GCSE and Alevel exams in England

[SmileEachDay]

Should they go ahead?

Given the wildly fluctuating attendance levels at school at the moment, the continued possibility of whole year groups having to isolate and the very different teaching experience this years Y11 and 13 are having?

YABU - Keep going! Exams! It’ll be fine! Tally ho!
YANBU - Cancel exams and use externally moderated assessment pieces, plus teacher assessment.

Wales currently having this discussion, England isn’t...

Exams will inevitably have to be cancelled, but of course, the stunning wonder that is GW will not announce it until April.

You think we’ll get that much notice zeb?

I think they will be cancelled again but it won't be confirmed till March time

If you are using externally moderated pieces of work won’t the difference in teaching still have an impact?
I get the impression that discussions are already going on. The DC’s school is planning to set rigorous mocks that would stand up to outside assessment.

I found your YABU comment flippant. Not all DC want exams cancelled. Both choices have positive and negative implications.

YANBU.. the current year 11 are worse off nationwide than last year's year 11. It's nonsense to think they can carry on as normal bar 3 weeks (and what they haven't made clear is some exams-core subjects- will be earlier than the 3 week delay). If Gav was a teacher he'd have been 'capabilitied out' by now.

It took them 3 months to come up with the brainwave of delaying exams by 3 weeks.

Yes, that’s really going to make it fair. GW you are a marvel. Giving all the independent school students 3 weeks extra to revise and consolidate, while others are playing catch up.

I don't know if it was on here, but someone suggested "they" should just go ahead with Maths and English GCSEs and have a post 16 "matriculation" certificate for everything else. It's not a bad idea in some respects, though disappointing if you would have hoped to have got a 9 for eg GCSE drama!

I tend to agree. However I don't want students or teachers to stop preparing for exams just yet or the rest of the year will be lost. Practising past papers, finishing the curriculums and having mocks will all help learning as well as provide evidence.

I found your YABU comment flippant. Not all DC want exams cancelled. Both choices have positive and negative implications

You’re right. It was flippant. Not because I think it’s a flippant issue - or because I think either choice is without consequence. I think the parroting “exams are the fairest way” from the government - when patently this year that is in no way certain - is a brush off. I was mirroring that, but I can see how you may have read it differently Chaz

If they worked it out now, they would have time to moderate work from kids and possibly avoid the shitshow we had in the summer. Kids might take school work more seriously too (and behave better), if they thought their teachers had anything to do with their final grades.

Problem is, this years results with no exams have been an absolute farce. So many kids with grades higher than they would have achieved, so many with lower. Rendering them all pointless.

Thanks for clarifying

Cancelling exams might work for GCSEs but not sure what the argument is for A levels. Surely if school has been so disrupted that they can’t pass an exam then they can’t just be given A level grades that they haven’t learnt the work for. How does that work for university? Courses expect a certain level of knowledge and if they haven’t got it they won’t be able to do the uni work. You can’t dumb down every level of education for the next few years!

How does that work for university? Courses expect a certain level of knowledge and if they haven’t got it they won’t be able to do the uni work. You can’t dumb down every level of education for the next few years

A lot of universities do foundation years anyway but if for example I have studied history, geography and English A levels it doesn't really matter if I haven't covered all the content as I may be studying something very different - eg law. And even if I study English literature at university it isn't going to matter that I didn't cover all the books I was meant to at A level - same for history as I might be doing ancient history for A level but choose to study modern history at university.

I think the level of working and skills developed are more important that the content.

I agree that the exam results last summer, with no moderation of CAGs at all, are fundamentally unreliable and I would hate to see that repeated. Equally, the moderation that Ofqual attempted was appallingly thought through and delivered.

The problem we have, of course, is that some schools have continued to deliver teaching throughout and others haven't, so students are in such very different places. DS, for example, just desperately wants to be able to sit his exams as normal but then he has not missed any teaching, and there are many students in that position. How do we ensure that they are not disadvantaged at the same time as ensuring that those who have missed teaching are not disadvantaged?

