Calls for watchdog to investigate delays to BTec results

Further education and sixth form colleges are calling for the exams watchdog to investigate the reasons for delays to BTec results, which have left thousands of students in limbo.

Exam board Pearson said there were 5,700 students who didn’t receive their grades for level two BTecs alongside GCSE results as scheduled on the morning of 25 August, plunging them into uncertainty over where they will be studying next year. This follows thousands of pupils failing to receive results for their level three BTecs from Pearson, and Cambridge Technicals from the exam board OCR last week.

Pearson said the delays were due to problems with entries not meeting the “qualification criteria”, making them “ineligible” for grading.

David Hughes, the chief executive of the Association of Colleges, urged Ofqual to launch “a full, thorough and open investigation into what went wrong to make sure this never happens again”.

Labour has also called for an investigation, describing the delays as “a debacle”.

Hughes said: “This cohort of young people has already suffered severe disruption to their learning due to the pandemic. That makes it even more unacceptable that these same students have faced extra stress with delayed results. Pearson and OCR’s systems simply did not deliver results on time to thousands of students, and they have badly let them down.”

Hughes added that it had been difficult to communicate with Pearson, which has not been clear about the reasons for the delay, leaving “college staff to pick up the pieces without all the available information to hand”, although he said the awarding body was starting to open up.

A spokesperson for Pearson said that 240,000 students received their results for BTecs and related vocational qualifications on time, and apologised to those who were still waiting.

She said: “As of 10pm yesterday, there are 5,700 students registered for the qualification who are currently ineligible to receive their grade – meaning we need to work with schools and college to resolve queries, run eligibility checks and confirm if the student still wishes to claim a grade.”

Pearson said BTecs were modular qualifications based on a combination of internal modules, assessed by colleges and schools, and external assessments, which Pearson marks. Unless it receives grades for all units, it is unable to assess the qualification. It said that changes made to account for Covid disruption had “added more complexity” this year.

Colleges said there was always some human error involved in providing the unit results, but this would not usually result in comparable delays.

John Thornhill, chief executive of LTE group, which runs several colleges in Manchester, tweeted his frustrations with the awarding bodies, warning that he would review the business relationship.

He wrote: “This a third year in a row we’ve had abject disregard for students, & LTE Group as a customer, while paying them £millions”.

Last week, thousands of students were left without their level three BTec results. Although colleges and universities promised to hold places for those with an offer, students who missed their grades were delayed from entering clearing, meaning there were fewer places still available.

In an update to level three entrants published on Wednesday, Pearson said it had sent an additional 2,450 BTec results to the University and College Admissions Service to enable students to claim their places for further study, adding that 900 outstanding claims remained.

OCR said that it had “now issued every [Cambridge Technicals] result for students with higher education progression needs” and that it was “very sorry for the additional stress to students over the past week”.

Ofqual did not confirm whether it would launch an investigation, but a spokesperson noted that “it is important that, as regulator, we review what has happened to make sure that students in future years receive results when they expect them”.