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The exam regulator for England has admitted to massively exaggerating how many students are granted extra time and other assistance while taking A-levels and GCSEs, a subject that has sparked controversy in recent years.
Ofqual announced on Thursday that it was withdrawing its official statistics for assistance in exams going back to 2014, saying that “the published figures significantly overstated the number of students receiving access arrangements”.
Ofqual had claimed that 30% of students taking A-level, AS-level and GCSE exams were approved for extra time to answer questions last year. It now thinks the actual rate may be far lower.
An Ofqual official said its analysis “has not revealed any evidence of misuse or systemic failure. This has been a technical issue with reporting rather than how the system has been used.”
Access arrangements are adjustments to exams for students with special needs, disabilities or injuries, with 25% extra time being the most common. In 2012-13, 107,000 students in England were granted extra time. But in 2024 Ofqual said it was nearly 420,000 students, an increase of nearly 300%.
The discredited figures had highlighted private schools as particularly to blame for the increase, where nearly 42% of students received adjustments. But that could be more than halved when Ofqual issues revised figures this year.
Julie Robinson, the chief executive of the Independent Schools Council, said Ofqual should apologise. She added: “Ofqual is supposed to be the trusted source for exam statistics and as a result of these significant errors, independent schools have wrongly seen their results undermined and their integrity questioned.”
Tom Bramley, Ofqual’s executive director of research, said: “We are correcting the record as soon as possible. The access arrangements process has not changed, and students who received support did so appropriately.
“This issue is limited to our access arrangements dataset and our other statistics are not affected.”
Bramley said the problems were with “how the data was recorded and reported”, including errors and double-counting. But the huge differences raise questions about Ofqual’s malfunctions dating back to the Covid pandemic, when its attempt to award grades by algorithm collapsed in chaos.
Ofqual’s initial analysis suggested the true proportion of students receiving extra exam time was “much more closely aligned” with the number of students with special educational needs. The DfE’s figures show that 16.5% of secondary school students had SEN support and education, health and care plans last year.
Ofqual said it would work with the Office for Statistics Regulation and examination boards to improve data quality.
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “We welcome Ofqual’s commitment to improving data quality and transparency, and we will continue to work closely with them to ensure high standards across the system.”
