time to cancel England exams?

[winechateauxjoy]

I see that Scotland have followed the lead of Wales and cancelled next summer's exams. Isn't it about time they did the same in England to make it fair for those children who have been in and onut of school like yo yos in some schools?

Or, are Wales and Scotland wrong?

It's been "time" for a long time! The sheer amount of anxiety that these students are going through, not knowing whether this next set of mocks will be their last chance to get a good grade, or whether they'll have to teach themselves a chunk of the course, is frankly ridiculous.

England have and are making changes to their exams. It isn't going to be business as usual.
Personally I'm not sure if I want them to go ahead or not for my DS!

Logically there doesn't seem any justification for cancelling them.
There won't be any need to cancel them due to covid as if schools can open, exams can go ahead, and things should be heading towards normality by June anyway.
The only reason to cancel would be if this year's candidates aren't up to it die to the education they have missed, in which case they would presumably get poor grades by any other assessment method too. Last year was different as it wasn't considered safe to hold exams, and students had completed most of their courses before schools shut.
So do you want to just give all candidates artificially high grades, or are you suggesting they take time to learn the things they've missed and do them in January?
I would think the most pragmatic option is to reduce the syllabus and adjust the grade boundaries - that would be much fairer than assigning optimistic grades based on teacher assessment

It's going to be tricky for pupils going into further education be it A-levels or degree, if they have missed large chunks of the syllabus as they won't be ready to study the next step up especially for subjects like maths and the sciences. So they may get the grade required either by teacher assessment or exam but won't actually have the required knowledge

Was a big mistake to cancel last year and led to chaos on results day (I am a teacher and gave a 6th form tutor group -really hideous time for those candidates).
Exams must go ahead and parents should call out those schools which are unnecessarily closing year groups instead of only the close contacts of confirmed cases.

My DD is in year 11 and I'm happy enough with the current plan for England. I appreciate it won't suit all but then nothing would suit all.

No I’m fine with adaptions

Cancelling is wrong way to go

I don't know if cancelling them is the right thing to do but I do think that the approach should be consistent across all the countries in the UK.

We shouldn't cancel, and I'm disappointed to see that Scotland have as it puts even more pressure on England to follow suit. But last year was chaos. Exams have been adapted this year to allow for missed schooling.

Wakes and Scotland aren’t making things fairer. They are just shifting the unfairness around.

No they shouldn’t be cancelled.

And wales and Scotland need to stop political point scoring, you can bet any money that if England had cancelled exams Scotland wouldn’t have....

Nope.

There's already concessions being made for the summer exam series. Eg 3 weeks later.
And as all exams are moderated nationally anyway, there shouldn't be too much room for error with grading, as they'll just change the grade boundaries (like they do every year!)

It will be fine.

@AlternativePerspective

No they shouldn’t be cancelled.

And wales and Scotland need to stop political point scoring, you can bet any money that if England had cancelled exams Scotland wouldn’t have....

This! Scotland do seem to be a bit like that. If England said, we'll give everyone a million pounds, Scotland would turn around and give everyone a million and one.

@Empressofthemundane

Wakes and Scotland aren’t making things fairer. They are just shifting the unfairness around.

Yep. There will still be the same ratios of grades!

So how does this work for children who have missed months of school since September ? It won’t be ‘fine’ with three extra weeks for those.
Or levelling the playing field when the extra allowances are made for every child when some have suffered no disruption since September.

Perhaps we should cancel all the exams and have all academically weaker students go directly into jobs or technical school at 14 and/or army training from 16? Save higher ed for the gifted and wealthy.

Watch that space because we aren't getting everything back at the end of this - not in the public sector, anyway.

It’s not fully worked out yet. There is consideration still on how to tackle disparity.

But exams are a big milestone for all students.

I don't think so and disagree with the Scottish decision.

Changing the date, reduce some content perhaps, but to have centre assessed grades or some variant will mean that they are devalued. By the summer there will not be the risk to hold them that there would be if they take place today.

People who benefit from last minute revision, or don't suffer nerves on the day, are not represented accurately in the other options.

As of now, I think adapting them is best. Highers I think are taken over one year? If English A levels are cancelled this year then what about next year as they are taken over two years.

Cancelling is poor decision making by Scotland and Wales and England would be a fool to follow.

I k ow of schools where year 11 have already missed 6 weeks of school since September. How could it possibly be fair to expect them to perform as well as a student who has been able to attend every day? What is they miss another 6 weeks next term as well?

Reducing the content or sitting the exam 3 weeks later for all students is not making it fairer for those who are mssing out on so much school time this year.

I can’t see how it’s fair to students to cancel exams, what’s unfair is taking their opportunity away from them. There’s plenty of time for the exams to be adjusted so that they can work as best they can. The fiasco of last year needs to stay a one off, otherwise we may as well stop bothering with exams all together as they will have so little credibility.

@winechateauxjoy

I k ow of schools where year 11 have already missed 6 weeks of school since September. How could it possibly be fair to expect them to perform as well as a student who has been able to attend every day? What is they miss another 6 weeks next term as well?

Reducing the content or sitting the exam 3 weeks later for all students is not making it fairer for those who are mssing out on so much school time this year.

There’s more to come re disparity

As it stands Northern Irish students are the most “disadvantaged” (if you look at it that way) in that they have the least adaptations to exams and syllabi. Wales and Scotland have done away with exams (albeit with Wales in a different way to Scotland) and England have announced not only a reduction in exams, a bigger wait before exams start, but also the latest measures like forewarning of topics to be examined and inflated grade boundaries.

As it stands, N.Irish students will be sitting their GCSE, AS and A-level exams only about a week later than normal and while there are adaptations on most subjects, there aren’t on all and the adaptations have been announced very late. (Many schools have spent time this year teaching stuff or even doing controlled assessments which now count for nothing.) No suggestions of matching the latest round of adaptations announced by England either.

As a teacher and as a parent of a GCSE pupil, I would like exams to go ahead, and I’d hate for DS’s results to be devalued by grade inflation. However, working in a school is so stressful at the minute and there is no doubt that many of our pupils are more stressed and depressed than we have ever experienced before. They are all worried about every test, every assessment, every essay in case it gets used to create a CAG. I know that DS hasn’t relaxed since March and we need to watch carefully for burn out.

I don’t know what the answer is, but I do think exams in some form are the fairest way to assess the students.

(I also concur with PPs who say that Scotland in particular are politically posturing!)