GCSE results, due to be published tomorrow, could see a possible narrowing of the attainment gap, according to a blog published by the think tank FFT Education Datalab.

Although some may be wary of any predictions after a tumultuous week, characterised by a government U-turn which meant all results will be based on the CAGs (centre assessment grades) worked out by teachers, the think tank has unearthed three trends that could shape tomorrow’s results.

GCSEs 2020: Results ‘arriving as planned’ after U-turn

A-levels and GCSEs U-turn: The end of the algorithm?

GCSEs 2020: Please don’t allow CAG appeals, say schools

These are based on grades that around 1,900 schools were about to submit as CAGs when they were gathered up by Datalab in June. Although these could be different from the final grades that schools submitted to the exam boards, the think tanks says that according to Ofqual figures, they were “ broadly comparable”.

GCSE Results: What to look out for 

• A potential narrowing of the attainment gap. Although the blog stresses this is “just a hypothesis, not a fact” there are two elements in the data that could suggest this as a possibility.
  
  As lower-attaining schools seem to have submitted more generous grades on average, Datalab looked at the relationship between deprivation and change in the results submitted this year.
  
  Although it found that schools serving more disadvantaged pupils submitted “only fractionally” more optimistic grades on average, there is another element that could work in favour of disadvantaged students.
  
  CAGs being lenient around the grade four boundary, as Ofqual found, could have helped push some results over the pass grade - something helping all students but disadvantaged students especially, the think tank notes.
  
   
• “Less of a discrepancy” between private schools’ improvements in results and state schools’ improvements, than was seen in the original moderated A-level results.  Although the think tank’s data was collected only from state schools, it points out reverting to CAGs it likely to mean that independent schools lose the advantage they gained from having classes so small that their grades did not go through the moderation process under Ofqual’s algorithm.
   
• A “quite considerable” variation in increases by subject. According to the data, there has been an increase in the percentage of pupils receiving a grade four and above, but this changes across subjects.
  
  For example, 78 per cent of pupils achieved at grade 4 or above in maths, compared to 73 per cent last year, and in English language, the proportion was 81 per cent and 71 per cent for last year.