And with that, a truly unique results week has passed. After lockdown after lockdown and the promise that exams would definitely be happening, teachers were once again asked to assess students and submit grades. With the hastily planned CAG process in 2020, many had hoped for a fully detailed process in 2020-21 with contingency plans prepared and ready to deploy as we began to better understand Covid (and its impact on education and life in general). It could have been so different (and, if we are to believe a new report from the Institute for Government, it would have been had Gavin Williamson been at key meetings), but students, parents, teachers and leaders are now in the midst of the final chapter of the TAG process.
So, what next? Well, emotions mirrored results day of 2020 in many ways, but with much more focus on individual teachers and their role in the final grade. There seemed very much a move to make teachers accountable for these grades (with the change from centre-assessed grades to teacher-assessed grades) and we are yet to see how this plays out during 2021-22.
Post-16 options: Does the funding match the rhetoric?
More results: No evidence of teacher bias in VTQs
GCSE resits 2021: More students achieve grade 4
Regardless of results, there are several concerns moving into the next academic year: the long term effects of Covid disruption to education; the additional resources still needed to “close the gap”; the additional support needed for those who have not achieved their target grade and this is just the start.
Even those who achieved a grade 4 have suffered the disruption of nearly 18 months of education. Although they will be able to move forward to further and post-16 education, apprenticeships and jobs without further study of English and maths, they are still likely to require significant intervention to cover the content which was missed as a result of the pandemic. Yes, funding has been allocated for interventions and catch up, but not to the level which is required to support all of the learners impacted.
And then there are those students who did not achieve their target grades in both 2020 and 2021. What next for them? Intervention was completed last year, with distribution of additional resources wherever possible, but they now find themselves studying English and/ or maths in further education, on reduced timetables (if previously in schools) and with limited funding in comparison to schools.
Students resitting in further education can, at times, suffer fractured relationships with FE English and maths practitioners due to their previous negative experiences in education. With students seeing their final grade from 2021 as a reflection of their relationship with lecturers, 2021-22 is likely to be an enormously challenging year not just for students, but for English and maths practitioners in further education also.
Functional skills
And all of this before mentioning the impact on those students completing functional skills. With information on final assessment processes for most qualifications arriving in January, there was at least some time to prepare and devise the relevant steps in each setting. For functional skills (FS), this proved much more difficult. With the decision to continue with exams, FS was very much the outlier among qualifications in 2021. With far fewer resources available for teachers and students (as a result of a lack of teaching in schools and the FS reforms making a vast array of past resources outdated), and confusion over whether FS exams would or could take place, students sitting functional skills exams have received far too little focus over the last 18 months.
Again, there will be funding available for intervention, but students will still experience roughly half of the teaching hours of their peers who are completing GCSEs. With no plans to review this any time soon, the majority of the focus will again be placed on GCSE and A-level students, meaning 2021-22 will likely be an enormously challenging year for students and practitioners.
Although Covid restrictions are largely being relaxed, there is still a sense (especially with the prominence of the Delta variant and potential future variants) that anything can still happen in September and beyond. As exceptional as the TAG work done by teachers in 2021 has been, it remains to be seen what assessment in 2021-22 will look like.
Even if mass vaccinations do mean a return to some normality, debate continues to rage about whether we should return to exams as the primary form of assessment.
Whatever 2021-22 brings, what is certain is that students require more support than ever to make sure that they are able to bridge the gaps brought about by lost learning.
