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The UK education secretary is facing growing calls to follow Wales’s lead and cancel next summer’s GCSE, AS and A-level exams in England amid lingering uncertainty over whether students can be guaranteed a course. level playing field when it comes to end-of-year evaluations.
The National Union of Students (NUS) has called on ministers to “follow the lead” of the Welsh government, which has announced plans to eliminate exams for the second year in a row amid the disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Salsabil Elmegri, Vice President for Higher Education at NUS, said: “From an equal opportunity perspective, having two different systems would not be fair for students studying in England to have to take exams while their neighbors in Wales do not.” .
He said eliminating exams was “crucial” to reassuring students and allowing staff to plan for the future.
Downing Street said there were “no changes” regarding summer exams in England, which will be delayed for several weeks next year, following the announcement from Wales.
Meanwhile, the Northern Powerhouse Partnership has called for a “continuous assessment plan” in lieu of exams.
“It is naive or deliberately ignorant of government to pretend that there is any hope of achieving a fair and level playing field for students when there are large disparities in both attendance and a child’s ability to work from home,” Sarah Mulholland, the think-tank policy chief, he said.
He added: “We need to anticipate another catastrophe that puts the future of millions of young people at risk across the country, but particularly in the North, where the Covid disruption has been worst.”
Systems for calculating test-free grades received a strong backlash this year, with U.K. reversals allowing students to take teacher-predicted initial grades, rather than calculated ones that had passed through moderation, after of the protests.
Wales is so far the only UK country to have announced that exams will be phased out for the second year in a row.
The GCSE, AS and A-level exams will be slightly delayed in both England and Northern Ireland next year, while Scotland has announced plans to cancel the National 5 exams and delay others.
Following Wales’s announcement, the Department of Education (DfE) said the tests are “the fairest way to judge a student’s performance” and the government believes they should continue next year.
Kirsty Williams, Wales’ education minister, said on Tuesday that the pandemic made it “impossible to guarantee a level playing field” for students facing exams.
“Based on the recommendations of both Qualifications Wales and the Independent Review, there will be no exams for GCSE or AS level students next year,” said Ms. Williams. “A-level students will also not be required to take tests.”
The minister added: “We remain optimistic that the public health situation will improve, but the main reason for my decision is equity. The time that students will spend in schools and universities will vary enormously and, in this situation, it is impossible to guarantee equal conditions for examinations to be carried out “.
A leading union welcomed the decision to eliminate next year’s exams in Wales.
“This is the right decision for our youth,” said Eithne Hughes, Cymru director of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL).
“It recognizes the fact that they will have been affected to different degrees by the impact of the pandemic and allows as much teaching time as possible to catch up on lost learning.”
He added: “We are confident that the planned approach is sound and that it will avoid the pitfalls that occurred in qualifying for qualifications this summer.”
Teacher administered assessments will include assessments that are externally established and graded, but are delivered in a classroom setting under teacher supervision.
Teachers will also have flexibility when it is best to take assessments.
Following the Wales announcement, the UK Prime Minister’s official spokesperson said the government still intends to go ahead with A-level and GCSE exams in England next year, which will be slightly delayed “to give students more time to prepare. ”
“We continue to think that exams are the fairest way to judge student performance and that they should continue next year, supported by the contingency measures that we have developed with the education sector,” said the prime minister’s spokesman.
Speaking about England’s intention to go ahead with the 2021 exams, Geoff Barton from the Association of College and School Leaders said The independent: “We believe that this can be achieved in a fair way for students, but will require substantial modifications in the content of the tests.”
The union’s general secretary added: “Students will need more choices about the topics they answer questions on to address the fact that they will not necessarily have covered all of them in sufficient depth and this will vary depending on how much disruption they have experienced. “
Andy Byers, principal of a secondary school in Durham, said The independent: “I think the exams should be done in some format, but it should be fairer than the current ‘go ahead as normal’ plan.”
Following the move in Wales, a DfE spokesperson said: “Exams are the fairest way to judge a student’s performance, so Ofqual and the government agree that they should continue next year.
“We are working closely with stakeholders on the steps necessary to ensure that the reviews can be conducted, and we will put plans in place over the next few weeks.”
The decision in Wales marks the cancellation of year-end exams for the second year in a row in the country due to the coronavirus pandemic.
As in other parts of the UK, students received calculated grades, estimates from teachers who went through a moderation process, this year.
Additional reports from the Press Association
