What’s happening with A levels for everyone?

[ClarasZoo]

No idea yet at DS college. They are working on it..

We have been told no exams at all, but nothing further just yet.

Exams here in April and May which will directly be 100% of their CAG unless they have official NEA which will then also be included.

Wow - no exams at all would be great. I think ours have one hour of exam which is 50% of grade!

Not sure no exams would be great for DS. He always performs well in exams, especially public exams...not so much internal exams as he is at a very high achieving school and is at the lower end of the cohort.

Cancelling A levels might be a disaster for him. His school always pitch their mocks really hard to stretch the most able (Oxbridge candidates) and are a lot harder, with higher grade boundaries that the actual A level papers.

The issue will be the difference in results between schools/colleges that aren't doing exams and those that are with the kids all competing for the same university places. I wish the actual A levels were going ahead.

3 cycles of exams - this week and next 2 x papers per subjects and then more in April & May plus all NEA’s and practical exams. Pretty much all content included.

^ exams all formal and in the hall.

@Olympicfan

DS had mocks this week. 1 paper per subject (2hrs long). He will get the results in the first week back after Easter. Then he will have a further 2hr exam in May and these two sets of exams will determine his grade in each subject.

Mine is doing mocks this week and next week too. His cousin who lives the other side of the country isn't doing any mocks at all. There doesn't seem to be any consistency.

My son finishes up curriculum by Easter. Then guided revision sessions till May then timed “assessments” in May. No further information as yet

Mocks cancelled here

Replaced by a series of assessments - seem to be school designed not regulator devised but I am not sure we would know? NEA included for History but partly included for Geog where they didn't get a chance to complete much due to lockdowns
Have your schools mentioned moderation? - ours say they are moderating against 2019 results which is causing some concern as they weren't great results!
I don't think they are doing a bad job but its been such a mess they only said yes to mocks a couple of weeks ago.
I am disappointed they are being kicked out so early though. I know the teachers have lots to do but I really feel that they have missed out on so much of their education and I thought the govt had asked they were educated for as long as possible....

oh and late june prom cancelled. I know there are many other things going on in the world but that felt sad, as it did for last years

@sleepwouldbenice that’s interesting your comments about the geography NEA. At my dc school everyone did the entirety of their NEA in lockdown- their fieldwork was cancelled (should have been the same week as the very first lockdown). School gave them minimal guidance but no advice (except approving titles) as the NEA has to be their own work of course. The guidance (exam boards / ofqual) was to use Google maps.

@KittyMcKitty to be fair they tried.......the physical geography students got further (except those who lived over the border in wales who couldn't really even travel to visit local features over xmas!) and mu daughters attempts to gather data on local regeneration got halted by the final lockdown.
But the local boys school got theirs done, but it was a different exam board
Having said that some of it was timing - they did no assessments and other gaps in year 12 first lockdown so had catching up to do in year 13..... all a dogs dinner really
and fieldwork went to pot many times - due to the weather as well as covid!
At least she got a pre covid trip to Iceland .... and they are now not covering glaciers much in the assessed work!

It’s hard for them. My ds had been planning one on coasts but field trip canx so he did one on gentrification with all his data gained from the internet (Google maps, zoopla, index of multiple deprivation, census etc) - it was incredibly hard work and took a huge amount of time!

I cam imagine. The NEA for history was massive.
The geog dept have to come up with alternative assessments now, history have much less!

My son's having to do an assessment every week for maths physics and further maths. They get told the topics and each exam is either an hour or 90 minutes. Then DT assessments every other week plus his nea. He would have much rather just had the normal exams as it's 10 weeks now of constant testing.