Can’t take mock papers home due to governments resilience guidance ?

[Cobwebs5]

Recently had this communication from school. What is the government guidance on resilience and what has it got to do with taking papers home please ?

Congratulations to all students on the way they have conducted themselves throughout this mock exam period. Starting next week, as previously communicated, students will begin receiving feedback in line with our growth mindset approach as a school. This feedback will be shared at the appropriate time for each subject and paper, forming part of a learning conversation in the classroom, likely over a series of lessons.

Please remember, in line with the government’s resilience guidance, students will not be able to take their papers home. However, with teacher guidance and at the appropriate time, students will be directed to take photos of their papers for reference.

Mocks are not taken home because they are reused for future cohorts who they dont want to have seen it in advance.

Ah, that makes sense, thank you.

The government's resilience guidance states that centres need to retain the mock papers in case a crisis at the scale of Covid, for example, occurs and prevents the exams being sat in the summer. In this case, mock grades could be used. Link below and relevant quote from the document. It is important to note that this doesn't apply to individuals and their potential crises, it's just about national emergencies that mean the exams are cancelled.

Retention of the work
Student work, either the original or a copy, must always be retained by the centre. Student work can be retained digitally or physically. Students may be given copies, or the original work, where this would support their study.

Guidance on collecting evidence of student performance to ensure resilience in the qualifications system - GOV.UK

Exactly as above - so we don't have a situation where we have to base students' grades on a feeling (2020) or masses of strangely gathered evidence (2021)

This has always been the case. You can order papers or download from the exam body

Last years papers are locked until May2026 (always a year after they were sat). @osloslow it's so schools can use them as mocks - teachers have access to them. Although some v unprofessional people have been putting them on social media - it's against JCQ rules so those teachers are risking being struck off. For a few quid.
We keep papers as has been said in case another Covid happens.

@osloslow you have given a reason for why mocks aren't taken home, but not one that answers the op's question about Government "resilience" guidance.

@Cobwebs5 , the correct answer to your question is the one given by @pinotnow above. It is a post-Covid measure.
It was very silly of the school to put it in the letter without explaining it. I'd be tempted to write back to politely point this out. Otherwise parents will assume it somehow relates to mental health and wellbeing.

It's because they need to be kept securely in school in case of a covid type thing.

I'm an exams officer and this is built into our policy documents.

I assume it means resilience of the exam system, not of the students.

Ds just took photos with full permission of the teacher, at least you can see what the questions were, what they wrote and what marks they got for each one. They can also refer back to it when revising.

I copy them for mine but taking photos is good too. We just have to keep the hard copies in school just in case. No one is doing TAGs/CAGs again !

My daughter showed me papers on TikTok. Clearly some schools have handed marked papers back as one I saw had been completed and marked.

In previous years mock papers have been handed back to students.

Yes so I'm a Teaching Assistant working with adults re-taking their GCSEs in a college, we use English and Maths past papers for mocks. We'll do several different mocks for each exam with one cohort. E.g. each class will probably do one walk through paper where we guide on the question timings, and then maybe two normal exam mocks. For this reason we can just use last year's papers because that would only give us one paper 1 and one paper 2 per subject. We will use papers from the last 2/3/4 years. For this reason, we'll need to keep the papers unseen from the groups that haven't had the mocks yet.

Schools would lose their right to be an exam centre if did this. It's more likely an unscrupulous teacher doing tutoring who has decided to break the rules. It's v annoying as we can no longer use last years papers as mocks as kids will look. Means we have to turn guess grade boundaries for papers so write.

We scan mock exams and store them that way so students can have their papers back.

I don't know if it's against JCQ rules? Northern Ireland's exam board, CCEA, who also follow JCQ guidelines, have no such a policy. I am quite sure it is just an AQA policy.