Horsham college student left ‘totally shocked’ after A-level downgrade

Sophie East has consistently achieved AAA for her courses in sociology, textiles and photography at the College of Richard Collyer.

But when A-level results were revealed today 18-year-old Sophie found she had been allocated two Bs and a C under a new Government assessment system introduced because of the Covid pandemic.

Sophie’s mum Samantha said: “We were totally shocked. This Government has failed this cohort of state educated children with its handling of the allocation of A-level grades.

“It is an utter disgrace and the Government should be deeply, deeply ashamed of itself.”

She said Sophie had consistently achieved good results at Collyers and had done well in her mock exams and coursework assessments.

“Today she missed out of her first place at university as she was allocated BBC - she never even received one C while at the college, so how can this be fair?,” said Samantha.

She said staff at the college were ‘brilliant and very supportive’ and that Sophie’s results were ‘as much of a shock to them as they were to us.’

“The college has reached out and reassured Sophie if she wants to appeal.”

She said Sophie’s first university of choice was Leeds to study photography and film media. “We are just taking stock now and deciding what to do,” said Samantha, who lives in Burgess Hill.

She added that Sophie had since been offered a place at Coventry.

This year is the first time that A-levels have been assessed without students sitting exams because of the pandemic.

Teachers were asked to rank pupils in order of how well they were expected to perform in exams and their grades were then moderated by exam regulator Ofqual.