The Times Educational Supplement reported that many IB students and teachers were furious that their 2020 allocated scores were depressed because of inadequate assessments by the IBO coupled with teacher grades being ignored or reduced. Certainly a great many appeals have been made and most seem to have been successful with grade uplifts. However, here at Education Advisers, we found very little evidence of unfair manipulation when we compiled our 2020 IB league tables for private schools in the UK, EU and World-wide. In fact many schools did show a marginal increase on 2019 points but rarely by more than 1 point. In contrast very few schools recorded decreases, albeit some may have decided to hide their embarrassment by refusing to reveal their average points.

 

By contrast there were so many increases of 5% to 15% in UK A Level grades at private schools , we feel many teachers inflated their predicted grades on the basis that the Government would reduce them again, which did not happen. It is well known among schools that teacher predicted grades can be wrong up to 70 % of the time, after research by UK Universities a few years ago. Therefore we have decided not to publish new A level league table positions this year but only show 2019 positions with the 2020 teacher predictions alongside them. Conversely we have much more confidence in the IB grades and are publishing 2020 tables. We accept that some individual IBDP students may have been treated unfairly but it appears they are very much in the minority and they have had the chance to appeal with their school’s support.