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...

My kids haven't had to self isolate but if they do are schools required to send them work? In our school the cases have led to only a small fraction of kids going home- if this happens I'm not sure what I can expect.

I know that schools were required to have remote learning plans by 22 October. As a parent can I ask to see this ?

If Gavin Williamson has anything to do with it, it will be a total shambles which will disadvantage lots of kids arbitrarily. Decisions will be made at the last minute after endless amounts of public pressure, threats of legal action and protests. Look out for the government saying loudly that they won’t be cancelling the exams, then Scotland will cancel theirs with a plan in place, then ours will be cancelled some weeks later with a really shit plan that nobody understands. Boris will probably be on holiday and Gav will be nowhere to be seen.

Don’t be fooled into thinking the government gives a shit about the ‘poor disadvantaged children‘ either. They really don’t.

Kids at Eton who aren’t going hungry and already have laptops will probably be fine though-so don’t worry about them.

@starrynight19

That won’t be possible for the 2021 exams, student would be better of taking their exams and getting grades that they deserve.

But will it be the grades they deserve if they are constantly out of school ?

If they have taken exams then it’s going to be a more accurate reflection of their ability than if CAGs are used again. There’s already enough people unfairly mistrusting this years grades and they were judgements made with as much evidence as possible by people that had been working with the same students for pretty much the entire course. Using CAGs again next year would give 2021 students even less respect for their grades than this years, which would be understandable seeing as these students have done less work (albeit through no fault of their own).

I understand the massive problem that exists because educational provision has been so different across schools, but by GCSE and A Level age, students should be capable enough of independent study that if they put in the work and their papers/grade boundaries etc are adjusted, they should be able to achieve grades that accurately represent their ability.

But its always been the same - some schools are better than others, some children's home lives are more supportive than others, some children work harder than others, and some children are simply brighter than others. There isn't, and never has been, a true level playing field. We don't cancel exams every year because of this

You genuinely don’t think that these are exceptional circumstances?

As a parent can I ask to see this

I don’t know if there’s national guidance on this, but you can at my school. Everything is on Teams and parents have the login details provided.

@TicTacTwo

My kids haven't had to self isolate but if they do are schools required to send them work? In our school the cases have led to only a small fraction of kids going home- if this happens I'm not sure what I can expect.

I know that schools were required to have remote learning plans by 22 October. As a parent can I ask to see this ?

At my school, SI (but otherwise well) students are expected to be in lessons, in real time, via Google Hangouts, their work and lesson resources are shared in Google Classroom.

Lots of kids are not capable of independent study, or they haven't got the means at home to do so. Even in my v able 6th form, there were kids who totally disengaged during ld and said they prefer to work in school. How many adults struggle with home learning? And when kids are at home and I'm streaming my lessons, how do I know they're not half listening whilst on their phones? When do I now find the time to phone their parents after school when I barely find the time to deal with all the in school stuff?

There's a stat we always share with kids about absences. I think 95 attendance =a drop of a grade compared to a kid with 100 etc. How is that going to work in the summer? Tier 3 kids get special circumstances (generally worth fuck all)?

Eldest school did exams when they got back to school. Were told they weren't important ( for teachers information etc to know what gaps etc there maybe with lockdown etc). Eldest had a tough lockdown ( me very vulnerable and needing surgery etc, lots of disruption etc). Some teachers now saying results will count. Absolutely furious I want them to change schools. Results in certain subjects not representative of potential.

The problem with externally moderated assessments is that they need to be standardised (i.e. set by an exam board with a proper mark scheme) and there's not enough time to set that up (unless they have some in a cupboard waiting to go?).

Maths can't do externally moderated assessments, we need exams. My suggestion would be that kids sit maths GCSE twice. Once in Jan, once in June. The Jan sitting is marked as if it were a June sitting so the right proportion of kids get 4s, 7s etc as if they'd sat the full course (so NOT like mocks using a June grade boundary), and the June sitting is as normal. The kids get the best grade of the two exams, but they don't find out till results day in August so they can't relax having 'got their 4' in Jan.

The kids who suffered disruption up to Jan have a chance to improve in June because there will be kids suffering disruption in Feb/March who will do better in the Jan papers. The kids who don't get any disruption will be competing against each other for grades. It's unlikely that a kid will suffer massive disruption all the way through.

There are already enough maths exam papers available because they write them a couple of years in advance.

What am I missing?

One of my kids is home-educated for complex reasons including ASD, is in year 11 and due to take exams as a private candidate in the summer. Doing well with studies but if the exams don't go ahead we have no way of getting grades as no mocks/coursework/teacher assessment obviously. This presumably means no way forward for us and many hundreds of others. I'm so worried about it.

The exam boards would not be able to get an alternative process in place for this year’s exams. Because of this, I imagine that rather than say now there will be no exams, the government are keeping teachers and pupils on their game with the the thought exams will continue.

