EXAM boards have lowered some grade boundaries for this summer’s GCSEs to prevent an embarrassingly big dip in results after the former education secretary Michael Gove made the exams more difficult.

Children getting their GCSE results this summer will need fewer marks to get a C rather than a D, or an A rather than a B than in previous years, an exam board insider told The Sunday Times. The change has been condemned as “fiddling”, leaving employers, parents and pupils confused about how well children have really done.

Alan Smithers, professor of education at the University of Buckingham, added: “Lowering the grade boundaries is a way of making Gove’s changes to GCSEs more palatable.” He thinks there will still be a slight dip on