Student intersectional sociodemographic and school variation in GCSE final grades in England following COVID-19 examination cancellations

In 2020, COVID-19 forced the cancellation of all student end-of-school examinations in England. Schools were asked to provide centre assessment grades (CAGs), offering their best estimates for what students would have achieved had they sat their examinations. Although initially replaced in favour of grades calculated via an algorithm, students were eventually awarded their CAGs following widespread public outcry over the calculated grades. Whether CAGs were unfairly awarded across different student groups and schools in 2020 compared to previous years is a key question. However, existing analyses of bias in CAGs are limited by a lack of attention to potential interactions between student characteristics, and thus to hidden differential grade inflation across intersectional groups. We addressed this by examining student GCSE performance in 2018, 2019, and 2020 via a Multilevel Analysis of Individual Heterogeneity and Discriminatory Accuracy (MAIHDA) analysis of intersectional sociodemographic variation which we cross-classified with schools given their role in generating CAGs. Overall, a picture of stability emerged, where despite substantial overall grade inflation in 2020, the use of CAGs did not appear to have generated new or divergent intersectional relationships in comparison to previous years, suggesting CAGs showed a similar susceptibility to bias as normal examinations.