A DERRY school principal says A-level students could be “disadvantaged” as a result of the new marking system over the Coronavirus outbreak.
On Thursday, Education Minister Peter Weir announced that because exams had been scrapped, students would receive predicted grades for GCSE and A-levels.
There have been concerns about how fair the process will be to pupils.
Students have the opportunity to query the results through an appeals process.
Michael Allen, principal of Lisneal College, says he’s worried about how predicted marking may “disadvantage” some of his A-Level pupils.
He told BBC Radio Foyle earlier this morning that some of his students may be hindered by a system that uses AS grades to supplement decisions for A-level grades.
For example, he says one of his pupils, who had a “nightmarish AS paper”, will be “seriously hampered” with this system, despite working very hard and now “outperforming others”.
“Thousands of pupils around the country just won’t sit inside that perfect model process, there are pupils who are late bloomers and some that just pull it out of the bag at the last moment,” Mr Allen says.
“The process can’t be perfect, but there needs to be some flexibility for those cases,” he adds.
