Questions have been raised over whether students will be able to switch their offers and how universities will cope with more freshers
Universities have been put into admissions “chaos” after the government’s U-turn last week on how A-level exams were graded in England, with some institutions already having reached capacity for new first-year students.
Education Secretary Gavin Williamson made the U-turn in order to allow results to be based on the grade predictions of their teachers, after criticism over the downgrading of roughly 40% of exam results by Ofqual, the exam regulator, using a controversial algorithm system.
This comes after Gavin Williamson, the UK’s Education Secretary, has resisted calls to resign as a cabinet minister, saying that he is “incredibly sorry for the distress” that the A-level and GCSE results issue had caused to students.
Students who were awarded higher grades due to the algorithm will be allowed to keep those results, however, many students will be seeing their grades improve following the change in decision.
University admissions teams throughout the country are facing huge amounts of students new who have now been accepted into higher education institutions, while also figuring out how social distancing can be maintained with a larger cohort.
The vice chancellor at the University of Brighton, Professor Debra Humphris, told Sky News:
“It’s now a different level of chaos that we need to work out.”
She said her university would “get on and do our very best”, but warned “there will be constraints in the system, which this decision will now exacerbate”.
The University of Oxford, which has accepted over 300 students who stood to miss their offers due to the algorithm, revealed that it was now facing “significant capacity constraints”.
Universities had previously been limited to the number of students that they can accept each year, but the government has now lifted the cap for the coming academic term to help those who have been affected by the exam grading decisions.
Nicola Horrocks wrote on Twitter: “My daughter is due to take her A Levels in 2021. After missing nearly 6 months of college. What provisions are being made for these students?? And will there be enough University places available next year?”
This comes after the way the UK government counts up how many people in England have died from COVID-19 will be changing amid concerns that the previous system that was in place is “misleading”. Figures for England will now be coming into line with the rest of the UK nations by imposing a 28-day cut off period for counting coronavirus-related fatalities.
Dr Tim Bradshaw, chief executive of the Russell Group, said “urgent clarification” is needed from the government on what additional support will be provided to universities.
“There are limits to what can be done by the university sector alone to address that uncertainty without stretching resources to the point that it undermines the experience for all, not to mention ensuring students and staff are kept safe as we follow the steps needed to fight the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said.
