College fears more students given wrong GCSE results

A principal has said hundreds of his students' English GCSE results are in doubt after a check on a sample of papers found half had been marked too harshly.

West Nottinghamshire College, in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, asked exam board Pearson to re-mark 41 papers from 2025. This led to 22 grades improving, in some cases by two levels.

The college said 1,400 of its students sat the English exam last year and now it wanted Pearson to re-mark more of the papers to find out whether there was a wider problem.

Pearson said it had carried out checks and pupils could have "full confidence" in their results, but the college said it did not believe these checks were as thorough as a re-mark.

College leaders requested the original re-mark because "many of our teachers were shocked that more students had not achieved their minimum target grade for GCSE English".

Once they had the results from the re-marking process, with two students raising from grade 3 (formerly known as a D/E) to grade 5 (formerly known as a C/B), they became concerned others might have been marked too low.

They met Pearson, which, according to the college, apologised and said the problem was caused by human error, but that a large number of examiners marked the papers.

However college principal Andrew Cropley said they had not done a re-mark to check more of the grades.

"I'm concerned it affects significantly more learners than the 22 that have had their grades raised," he said.

"That might be another 22, it might be a lot more than that and we need to know with a good deal of certainty that the scale of this is known.

"At the moment I can't assure my GCSE English students from last summer they absolutely got the grade they deserve and we should be able to.

"We are doing everything we can to try and get the grades for our students they deserve to get.

"This isn't numbers on a piece of paper, this isn't statistics, this is young people whose careers and future prospects are going to be affected by this."

Steve Yemm, Labour MP for Mansfield, raised the matter in Parliament after speaking to the college.

He told the BBC he agreed it had raised questions about all of the students' English results and he supported the call for further re-marks.

"It is a real landmark exam for a lot of students," he said.

"And to find out that such a high proportion have been marked incorrectly and have been re-graded in every case to a higher grade really concerns me that I am seeing young people in my constituency who are being treated unfairly.

"Effectively they're being failed if they've not been awarded the right grade when they've worked so hard, and their efforts should be rewarded."

The college has also raised the matter with exam watchdog Ofqual, which said it could not comment on private matters but confirmed it was "aware of this issue".

A spokesperson added out of 6.5 million GCSE, AS and A-level grades awarded in summer 2025, 4.6% were challenged and 1.1% were changed following reviews.

A spokesperson for Pearson said it had carried out "detailed quality assurance checks" and found "no wider issues with the marking of students' exams".

They added: "We understand that this may be concerning for students and we would like to reassure them that they can have full confidence in the results they have received.

"All our exams are marked by trained examiners and go through multiple layers of checking and senior oversight to ensure marking is fair and consistent for every student.

"We are in contact with West Notts College and we will continue to work with them to address the concerns they have raised."

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