I have the privilege of being an OCR examiner for the Philosophy of Religion paper but I have absolutely no insight from the exam board on this, this is just my own speculation ahead of results day 2025.

We saw in 2020 exams cancelled in many places and teacher-assessed grades the norm, leading to what was called ‘grade inflation’. Accordingly, the numbers of students in England Wales getting their A levels that year and heading off to their chosen university increased. In 2021, grade boundaries were deliberately lowered to compensate for the fact that those Year 13s, in their Year 12, had experienced a lot of disruption to their learning, In the case of some exam boards, given topics which would come up on the exam were specified, making revision much less daunting a task that year.

Since 2021 exams we have seen a year on year increase of grade boundaries and in 2024 they were roughly the same as 2019, if not higher in some case. So will they be raised again this year? My view is there would have to be another very good reason – nothing to do with the pandemic we went through – for this to be justified.