“I don’t understand.” “I don’t think it’s fair.” Meeting students, parents and teachers at one of our sixth-form colleges as they arrived to receive A-level results on Thursday, you could sense the trepidation and worry. For weeks they had prepared tentatively to go to university, not sure if their hard work would be recognised. In recent days, they had followed the furore and then capitulation in Scotland and the government’s sudden announcement that mock exam grades could be used to challenge their results. When they opened their envelopes, socially distancing and disinfecting beforehand, most were simply relieved and thrilled that a summer of worry and uncertainty had finally come to an end. However, there were too many who felt really let down, angry with a system that meant the predictions of their teachers were not affirmed, or disappointed that their teachers had not shown greater belief in their potential. Overwhelmingly, a positive day for most was punctuated by confusion, doubt and despair for many. How did we get here? With schools and colleges shut and exams cancelled, teachers were asked to predict the grade, and crucially the ranking, for each of their students. This is a thankless task for any teacher. In any given class, you may have 10 students who have the potential to achieve an A but only five or six will actually get the grade, and right until the results are published you never know who it will be. Similarly, you tend to know who your very brightest students are, and those who struggle the most in your class, but it is nigh on impossible to determine who should be ranked where in between. That’s the uncertainty that asking teachers to predict grades and rankings cannot resolve. Exams resolve this uncertainty, but there were no exams this summer. Teachers understandably did what all good teachers would be expected to do. Faced with the uncertainty of not knowing which of the 10 will secure an A grade and the requirement by the exam board to choose winners and losers, they erred on the side of their learners and predicted a few more than they would normally expect to achieve each year. As a result, the predictions made by teachers would have meant so many more top grades being awarded that it would have potentially devalued the qualification. Universities, faced with a surge of young people having achieved entry requirements and a cap on their numbers, could not be expected to honour their offers. It would also be grossly unfair to the young people whose teachers predicted judiciously and the many tens of thousands (the majority) who had very little difference between their predicted grades and the grades issued by the exam board. So, faced with the certainty of knowing teachers had predicted far more top grades than could be reasonably awarded, Ofqual and the government made the understandable decision to standardise the estimates. By looking at how the subject had performed in each school or college over the past three years, they capped how many of each of the grades could be awarded. However, no formula can account for the uncertainty and individuality of each cohort and of each young person in every class. It cannot allow for the surprise result, the student who pulls through and achieves a grade they never looked like delivering all year and the young person who fails the paper despite looking so consistently assured in class. With so much at stake, our young people receiving their GCSE and A-level results should not have been subjected to a purely algorithmic calculation that puts a ceiling on the grades they achieve simply because of how well (or badly) their peers performed in past years. It’s just not the message that a meritocratic society wants to give to a young person today, particularly those from our most disadvantaged communities who already face so many hurdles and glass ceilings in life. Guardian Today: the headlines, the analysis, the debate - sent direct to you Read more So what are we to do? Urgently, we need to move quickly to an appeal process that allows learners to challenge their grade if it is patently wrong. Some headteachers have reported “unfathomable” grades for some of their students and these need to be resolved quickly. The government must also cover all fees for appeals this year – it cannot be right that this year, of all years, schools and colleges should pay for them. Furthermore, for those students who have missed out on the grades they need by a small margin, colleges and universities need to show maximum discretion and flexibility. In particular, if a student has missed out on their entry requirements by just a grade, and the teacher predictions were higher, they should be admitted. If needed, we should lift the cap on university numbers so that this does not become a constraint to enabling young people to progress during these extraordinary times. In addition, universities should consider deferring the start of some of their courses to December or January to allow for the results of appeals and the special exam series in the autumn to be completed by learners. We also need to redouble our efforts with disadvantaged students. The exam results system – like so much of our society – is not designed to be biased, but it reflects and exacerbates the inequality and injustice that blights so many of our communities. We need a new national effort to close this gap, adequately fund and support the schools that serve the disadvantaged, and more robustly mandate universities and employers to ensure fairer representation for them. Finally, we need to ensure that this never happens again. Schools were rightly closed and exams rightly cancelled this summer – something I called for in March. However, we cannot afford to put thousands of young people and their parents and teachers through such turmoil again. We need to develop a better system for rewarding the efforts of our young people in such contingencies, and have the foresight and fortitude to deliver it effectively. • Hamid Patel is chief executive of Star Academies, a multi-academy trust that runs a network of primary and secondary schools across England