Recommendation 18

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the government moved to a system of locally- assessed grades in place of the usual A-level examinations. This led to significant grade inflation in 2020 and 2021 and meant that many more students than expected were able to take up places at their first-choice providers and on high-tariff courses. This meant that many medium- and low-tariff and specialist providers recruited fewer students in 2021 than they had in 2019, despite a 10.8% overall rise in undergraduate entrant student numbers over the two years.34