A letter to Michael Gove - redraw the English GCSE grade boundaries

This letter will be handed in to the Department of Education in Westminster after the Protest Lobby being held on Thursday August 28th, at 1pm:

Dear Mr Gove

Last Thursday, instead of receiving just reward for their achievements, many thousands of GCSE students found that their hopes of that vital ‘A*- C’ Grade in English had been dashed. It is now clear that this was owing to a substantial and unjustifiable shift in grade boundaries between January and June 2012.

Those students, their parents and teachers, as well as many members of the wider public, expect you, as Education Secretary, now to act swiftly to resolve this scandal.

Unfortunately, those same students, parents and staff are only too aware that this unacceptable shifting of the GCSE goalposts fits well with an ideological agenda that seeks to privatise education, undermine local democratic control and restrict the opportunities for our youngsters to progress to further and higher education.

The raising of the ‘floor target’ to 40% A* - C grades, a target that schools must reach to avoid the threat of forced academisation, is undoubtedly your decision. Conveniently for the supporters of school privatisation, this increase now coincides with a shift in grade boundaries that has made it significantly harder for schools to achieve that higher target.

If you are to convince schools, students and voters that you and your Government are not intent on damaging youngsters’ life-chances, nor set on unfairly extending your privatisation plans, then you have a urgent responsibility to insist that this summer’s English grade boundaries be redrawn.

I demand that you call on Ofqual and the exam boards to urgently redraw the grade boundaries for GCSE English to ensure that those students who, in June 2012, achieved the standard which was required to achieve a ‘C’- grade in January 2012 , are now also awarded the same ‘C’ - grade.

Yours