AROUND 25,000 pupils across the North of Ireland will receive their A-level and AS results this morning, Thursday, August 13.
But the NI exams board CCEA has admitted there will be “anomalies” in some of the grades awarded.
In an email to principals on Wednesday, CCEA said it recognised there would be concern about some results.
It said it would “start contacting schools where we have seen anomalies in terms of judgements provided and the grade issued”.
Pupils who have taken subjects through CCEA will get results online from 08:00 BST.
The overall picture of results for Northern Ireland will be available at 09:30 on Thursday.
As exams were cancelled, grades will be awarded based on predicted grades from schools, which have been standardised by CCEA.
A similar system is also in place in England and Wales, and about 12% of pupils in Northern Ireland take subjects through exam boards from those countries.
While results in Northern Ireland are expected to rise, there will be intense scrutiny on how many grades predicted by schools have been changed by CCEA’s statistical modelling.
Schools have expressed concerns that a significant number of results they had predicted will be lowered.
In Scotland, results predicted by teachers alone will now be used to give pupils their grades.
That is after a major U-turn by the Scottish government on Tuesday, which abandoned a moderation system for grades by the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA).
In a statement made after the change in Scotland, CCEA said grades in Northern Ireland would still be awarded “based on a combination of teacher professional judgement and statistical modelling, as directed by the minister of education”.
“A key element of the process is to ensure that qualifications standards are maintained this year,” it said.
“There has been no change in this direction or our approach.”
Education Minister Peter Weir also said the system in Northern Ireland would be fair, and has criticised Scotland’s decision to award grades on teacher predictions alone.
He said that would lead to enormous increases in grades and undermine the credibility of their qualifications.
The chief executive of CCEA, Justin Edwards, has said that top grades at A-level would have risen in 2020 by at least 10% if data from schools alone had been used.
But in an email to principals on Wednesday evening, CCEA said it would “work through the anomalies as quickly as possible so that you can reassure students tomorrow that any queries regarding their results will be resolved as quickly as possible”.
While pupils getting grades from CCEA can get them online, many of those getting results from English and Welsh boards will have to go to their school to pick them up.
Pupils in the North of Ireland have outperformed their counterparts in England and Wales in recent years.
Just over 30% of entries were awarded A* or A grades in 2019.
CCEA will operate a dedicated exams helpline for pupils on 028 9026 1260 from 13-26 August.
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