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...

@zeb1

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

That's a bit early for such a big announcement, I think it will be in July.

In 2020 we have broken that expectation. Having a 7,8,9 in chemistry is not an indicator of the student knowing the syllabus pretty well. They could have a 7 on the basis that if their teacher believes they would have been capable of achieving a 7 if they had had normal teaching. We are here debating whether whole swathes of the syllabus should be ignored, so you get a 9 marked on half of the syllabus and the rest is ignored

That's not true of 2020, the year 11s had more or less finished the syllabus when lockdown started.

There is an issue for 2021, but that is going to be the case whether or not there are exams. There isn't enough time to cover all the content.

@SmileEachDay

Any school who is not providing a full education to their students, using cohort appropriate high quality remote education when necessary is severely letting them down

This is certainly the ideal. Could you expand on how this can happen for:

Students with no appropriate tech
Students who have nowhere to study
Student who don’t have enough to eat
Students who are young carers
Students who have significant literacy issues
Students who have ADHD
Students who have are not engaged or motivated to learn.
Students with no parental support.

There are other issues, but these are some of the primary barriers with my current KS4.

No, because I'm not a highly qualified educational professional. I would expect highly qualified teaching professionals to be able to find a solution that was cohort appropriate. Heads, deputy heads, pastoral specialists, SEN specialists and teachers working together should be able to come up with a solution, because that's their job, what they have studied in, have experience in, and what they are being paid to do!

No, because I'm not a highly qualified educational professional. I would expect highly qualified teaching professionals to be able to find a solution that was cohort appropriate. Heads, deputy heads, pastoral specialists, SEN specialists and teachers working together should be able to come up with a solution, because that's their job, what they have studied in, have experience in, and what they are being paid to do!

The big variable that we have no control over is home circumstances.
The Sutton Trust told us years ago that home circumstances are 4 times more impactful on educational outcome than anything a school can do.

As soon as our students are not physically in the school, that becomes even more powerful.

We can try all manner of remote strategies- and we have - but it’s not as simple as saying “schools should”. Sometimes we can’t. That’s especially true if the re ore learning is sudden or unplanned - a bit better when it’s planned because we can weave home learning into in school provision.

I would expect highly qualified teaching professionals to be able to find a solution that was cohort appropriate

It's a bit difficult when some of the solutions cost money and need government support, like 'providing disadvantaged students with laptops and dongles' and then the government says they'll do it, then literally fail to deliver.

@SE13Mummy

If I were running the country, I'd have required the exam writers to chop up the 2020 and 2021 papers and publish them as unit assessments. These would be sat in exam conditions as and when each class had covered that unit before being sent away to be externally marked. That way, each student would have the opportunity to be assessed on material they'd been taught. Those assessments would be 'banked' and by the summer, the only exams needed would be for units that hadn't been assessed earlier in Y11/Y13. For the Y12s, I'd advocate a similar approach to ensure they had some externally marked grades to inform predictions. Home educated candidates would be able to access the unit assessments too although an independent external invigilator would have to be employed for each unit in order to ensure exam conditions were adhered to.

Students that have repeated periods of isolation may end up not sitting an assessment in a specific unit so I'd base the final grade on percentages, disregarding missing units. My approach would not permit retakes of individual units in order to improve the final grade but may include a magic formula to give additional resilience marks to students whose schools did not offer full days of live teaching during the 14 weeks of lockdown. This would be a way of levelling the playing field a bit.

I've not quite worked out how students who sit no unit assessments will be graded but as I'm not in charge, it probably doesn't matter.

So how would you keep those unit assessments secure? At the minute, every child who dors, say, maths, does it at the same time on the same day to prevent the questions becoming public knowledge. This would not be possible with this proposal. Schools can teach the syllabus in any order they choose so it's not even as simple as miss out the last unit as some schools may have taught that first.

@noblegiraffe

I would expect highly qualified teaching professionals to be able to find a solution that was cohort appropriate

It's a bit difficult when some of the solutions cost money and need government support, like 'providing disadvantaged students with laptops and dongles' and then the government says they'll do it, then literally fail to deliver.

There was an interview with a head teacher from a deprived area on the BBC news the other day. They were allocated something like 13 laptops for year 11

No, because I'm not a highly qualified educational professional. I would expect highly qualified teaching professionals to be able to find a solution that was cohort appropriate. Heads, deputy heads, pastoral specialists, SEN specialists and teachers working together should be able to come up with a solution, because that's their job, what they have studied in, have experience in, and what they are being paid to do!

We’re paid to teach. Absolutely no where in the job description does it say we need to somehow compensate for poor parenting, economic hardship, take over caring responsibilities or anything else. Local solutions will need financial backing, or do you expect us to sit on student doorsteps to teach them individually for as long as it takes for this to pass?

You are blaming the wrong people. This is not our responsibility to solve. We have an elected government to do that.

I would expect highly qualified teaching professionals to be able to find a solution that was cohort appropriate. Heads, deputy heads, pastoral specialists, SEN specialists and teachers working together should be able to come up with a solution, because that's their job, what they have studied in, have experience in, and what they are being paid to do!

No. None of those people can magic up solutions without any funding. You are pointing the finger at the wrong people.

@Enoughnowstop

No, because I'm not a highly qualified educational professional. I would expect highly qualified teaching professionals to be able to find a solution that was cohort appropriate. Heads, deputy heads, pastoral specialists, SEN specialists and teachers working together should be able to come up with a solution, because that's their job, what they have studied in, have experience in, and what they are being paid to do!

