The highest-achieving girls at a top independent school were marked down in this summer’s language GCSEs, it was claimed yesterday. The inaccurate marking could herald problems for new GCSEs being introduced by the government next year.
Fiona Boulton, headmistress of Guildford High School, and Jon Coles, a former director-general for education standards at the Department for Education, conducted the first-ever direct comparison of GCSEs with International GCSEs.
They found that the brightest girls did better at the iGCSE because the GCSE penalised their responses to extended-answer questions, which are meant to give outstanding candidates a chance to shine. Less outstanding candidates did better at these GCSE questions by giving more formulaic answers that examiners could recognise.
The prestigious school, at which almost 73 per cent