The decision to cancel GCSEs and A levels will not have been taken lightly. To describe the situation we are now facing as “unprecedented” would be an understatement of epic proportions. 

Many people are assuming that the cancellation is the least bad option among several terrible options for the government.

My concern is that, while this might appear to be a pragmatic decision, the consequences for the students concerned could be severe - both educationally and emotionally.

Pause for a moment to consider what it would be like to spend the rest of your life knowing that your GCSE and A-level grades were contrived, and that your qualifications are merely something you’ve been given, rather than something you’ve earned.

You never got the chance to show what you could achieve. Instead, you were simply assigned a grade, and you had little or no choice but to accept it.

Robbing pupils of chances

How would you feel if you were assigned a grade that might rob you of your chance to progress on to A levels, or might cost you a place at your chosen university? 

I rapidly lost count of the number of parents on social media last night, who said that their children were devastated about the loss of the exams. I would entirely understand if they were fearful about what might be imposed on them. We can only wonder what it would feel like to be given a bad grade under these circumstances.

I understand why the government is keen to emphasise that whatever grade system they implement will be “fair”. Even so, their definition of “fair” is unlikely to be shared by thousands of schools and hundreds of thousands of pupils and parents, especially those who end up losing out. 

The reason we have GCSEs and A levels is that - despite their imperfections - they are the fairest option we have for measuring what each student can achieve at a given moment in time.

A new academic cycle

The statistical modelling of coronavirus shows that the government is expecting the NHS to have enough capacity to cope with the level of hospital admissions by the beginning of August.

By the start of September, the situation should have improved further. On that basis, it seems logical to put in place a new academic cycle for the next 18 months, to accommodate GCSEs and A levels.

Let’s assume that all secondary schools and colleges will remain closed until the start of October 2020. This means that mid-August through to September can be allocated as the exam season that traditionally runs from May into June. 

A levels will be sat in the first half of the delayed exam window, while GCSEs can take place in the second half.

For A levels, results will appear about two months after their completion - say, mid-October to early November 2020. The university year will begin in January 2021, giving each institution around six to eight weeks to accept students and sort out accommodation (not dissimilar from the existing timescales). 

The following university summer holiday in 2021 should be condensed from three months down to two to four weeks, to make up for lost time. Universities should also be given a bridging loan for the latter part of 2020, to cover the loss of tuition-fee income from this cohort.

Making up for lost time

For GCSEs, results will appear in December or January. In the meantime, all school sixth forms and colleges should operate a lottery-based system for places in the next academic year (starting in October 2020). 

Students will receive their results in plenty of time for the university admissions cycle that they will enter in 2021-22, and we could shorten the summer holiday in 2021 by two weeks for this cohort, and also delay their A levels in 2022 by a week or so, to make up for the time lost to the delayed exam season this September.

Needless to say, we do not know for sure what the world will look like in six months from now. On that basis, there is nothing wrong with the government trying to pull together a plan B, if this summer’s exams simply never happen. Nevertheless, surely a delayed exam season is better for students than no exam season at all? 

I worry that any system that imposes grades on students will generate too much acrimony, unreliability and unfairness to make it tolerable. On that basis, it seems to me that the alternative of a 12-18 month period of adjustment is achievable and desirable. 

Most importantly, it would mean that the class of 2020 will be able to walk away with GCSE and A-level qualifications that they truly deserve.

Tom Richmond is founder and director of the EDSK think tank, and a former government adviser on skills