Pupils aren’t up to sitting exams next year, say teachers
Nicola Woolcock, Education Correspondent | Rosemary Bennett, Education Editor
Monday September 21 2020, 12.01am, The Times
Education
A survey found that over 50 per cent of teachers with pupils due to take exams next summer felt they were not on track to get the results they should achieve
A survey found that over 50 per cent of teachers with pupils due to take exams next summer felt they were not on track to get the results they should achieve
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Questions surround next year’s GCSE and A-level exams after ministers, unions and private schools raised doubts that they would run as normal.
Scotland is likely to cancel the equivalent of GCSEs — National 5 tests — but will press ahead with a scaled-back version of Highers, which are akin to A-levels, it was reported yesterday.
The leader of a private school body told The Times that heads of elite schools doubted whether exams would take place next year due to the amount of schooling lost and fresh disruption from coronavirus testing problems.
The biggest teaching union, the National Education Union, said it was time for a radical rethink of assessment otherwise next year’s exams would be a measure of disruption not attainment.
Heads belonging to the Headmasters and Headmistresses Conference (HMC), the group of 280 oldest and biggest private schools, are making their own plan, including working with exam boards to see how they could use a form of mock tests if exams are cancelled.
Simon Hyde, the HMC’s new general secretary, said they planned to compile detailed data over the next two terms.
“One possible alternative would be peer-reviewed pupil assessments, which operates in Germany, where a teacher marks a paper and then sends it off to another school to moderate,” he said. Mr Hyde said last year’s loss of learning “was bad enough”, adding: “But this year’s Year 11s and 13s have missed substantial chunks of the curriculum. We can’t plan on the basis of an uninterrupted school year.
“Schools are sending home whole year groups already because someone has taken ill. We really need some serious and immediate thinking.”
Most teachers said teenagers due to sit GCSEs and A-levels next year were not on track to get the results they deserved, a survey has found.
It found that 81 per cent of heads did not have enough funding to fully equip pupils taking exams in 2021 with textbooks or workbooks.
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The survey of almost 7,000 teachers by Teacher Tapp app, for the Publishers Association, found that staff in the most deprived schools were more concerned that pupils would miss out — with 60 per cent of these teachers saying they could not provide resources needed for home study compared with fewer than 1 per cent of staff in private schools.
Fifty three per cent of teachers with pupils due to take exams next summer felt they were not on track to get the results they should achieve. This rose to 66 per cent in schools with the most children receiving free school meals.
Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the National Education Union (NEU), said: “The government has to get real about the ongoing impact of Covid, as it works with Ofqual on the exams for next summer. As things stand, exams will become a measure of the disruption caused by Covid rather than what pupils are capable of.
“This is an opportunity for radical thinking. We’re going to need to adapt how we assess and examine students.”
In Scotland, ministers are expected to drop National 5 tests as a result of the pandemic. However, under plans being considered by John Swinney, the education secretary, a scaled-back version of Highers would still go ahead, The Sunday Times reported yesterday.
Mr Swinney is expected to make an announcement before the October half-term break, reflecting the extent to which pupils fell behind during the lockdown. It will be informed by the findings of a review into this year’s exam fiasco while a report on the future of exams, by the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA), is also imminent.
Last week, Gavin Williamson, the education secretary, said the government was “actively considering” pushing back exams. An announcement is due next month. He told MPs that students could sit exams in public buildings if social distancing was required, while a “reserve set” of exam papers could be introduced if pupils were unable to sit a test while ill or self-isolating.
A Department for Education spokesman said: “We recognise that students due to take exams next summer will have experienced disruption to their education, which is why we prioritised bringing Year 10 and Year 12 pupils back to school last term.”
Rethinking Assessments, a group of private and state schools, could launch a campaign to end GCSEs, The Observer reported. Members include Eton, St Paul’s Girls’ School, and several academy chains.