Headteacher: Exams should be postponed till next year.

Ridiculous idea. Where is the average secondary school going to put 500 pissed off and disengaged 17 and 19 year olds for a whole year? Who will teach them? What will the teach? The syllabi are either finished or only have a couple of weeks to go.

The vast majority of dcs will be well enough to sit some or all exams during the 6 week exam period. Maybe the focus should be on training up new invigilators and requisitioning other buildings such as leisure centres and conference centres to spread candidates about and reduce infection risk in the exam hall. Universities may be able to help if they are emptying out and have a vested interest in filling their sept 2020 courses with candidates who meet the entry requirements

Oakmaiden If you tell a Year 11 child that the work they've done over the last few months to bring up their grades is immaterial, and the teacher's (much lower) predicted grades will be used instead, do you really think any of them are going to say ("oh well, I'll just have to spend another year working on those subjects and resit?")

The answer is "no" - it will just entirely put a whole set of 16 year olds off bothering with future study.

I'd be in favour of sitting exams later and adjusting Post 16/university courses accordingly to allow for the shorter teaching time.

oakmaiden - factors like that are great (and very useful) when applied to an entire cohort. They must NEVER be applied at individual level.

Cant believe the Guardian gave this twaddle any airtime, tbh.

This is a nightmare for us. My yr11 dd has ASD and is counting down the days until school is finished with, she's desperate to leave it all behind and mentally I don't think she would cope with suddenly having to spend longer at school. She's got all 7 and 8s in her mocks. I really hope they go ahead on time.

Alternatively - the data found in studies like this www.ucas.com/file/71796/download?token=D4uuSzur could be used to adjust predicted grades to "most likely" outcomes.

Yes, it will disadvantage those children who didn't do well all through the course and might have made a huge push to up things for their exams - but I guess they could be offered the choice of retaking the year.

Using predicted/mock grades massively massively massively disadvantages those from disadvantaged backgrounds. I cannot emphasise enough what an appalling idea this is.

Not stay down a year- - but stay in their current year group until year 11 have taken their exams.

A levels - they have already submitted projected grades to their unis. They will just have to use those grades and if uni's have offered to too many people they will have to select on a lottery type basis. It isn't perfect, but it is better than them having to repeat a year and having an empty year at uni.

GCSEs - I would think about putting an early exam season in, starting about 3months after this all dies down. All children stay down a year for that period. As soon as exams are over they move on to college - and college will have to run through the summer holiday next year to make up the missed time. With suitable recompense for teachers - and with extra funding so colleges can employ extra teachers for that period, so teachers do get some sort of break.

Dont think the head teacher has thought that one through fully!

And what happens for the year below. If this year’s Y13 stay another year at school and then go to university, what do the year below do? There won’t be any university places for them. And so on and so on. Or do universities run two 1st years then and have a year sitting empty next year ?

I don't know what the solution is, but repeating a year just can't be it.

GSCEs are distinct from A levels in that there's an argument we should have them at all. However, I think there are two possible options. Firstly to go on predicted grades - which works well for my son as the school have said mocks +1 and he got loads of 8s (not all of which he'd have converted presumably).

Or close schools for all but y11s and 13s taking exams. They can't sit near each other anyway and they'd have plenty of space if the rest of the school were off. Invigilators would have to come from low-risk groups and avoid any close contact.

I can only think that the author of the article was making such an outlandish proposal to force the government into making firm contingency plans.