A teacher has started a petition to cancel this year’s GCSE and A-level exams during the coronavirus outbreak signed by more than 20,000 people.

The campaign, begun by teacher Neil Brownhill, warns that postponing the exams poses a “logistical nightmare” that would cause further stress and anxiety to a generation of pupils already struggling with their mental health.

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The petition is addressed to prime minister Boris Johnson and has seen support grow from more than 15,600 people to 22,000 people so far today.

“Cancel all GCSE and A-level examinations this year,” it says.

“Postponing is a logistical nightmare and going ahead with them at this point is going to cause more stress and anxiety on a whole generation of students who are already suffering with an unprecedented level of mental health issues.”

Mr Brownhill proposes that exams should be cancelled instead, and that teachers should use predicted grades for their pupils’ GCSE and A-level outcomes. He says this would work by the government “showing you have as much trust and faith in teachers as you need to have in your NHS and other key personnel over the next few months”.

The petition calls on the government to:

• Allow teachers to submit predicted grades for pupils. It acknowledges that some pupils “will get a better grade than if they sat the final exam” but that others might have fared better through having sat the paper under “normal conditions”. Mr Brownhill points out that “these are not normal conditions” and teacher predictions were likely to be more accurate than going ahead with the exams. 
• Allow any pupil who feels they might have performed better than their predicted grade to resit exams in November, which would be a completely voluntary option to be decided by the individual.
• For all universities to accept pupils they have given offers to unconditionally on the basis of predicted A-level grades.
• To suspend all Ofsted school inspections for the 2020-21 academic year to allow “schools and students time to recover from any gap in education caused by closures without the added pressure of judgements by the inspectorate”.

News follows a call from the chief executive of a high-performing multi-academy trust for the government to postpone GCSE and A-level exams, along with primary Sats, for this academic year, with pupils sitting the exams in the summer of 2021 instead.

Hamid Patel, the chief executive of Star Academies, said the government need to “do the unthinkable” and cancel the exams for this year.

“Cancellation is the only sensible and humane option. It will go a long way to ensure the success of the ‘delay’ phase of the government’s strategy,” the Guardian reported.

“Imagine the scene if examinations were to proceed as normal. Would infected students arrive to sit the examinations that they have prepared so hard for? Would infected invigilators supervise them?

“Would all students be required to have their temperature checked before entering the exam hall, or would they simply be allowed to cross-infect their peers?”

However, Tes has revealed how the former chief executive of one of England’s big three exam boards has warned that using predicted grades for pupils could be seen as unfair as “you’re predetermining someone’s performance on their marks at 11”.

They added that it would be difficult to standardise grading using predicted grades alone this year, which could mean GCSE and A-level grades were “slightly higher” this year. 

And they warned that in the event exams go ahead, hundreds of thousands of pupils who miss one or more of their papers from the disruption caused by the epidemic would apply for special consideration for their grades.

The sheer volume of pupils who might apply for this would mean boards would find it “near impossible” to cope with the level of demand, they said.