October A level exams - anyone know anything about them?

[loveyouradvice]

There seems to be very little out there... so I am expecting a big announcement before A levels results day - but perhaps that's overoptimistic

1. Do you know anything about format or timings? I seem to think they are offering the same number of papers for each subject as before, and therefore I imagine the same content - but probably over a shorter timeframe??

1. How are schools likely to support this? Given they missed all the March-May revision classes etc? I hope they will given how long kids have been out of school, but am concerned that all the Covid demands mean they might not.....

Look forward to hearing what you think or know

I believe that schools have had very little information so far. I can’t imagine they will be able to offer much support in terms of revision classes etc - teachers will be fully occupied teaching current pupils.

The A-level exams will be scheduled over a two week period (three weeks for GCSEs). I wouldn't expect the school to offer revision support; the staff will already be at capacity teaching current pupils and helping the new Y11 and Y13 to catch up.

I doubt there will be any school provision - the students will no longer be on the school roll, the teaching time will be fully allocated to current students. The guidance for keeping year groups apart means they're not going let any extra students onto the premises. My guess is that the best you'll get is access to revision resources. I'd be finding out about local private tutors...

Dates are Oct 3 - oct 23 for A levels. Identical format to before i( look at Ofqual site for more info)
Schools will just host exams not teach students for them

The other thing is no NEA, so if your child was doing a subject with coursework, that won’t count - it’s all exam based for the October exams. Where DH works they are not offering any support as staff are all too busy teaching existing years. I think it will depend on how much the grades are adjusted by the exam boards.

My daughter's (state, comprehensive) school have said that they will support any student who wishes to sit the exam and will put together a personalised support programme depending on the subject.

They acknowledge that what that support looks like will depend on how many students are involved, but they seem sincere about making sure they aren't just left to prepare on their own.

Conversely, they are strongly encouraging the students to accept their grades and move on to the next stage, if they are sufficient for that to be possible. So they expect that numbers doing the autumn exams will be very small. And it's a small year group in any case, so they are probably reasonably confident they won't be over-run with requests for support.

I think it is awful that they cannot use the NEAs completed this academic year towards the resits. It means that there is no way that Yr13 can do the exams they would have done if the June sittings had not been cancelled. It is also really hard to keep going with subjects like languages for months on end with no teaching.

The papers in October, will be the papers that they would have sat in the summer. They will be full papers covering the whole of the content. They will not be reduced paper. However, should they sit the exam and end up with a worse grade that the teacher assessed grade, they will keep the higher grade. Hope that helps a bit.

@madrose However they will not be as they would have been this summer as the NEA will not be counted.

I don't know about the effect of NEAs, but that's what we were informed by the exam boards.

Achicken that is really good to hear... DD school has been extraordinarily silent on this......Hope they might do the same!

Echoing some points from above.

The message from the Sixth Form College that I work at is to encourage students to accept the grades as an accurate approximation of what they would have got and move on. Moving on could include going through clearing if grades aren't what they hoped for. If students choose to resit in Autumn, I can imagine that it'll be treated in the same way as any resit, with little support from the college. We'll be already overworked dealing with the undertaught new Year 12s and our Year 13s with new social distancing timetables and blended learning.

The exam papers that will be sat in Autumn will be exactly the same exam papers that were prepared for Summer 2020 and not used. NEA has to unfortunately be discarded since many students didn't get to finish before lockdown and internal moderation processes weren't completed. It would be even more of an unreliable measure than normal.

My personal advice is that (unless something went really wrong during the past two years) students will be unlikely to do better in the Autumn exams because they won't have had the intense revision phase and probably won't have teachers to help them. Also demand for uni places will be higher next year. It will, in almost all cases, be a better idea to use clearing than resit.

Thanks Mat.... my understanding though is that these are not resits? They are to be seen as part of the 2020 papers so that those who do sit them are not to be disadvantaged by doing so. Its only if you take exams again next summer that it becomes a resit

At least two unis have said they 'll respect these grades and take forward offers to 2021, and I seem to remember one of the commentators said that they expect other unis to follow suit, as they would be legally opening themselves up to challenge if they don't respect the offers they made for 2020 A levels. I havent heard anymore about this yet but imagine we will

Like you I am hoping there are not many of them - really just those who for whatever reason feel their grades are not what they would have been if they had done the exam

Secondary school teacher here. We’ve been given very little specific info so far. Kids have got nothing to lose given they will keep the best grade. I work in a pretty academic school and suspect that students will resit if unhappy with their grades. We will be supporting/ encouraging this. But no dates or any info.

That's a completely reasonable understanding too. You might be right. I think there's too little that anyone's been told about it and it's probably going to be a bit too late for anyone to make properly informed choices in a few weeks.

My view is a little cynical and that the autumn exams are just there to give Ofqual an answer for when students blame their system for them not getting the grades they wanted.

There's so much unfairness associated with grades in our education system (hidden and obvious). Things like a fixed percentage of fails each year, and different distributions of grades for different subjects, just in order to keep the percentages the same as the previous year. In my opinion, they cause so much stress and detract from the point of education :(