Independent schools have seen a sharper fall in top GCSE grades than state schools, today’s exam results reveal, The Telegraph reports.
This year, the first time students have sat GCSEs since 2019, the proportion of grades marked at a 7 or above was 53 per cent, an 8.2 percentage point decline on 61.2 per cent last year.
This fall compares to a meagre 2.7 percentage point fall at comprehensive schools, where top grades accounted for 23.3 per cent of marks this year.
The results come after independent schools were accused of inflating grades under the teacher-assessed marking system brought in due to Covid.
The share of top GCSE grades jumped from 47 per cent to 61.2 per cent between 2019 and 2021, a rise of 14.2 percentage points.
That was double the rise seen at secondary comprehensives, where the share of top grades only increased by 7.5 percentage points.
Barnaby Lenon, the chairman of the Independent Schools’ Council, denied that the fall was because private schools had been too generous with their teacher-assessed grades the previous year.
He said: “Ofqual looked at that question themselves last year, they looked closely at schools who might have been thought to be over-predicting and concluded… they were satisfied that the grades that were awarded were correct,” he said.
“That this drop is greater than some other types of school is expected because independent school students are more clustered at the top end of grade scale where there has been most grade deflation.”