With the number of local lock downs, pupils and teachers missing school as required, there can be no guarantee the results will be fair. I imagine schools will be told just before Easter that exams are cancelled again and schools revert to CAG as they did this year.

by GCSE and A Level age, students should be capable enough of independent study that if they put in the work and their papers/grade boundaries etc are adjusted, they should be able to achieve grades that accurately represent their ability

This is not true. Some people work well on their own. Others don't. Why is it ok for adults to say they don't like WFH and prefer office working, but not for students to say they don't work well on their own and need to be in a classroom/library environment?

We always seem to impose more behavioural requirements on the under 18s than we do on adults.

@noblegiraffe I like that idea.
Can it be done for English Language too please?

I don’t have any solutions but changing a system two terms out is virtually impossible. Exams are written two to three years in advance so that they can be tested for fairness. When specs changed teachers are trained for them.

Schools can’t just switch on the ability to moderate. Not all subjects have moderation right now, and again, teachers would need to be trained in how to do this.

If there is significant absence from either students or teachers, delivering moderated assessment would be tricky.

Noble’s solution would work well if you have finished the specification, but how many can say that?

I will have finished my spec by Christmas, so would be fine for the exams to go ahead as normal in June.

I think children need to know where they stand. Not be told by one set of teachers exams ( taken eg straight after a very tough lockdown) do not count to find other teachers reportedly saying later they do 👿.

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

Disadvantage for the current exam years has many definitions. Depends on how well your school approached home learning, how well students as individuals engaged with it, how often students are forced into isolation over the coming months, how the school manages isolation, how often an individual teacher is forced into isolation, how sick a teacher gets (not impossible someone getting covid today could be off work till March or beyond), whether a school can rejig the timetable to give exam classes experienced staff, whether suitable supply staff can be sourced, how well a student’s own mental health holds up, how worried they are about losing family members, whether they lose family members and whether they are self isolating on the exam day or off sick themselves etc etc etc I a, not sure it has ever been a level playing field but this year there are people affected from all walks of life through no fault of their own.

But surely teachers are being paid to provide an education to children, and if they (children or teachers) are self isolating, then they need to provide a high quality remote option instead? They are professionals being paid a salary to do so? So a good quality education should be being provided by schools regardless of whether bubbles burst etc

How do you provide a quality education when your children are largely deprived and many of them don’t have a laptop or a consistent internet connection to be able to access lessons? Is your expectation really that teachers should teach simultaneously online and in-class as well as ensure they are providing learning packs for students who are unable to access these? Because the planning that goes into making a lesson accessible for all 3 of these scenarios is unsustainable for the average teacher who also has the same responsibilities at home that everyone else has. We were at breaking point before this started. You cannot expect teachers to be taking risks every day with their health and that of their families in classrooms and give them absolutely no physical or mental space to relax and recuperate. We are doing best in increasingly difficult circumstances.

What am I missing?

The fact that each school will have it’s own approach to fulfilling the spec so we are all at different points having started at different points. I am nowhere near finished and an exam in January would render students unable to complete large chunks of a full exam. Any changes you made to try and support my school’s approach would simultaneously knock out other schools who did it differently....

Noble’s solution would work well if you have finished the specification

Most kids don't ever finish the specification in maths though.

Are you maths, Enoughnow?

It doesn't matter what order schools have taught maths topics in as most of them never get taught all the topics anyway. Most children aren't expected to be able to answer all of a maths paper.

@yoyo1234

I think children need to know where they stand. Not be told by one set of teachers exams ( taken eg straight after a very tough lockdown) do not count to find other teachers reportedly saying later they do 👿.

We’ve consistently told our students that we expect the exams to go ahead in June.

We are introducing an early mock in November, and pushing of main mock to February. That will give an opportunity for them to mess up in the first set and take the second set very seriously, should we need to use them in place of the real thing.

@Enoughnowstop

What am I missing?

The fact that each school will have it’s own approach to fulfilling the spec so we are all at different points having started at different points. I am nowhere near finished and an exam in January would render students unable to complete large chunks of a full exam. Any changes you made to try and support my school’s approach would simultaneously knock out other schools who did it differently....

Any school that uses a carousel system would be well and truly stuffed.

No, not maths. MFL - questions from anywhere on the spec, very cleverly integrated questions from across topics so need to cover as much as possible. The concessions we have been given are fair (if odd, no speaking exam) but we really do need to finish the spec to give them a fair chance.

And then there’s grammar. There are two text books available that cover the 2016 spec - they have very different orders to the topics covered.

Yeah maths haven't been given any exam concessions (not even later exams!), they're planning on just finding the grade boundaries which would be fine if it were a level playing field but doesn't take into account the disruption some of the kids will have experienced. My making them sit the exams twice will do that.