MP for Worcester Robin Walker is lobbying the government to help city students affected by the A level exam results fiasco.

Mr Walker has been speaking to Neil Morris of Christopher Whitehead and Ed Senior of Worcester Sixth Form College, after the headteachers voiced their anger at many pupils having results downgraded. The MP encouraged students to appeal grades they think are unfair and said he is enquiring with the Department of Education to see if group appeals would be possible.

Mr Walker said: “I know they (Neil Morris and Ed Senior) have concerns about the marking process and I am taking it up with the education secretary. Everyone does have the right to appeal and I am trying to explore whether they can do a group appeal - I’m waiting to hear back from the department on that.”

Mr Walker was responding after Mr Morris slammed the grading system used. The government’s so-called 'triple lock' where students received the highest mark from one of their mock exam, predicted grade or resit failed, said Mr Morris, because as many as 75 of his pupils received lower grades than expected.

Across the country, it is estimated 40 per cent of grades issued were lower than they should have been. Despite this, education secretary Gavin Williamson said there would be no U-turn on the system.

Mr Morris said: “These students are the cohort who underwent the first set of GCSE results with the new 9-1 grades, had their rite of passage end of school, final standardised exams cut short by the pandemic and are now the guinea pigs for the calculated exams shambles based on bell curves and algorithms, not actual performance. In particular our science grades are spectacularly penalised, with C grade students given U grades and fabulously bright A grade students given C grades thereby ensuring they fit a bell curve of historic data not the current cohorts’ ability, work, aptitude or recent mock results.”