We’re paid to teach. Absolutely no where in the job description does it say we need to somehow compensate for poor parenting, economic hardship, take over caring responsibilities or anything else. Local solutions will need financial backing, or do you expect us to sit on student doorsteps to teach them individually for as long as it takes for this to pass?

You are blaming the wrong people. This is not our responsibility to solve. We have an elected government to do that.

I agree.

It’s an already an emotionally overwhelming job without being expected to solve all the ills of society.

Our job is to get students to reach their academic potential, which will then enable them to open doors to new opportunities and give them choices.

Good pastoral care and not giving up on a child is important to this goal, but we cannot compensate for everything that is not perfect in their lives.

Teachers are teachers not miracle workers.
They can't magic resources out of nowhere, neither can they teach 2 term's work in 1 term.
Additionally, because the pandemic is still continuing, they aren't even back in normal circumstances yet.
They can't make up for all the inequalities of life in school hours.

Most schools finish their GCSE curriculum in year 10, so students aren’t “six months behind”

As the current year 11s missed half of year 10 due to schools being unexpectedly closed and at the time not being set for home learning, how do you think that they completed the course?

I know that within my dds Cohort, those who didn't want to engage with education as they don't see the point have become totally disengaged as they had no/little access to the expertise of the teachers try to engage them. Those without access to technology, regardless of the work ethic are also struggling and the mental health of this Cohort is suffering as a result. The students need certainty.

@Newkitchen123 one of the perks I'd have if I were in charge would be to throw money at the problem so I'd commission exam-question-writers to write billions of questions. I suppose I might be a bit more restrictive about the unit assessment timings and impose some sort of a national timetable so every Y11 studying AQA English Lit would be able to sit the Christmas Carol unit on 1st December or one of the commissioned alternative assessments on 5th Jan, 1st Feb or 1st March. I would have a lot of money at my disposal.

@SE13Mummy in an ideal world!

Oh yes @Newkitchen123 I'd only be in charge if it could be on ideal world terms.

I don't think it would have been beyond the realms of possibility for the people actually in charge to come up with something similar. The alternative to billions of questions in scheduled unit assessments would be to use those questions in a magical computer-based assessment. Invigilators would still need to be sourced but students would sit a unit test and receive a random allocation of questions on that unit. It would mean a single class wouldn't necessarily be asked the same things so there would be less scope for sharing of information about content. It would penalise those students who aren't very quick at typing so I suppose it might be necessary to let them answer on paper and sent off for marking... or to make it multi choice.

Last year's cohort should have sat exams on July and August. They only.missed one week in March, and 2 weeks in April. May is used for revision and exams in last week is half term anyway. By year 11 students should be able to revise on their own and A level students should also be able to use text book to complete their specification. Cancelling last year was a farce. This year's cohort will be much more disadvantaged and the teaching variable depending on school they attend. If any year had to be assessed by school assessment it should be this year. They missed 1 week in March, 2 in April, 3 in May, 4 in June and 3 in July. So 13 weeks, a whole term. My son is just starting year 10 and got hardly any work sent home but luckily he was locked down with.esrly retired teacher so he did not fall behind as I got text books and followed specification. This year is a waste of time as school is making all students do the work they should have covered last year. He is having to do it again even though he took his work folders in and showed his teachers all the work he did in lockdown, generally 5 hours each day. He said some children in his form group had done zero work in lockdown. He is furious he has to go over year 9 work as he wants to start year 10 work. I am now having to do year 11 work with him because I think they will do year 10 work next year in school. It is all a total mess but I definitely think this year's year 11 suffered the most.

@caringcarer while I fully agree that this year's cohort are more disadvantaged than the last I think that cancelling last year's exams was the right thing to do. Yes they were coming up to revision time but that time is extremely valuable time and it's often where they learn the exam techniques etc.
I agree with other posters saying that they will be cancelled again but they won't actually announce it until later in the year.
I've done my stint as a secondary teacher and I'm so glad I'm out!

My kids haven't had to self isolate but if they do are schools required to send them work?
Yes. But if it's only a small number of students, it will likely be "work" rather than "remote learning". My school asks us to upload the work for the lesson to Teams so that students who aren't in can do it.

I know that schools were required to have remote learning plans by 22 October. As a parent can I ask to see this ?
Our parents were all sent the plan, and it's on our website. It basically says "work will be set for students self isolating" and "online lessons if we close a bubble"

Making teachers do remote learning plans seems a bit daft when they don’t know which school weeks they would be needed for. They can’t just produce one plan and expect it to work for any two week closure period between now and the end of the school year, because strangely enough, different things are taught every week.

Ours says "if x happens we will do y". We certainly can't tell you that if it's next Tuesday, in maths they'll do fractions...

@NailsNeedDoing

Making teachers do remote learning plans seems a bit daft when they don’t know which school weeks they would be needed for. They can’t just produce one plan and expect it to work for any two week closure period between now and the end of the school year, because strangely enough, different things are taught every week.

All my lessons are designed for remote learning, in that the LOs, digital resources, worksheets and instructions are all in Google Classroom assignments.

So far, we haven’t had to close this year, so I just deliver the lesson in person, and via Google Hangout for anyone joining from home. I was out for a few days, and students had their lessons ready to go - no traditional cover work that inevitably has to be repeated.

If we do close, the students know what to do, as they did it throughout the summer term. The only difference now is that my resources are better as I have a better understanding of what works.