I have to go and do some work in a minute. But before I go, there is one more little gem that I discovered in this algorithm.
The grade distribution calculation process starts with the school or college's exam performance in previous years. This is then adjusted to take account of the difference between 2020's cohort and previous years. The difference is calculated using GCSE data for 2019 and 2020.
But they can only do this for students that have GCSE data that fulfil the criteria. So the formula that calculates the grade distribution is weighted by the proportion of students that have qualifying GCSE data.
If a school or college has only a small proportion of students with qualifying GCSE data, the college's historical data WITHOUT cohort adjustment dominates the grade distribution. In other words it has hardly anything to do with the 2020 cohort at all.
Here's the relevant bit from @OfQual's tech spec explaining this. Warning: contains maths.
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