In light of today’s announcement that A Level grades are to be awarded on the basis of teacher predictions, Univ will now confirm the places of all its UK offer-holders.

All of this year’s university applicants have been affected by the pandemic, and when last week’s A Level results were published, some students who were not assigned their predicted school-leaving grades asked whether this was a result of the way in which those grades were calculated this year, rather than a true reflection of their academic performance.  We shared their disquiet, as did many friends and alumni of the College.  We are delighted that the government has now accepted and addressed the inadequacies of the process by which grades were assigned this year.

Last week, we considered very carefully the cases of those offer-holders who were not assigned the grades their courses required.  In so doing, we were particularly mindful of the disproportionate impact the pandemic is likely to have had on the educational opportunities of, and the A Level grades assigned to, those who come from socio-economically and educationally disadvantaged backgrounds.  By the end of the day on which A Level results were published, we had already confirmed the places of three quarters of those A Level students who were not assigned the necessary grades.

Even before today’s announcement, this year’s first year was set to be our largest ever, with the highest ever proportion of students coming from UK state schools, and the largest number of students coming from postcodes classed by the University as disadvantaged.  We are very pleased that we are now able to confirm the places of all our UK offer-holders at the College.  In the event that an offer-holder’s course is already oversubscribed and thus unable to take on any more students this year, we will confirm their place for next year and work with them to put in place appropriate arrangements for the intervening time. In the midst of a year that has been extremely difficult for so many students, we are already extremely proud of our new first year, and we look forward to welcoming every single one of them to the College.

Published: 17 August 2020

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