ofqual equalities report private candidates

Ofqual have produced their equality report which includes clues as to how successsful they were overall in dealing the private candidates

The Ofqual equality objectives Until the end of 2019 the objectives we had set ourselves to help us meet the Public Sector Equality Duty were to:

regulate to promote good practice in the way qualifications are designed, delivered and assessed promote equality in recruiting and employing members of staff promote equality when we procure goods and services

The report can be found here.

Private Candidates

'We worked with exam boards to explore how the alternative arrangements could provide grades for private candidates taking GCSEs, AS and A levels. Following consultation, we could not identify any reliable way to calculate grades for private candidates who could not be included within a centre’s cohort of students. Exam boards issued guidance about the alternative sources of evidence a centre might consider when determining a centre assessment grade for a student who had not studied with them. This meant that some private candidates were able to receive CAGs in 2020 but unfortunately this was not possible for all students, where sufficient evidence was not available to inform the grade. Such students used the opportunity to take exams in the additional 2020 autumn series. For vocational and technical qualifications (VTQs), for which there was a very small number of private candidates, awarding organisations had to include private candidates in their arrangements where possible.'