This short article notes the disruption to public examinations caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and resultant lockdowns. This provides a context to examine the way normreferencing controls the distribution of grades in England's test and examination system. This is viewed as 'the elephant in the exam room', something accepted, normalisedand hidden…

The present study examined how information about different grading systems affects students' course expectations, particularly in ways that may have downstream consequences for learning and other academic outcomes. In an online experiment using a preregistered design, we prompted two samples of current and recent college students (N = 547) with a…