Gavin Williamson says appeals against the grade you were awarded will be free. This may or may not be good politics but it's terribly misleading. Appeals may be free but they are also pretty much pointless.

The appeals system is set out here (from paragraph GQCov paragraph 5.1: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/909477/6668-1_Extraordinary_regulatory_framework_-_General_Qualifications_COVID-19_Conditions_and_Requirements.pdf) and the guidance on the appeals system can be seen here ( https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/907648/Extraordinary_regulatory_framework-_General_Qualifications__COVID-19_Guidance_060820.pdf).

You can't challenge your school/college on the grades or rank order it submitted. As the Guidance states "attempts to amend Centre Assessment Grades or rank order information by revisiting or revising the professional judgments which underpin them... is not permitted."

The system does allow for appeals in respect of administrative errors - similarly named students, using the wrong data sets for similarly named schools, and so on.

Beyond that you are in a world where you have to show exceptional circumstances - so exceptional they mention it twice - establishing that previous cohorts are not representative of the 2020 cohort.

At paragraph 31 the Guidance then gives a number of examples: eg schools moving from a single sex to a mixed intake, "extraordinary or momentous incidents or events" affecting a previous cohort and so on.

And even then "An appeal... should succeed only where the awarding organisation can identify a method to standardise results which allows for the substantive difference and which it considers is more likely to produce accurate results than the initial calculated results."

In our letter to Ofqual we characterise the appeal process as "aimed at truly exceptional circumstances" and observe that "there is no ability to appeal an awarded grade on the merits... on the basis of a disparity between their Centre Assessment Grades and their awarded grades."

This thread is not legal advice on the complex and limited grounds for an appeal. The point is that it feels pretty dishonest - gaslighting, if you like - to suggest (as this front page must be intended to do) to suggest these profound injustices will be resolved on appeal.