The problem with externally assessed/moderated tasks is - who sets them?

@cologne4711 ok I was thinking more of the science degrees which need knowledge of maths and science. You can’t just not learn a chunk of it and expect to go onto university, the courses are tough enough as it is and won’t be able to go over all the basics which should have been learnt before.

Racoon - I have a DS in U6 in an independent school. They did online exams after Easter which, combined with general performance, were used to give “working predicted grades.” Then, as soon as school reopened in Sept, it was a formal exam week - 2.5 hr past exam papers in the sports hall etc. This confirmed final predicted grades for UCAS and meant teachers could back up their predictions in the references. Now they have some smaller tests after half-term. This is an independent school and they are taking no chances and gathering evidence. If exams are cancelled, they will have at least 3 or 4 exam papers to justify the grades they award.

The problem is, is that not all schools are doing this and the lack of a decision from GW et al l is not helping. DS has friends in a state sixth-form college who are doing one week in, one week home learning, but haven’t done exams since GCSEs!

So how do schools do set grades?

If pupil A has been out more than another, their skills and attainment will be lower than pupil B. Does that mean they get placed 'behind' B?

To the extreme (my DD) - she hasn't been in at all as she has had a breakdown. Do they grade her on
a) where she was compared with others before the breakdown
b) where they guess her to be now
c) where they hope she would be by exams when recovered

Even within one school, pupils will have been very differently impacted by lockdown. Are you going to penalise kids who didn't/couldn't access education remotely but otherwise work well, or give them a decent chance to catch up by next June?

I don't have answers by the way. It is a bad situation all round.

Yes my dd y11 , has already done two lots of isolation this term.
We are tier 3 and cases are rising. We are in one of the top badly affected the places in the country. So expecting more disruption next term with cases in both my dc schools in double figures last term.
This is a postcode lottery for students doing exams this year.

I would argue that exams aren't fair in a general year. Assessing via exams favours:

Children who can afford tutors.

Children who have graduate parents who can coach them.

Children who attend school where there's minimum classroom disruption.

Children who live in a home with minimum disruption.

Neurotypical children.

I'm not saying that everyone with those advantages will automatically do better, nor that children without them will do worse, but as a mass, you could have two children of the same level of intellect, but the one who has all of the above will do better than the one who has none of them.

I honestly believe that an Eton A is worth significantly less than a [name special-measures school here] A as a test of a child's intelligence.

@EdwardBear1920 would agree and also ability to pay for remarking etc

The government were all over the ‘disadvantaged’ children when they wanted schools to reopen.
Given it’s some of those children who are being most affected now radio silence.

It’s going to be another shitshambles of grandstanding and refusal to let a teeny little thing like a pandemic change the plans isn’t it? I’d like to think that there is a plan b in the corridors of the DfE but I’m pretty sure that there isn’t.
DS has been lucky so far, no isolation in his year 11 group, but I can’t see that lasting. Even if it did, the picture isn’t equal across the country, so an alternative needs to be found. Lots of “mocks” this year (taken in line with government instructions) in order to have data for CAGs if/ when needed. (So no break at all from schooling, despite full on working in lockdown- he’s exhausted already.)

I’d be interested to hear from the 13% - genuinely.

Is there a way for the summer exams to be fair?

The thing is, a lot of content is fairly arbitrary anyway. Who decides you need to study x number of books or certain periods of history? The material i studied for gcse science 25 years ago is probably different to what's on the spec now. Methods change too (yr 5 maths, I'm looking at you). When I did my a level eng, we didn't need to look at critics or analyse critical receptions of novels. A level students do now. Does that mean my A level is worth less?

Teachers will cover the content, but not all kids will access it the same way. It's the skills that need to be learned for future study. Which is what I'm constantly trying to explain to kids. Yes, knowing the use of dramatic methods in Shakespeare will pass an exam, but the analytical skills are what you'll use in real life. Not only that, but a lot of mine are stressed by the will they/ won't they nature of it all.