We’ve issued a response to Ofqual’s baseless criticism of the @RoyalStatSoc’s letter to @StatsRegulation, in which we called for a review of this year’s A-level and GCSE adjustment models.

For anyone interested, here’s a THREAD.

At 17:30 on Friday evening (), we got a letter from Ofqual’s chair Roger Taylor, complaining about how we described the NDA that Ofqual asked our experts to sign back in the spring, when we offered to help with the exam algorithm.

(Here's our letter: https://rss.org.uk/RSS/media/News-and-publications/News/2020/14-08-2020-Letter-Deborah-Ashby-Sharon-Witherspoon-to-OSR.pdf /2

Ofqual made two claims: 1. That the NDA was actually NBD - specifically that the RSS could have signed it without compromising our ability to comment on the model, and 2. That we were wrong to say Ofqual didn’t provide an official response to the questions we raised about it. /3

Both Ofqual's claims are incorrect. The NDA was, as one lawyer put it me “very widely drafted”, and – as has been reported - prohibited us from revealing any confidential info that Ofqual didn’t choose to publish for a whopping five years. /4

It’s true that we might have been allowed to comment on the model itself, once Ofqual had published it – but there is a whole lot of info that goes into the “choice of the model” that the NDA would have barred us from commenting on. /5

We also didn’t receive answers from Ofqual to the questions we raised about the NDA and about our involvement. (We did receive an email giving a generic reassurance that it was all fine… 51 days after we asked them. How reassuring would you find that?) /6

In short, Ofqual’s complaints are baseless. We’ve set out our full argument in a letter which went from @royalstatesoc to Ofqual today.

You can read it here:
https://rss.org.uk/RSS/media/News-and-publications/News/2020/24-08-2020-Letter-Deborah-Ashby-and-Sharon-Witherspoon-to-Ofqual.pdf /7

It's time for Ofqual to cease defending the indefensible and focus on fixing the issue.

But before I go, there's also a broader point here about transparency... /8

I was recently reading a book that concluded with a rousing argument that transparency shouldn’t be based on what public bodies deign to reveal.

The exam adjustment algorithm seems like a great case in point: true transparency could have revealed the hidden problem. /9

The book's author? None other than Ofqual’s chair, Roger Taylor.

On this point at least, I couldn't agree more.

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