven-year black hole in official data in England, since Ofqual will not replace the figures between 2014 and 2021.
Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, voiced concerns with Ofqual last year about the significant jump in pupils receiving extra time and urged them to examine 'the range of reasons that might be driving this and whether any policy response is required'.
She told the Financial Times in November that it was 'a real concern to me there is such a big divide between the state and private system'.
Torsten Bell, the Labour MP for Swansea West, also said on X last November: 'A far greater proportion of private than state school pupils get extra time in exams… which is even odder when you consider the wider context this is happening within: we know special educational needs are more prevalent in poorer areas.'
Unions had also jumped at the rise in extra time figures to claim that exams are too stressful for pupils and called for a rethink of high-stakes assessments.
Paul Whiteman, general secretary at school leaders' union NAHT, said: 'While it is regrettable that problems have been identified with these statistics, Ofqual has done the right thing in withdrawing them and working to correct and republish them.
'School leaders have certainly seen more requests for access arrangements in recent years in the aftermath of Covid, increased reports of anxiety and mental ill-health, and significant rises in numbers of children with additional needs.'