Did they really need to cancel GCSEs and A levels

I said from day one that exams should have been taken in September/ October and that the university term should start in January. Student would have continued to study during the lockdown period. Most of the syllabus had been completed by this time and I would expect A level students to be able to work independently.
Some posters said that my suggestion would be unworkable. However, it’s definitely preferable to what’s going on now
Nicola Sturgeon was criticised for apologising and making a U turn, but it seems that she made the correct decision.

surprisefrog I'm surprised that you think the teaching unions have 'loud voices' or any influence at all over government or PHE strategy and decisions.

Schools closed across the world, most much earlier in the rise of cases. Irish, French, Italian etc etc schools closed a week before English/Welsh/Scottish ones.

Do you think the UK - with the highest death rate CV19 even with lock down - should have just kept their schools open?

With hindsight they could have kept the exam cohorts in school until they'd done their exams, but back then everyone was panicking and the loudest voices (the teaching unions) got what they wanted.

Having sent kids home, the Government had to cancel the exams - many students hadn't finished the syllabus in some subjects and didn't have the tech or support at home to carry on learning, so if they had carried on with just the exams there would have been just as much controversy, if not more so, than we have now.

We live 180 miles away from my dc’s school; others in their class live much further and some overseas. Not sure we could have managed all that travelling...

There has been lots of strange and unprecedented situations since March that the country seems to have endured or accepted: paid furlough still on-going after many many months, subsidised meals out, nearly 50,00 extra dead, quarantines at home. A year group of 16 and 18 year old being given the results that their own qualified and professional teachers predicted for them is the very least of an anomaly in 2020 and would have been seen as perfectly acceptable in March. It is only because results have been left until August when we are all being encouraged to get back to normal that the anomalous results are seen as unacceptable. The government needs to take responsibility for the decision it took in March and protect the interests of these GCSE and A'level pupils.

To those above citing the interests of higher education and employers in ensuring there is no grade inflation this year, do you release that these people only have secondary indirect interests?
Those with a primary and direct interest are the pupils.
The mass moderation has decreased individual pupils' results from their predicted grade without any proof or evidence that the individual pupil affect would not have got their predicted grade. There is no exam paper to mark or to demonstrate that they underperformed in the exam. it is at best guesswork about a school as a whole and should never have been applied to an individual pupil's grades - wholly unethical and unfair, plus inaccurate.

There was far too much uncertainty not to cancel them. What if no invigilators had been available? And the massive unfairness that some kids would have all the technology available at home, parents qualified to assist them, able to pay for online tutors etc. Children are already privileged by having these things now, with no school available to balance these things a little the gap would have been massive.

@FlyingPandas makes excellent points about the logistics of what goes into running an official exam. Where I work we have a 210 cohort size and employ around 8-10 invigilators. Generally we'd have a large main exam venue, a second smaller room for students having extra time and/or using word processors plus a varied number of 1:1 rooms for children using scribes. Maybe the academy admin staff, kitchen staff etc who don't necessarily know the children academically could have been trained up but I'm not sure. I'm no expert.

Other things to consider would be transport to and from school. We're a rural academy and children travel miles to come to us. A significant number do not have access to their own transport so would have needed that provided.

On balance, I think it would have been possible, and I would have liked them to go ahead; they were working so hard for them. But I don't think it would have been as simple as just using multiple rooms.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

A third of the pupils were off a week before the schools officially ‘closed’ in one of my local schools. A similar proportion of teachers were also not in. How were people going to know how it would impact students in 2 months time?

Good points about age of invigilators - yes, so often retired people, and of course more would have been needed than normal - and school buses, not thought about that.

If all students are awarded predicted grades, and the overall grades are massively inflated this year, would it be an issue?

Also, the grades weren’t inflated consistently across all schools. Schools which kept their predictions in line with previous years’ results (because we knew that’s how the moderation was going to work) would be disadvantaged if other schools’ inflated grades were allowed to stand.

this is what would happen if we cancel exams every year..

I'm talking about a one off cancellation so yes university cohorts will be bumped up (bulge class!) and employers will see grade inflation in employee's certificates for one year. So what??

I imagine their grades can be denoted with a little P (for predicted). It's up to employers to decide between candidates with A (P) and A.

If grades are over-inflated, then further education/employers etc may also have to increase their requirements, firstly so they're not swamped, and secondly to try to keep the standards high enough. Employers aren't going to be happy thinking that their new recruit is good enough because he's got high GCSE/A level grades, only to find in reality, he's not up to that standard at all.

The other thing I would say is that a significant number of invigilators are older retired people - I don't know exact ages, but I'd hazard a guess that at least two thirds of the invigilators the school I work at are in their 60s, some possibly early 70s. So many of them would potentially have been shielding anyway and unable to work. And teachers themselves are not allowed to invigilate the public exams.

No point arguing about the past. Cancelling was never ideal but no one had any visibility of how the virus was going to spread so let's take it as a done thing.

If all students are awarded predicted grades, and the overall grades are massively inflated this year, would it be an issue? Universities will adjust their entry points, employers will be aware that these are predicted grades, the whole world moves on...

I'm not arguing that exams are not necessary and grades are arbitrary but one in a lifetime exception is no big deal in my opinion...

@mummabear1967 yes, that is my understanding too. That predicted grades have always existed for those who, for whatever reason (illness, injury, bereavement etc) are unable to sit their GCSE or A level exams.

The difference being that this year everyone was unable to sit their GCSE or A level exams!

As to whether they really needed to cancel - I'm a Y11 parent and an exam invigilator - I guess hindsight is a wonderful thing, but the reality is that so much was unknown at that point. The 'stay at home, save lives' message, the fact that no more than 2 people from different households could meet outside their household along with the ban on public gatherings, for starters, would not have been conducive to students travelling to schools/colleges to sit in groups to sit their exams. Even socially distanced, students in a classroom or hall would have been considered a public gathering. And if you split them all out into small numbers to sit in classrooms you'd need an invigilator or two for each classroom - far more than any school would have available at a given time.

And that's assuming that all students and invigilators were physically/mentally well enough themselves, not shielding or self-isolating etc, to actually attend. It would have been a logistical nightmare.

Absolutely no idea! I'd hope not, but at least time would hopefully be put in by all agencies to at least consider how grades can be fairly awarded.

I'm both a secondary teacher and an exam year parent. I think they did have to cancel. Pupils needed certainty. Stress levels about exam work were starting to rise very rapidly as we approached end of March. Potentially too many families were going to be affected, having a knock on effect on students.
We certainly had not finished teaching. Many subjects had practical work or pre-release work to do, which need student bums on seats.
Many of our students do not have good tech access, indeed our staff didn't necessarily either, creating problems with finishing courses and disadvantaging the already disadvantaged.
Many exams would have 250+ pupils on one day, a rooming and invigilation nightmare.
I think they've massively bungled things, but I don't think cancelling was wrong.

Look back to the threads on here in early March. No one knew how many students would be ill/self isolating; how many teachers/invigilators would be ill; whether self isolating would work; what would happen if a lot of students sat one paper and the other (where there were 2). Meantime the students themselves were worried sick about what would happen and were struggling to work effectively (not to mention worrying about the pandemic itself). The government needed to announce something at the same time they announced school closures. At that point I don't think they had a viable alternative to cancelling and it would have been deeply unfair to leave the students taking exams not knowing what was happening for any longer.

The mistake was in not defining the alternative much sooner, in a robust way with proper appeals system, with buy in from teachers.

Does anyone know how the kids get the results? DS get his GCSEs results next week and he either doesn’t know or isn’t telling!