The Office for Students provides further evidence of unexplained achievement.
The Department for Education has been concerned about grade inflation in university degree classifications for some time. Playbook understands that when David Willetts was minister for universities he expressed alarm at the rise in the number of students achieving a first or upper second class qualification.
The politics of the coalition made it difficult to challenge universities on the topic, and Willetts had bigger fish to fry during his time at the DfE. It was Jo Johnson who first went public on what he called “rampant grade inflation”, at the behest of Justine Greening, then the secretary of state for education.
This article on Research Professional News is only available to Research Professional or Pivot-RP users.
Research Professional users can log in and view the article via this link
Pivot-RP users can log in and view the article via this link.