As we anticipate the first formal exam results in three years this week, with A-level and GCSE grades expected to be lower than last year’s teacher-assessed grades, Tes takes a look at how the journey towards the return to exams has unfolded, and how teachers have found getting back to “normal”.

While the reintroduction of exams may have been welcomed by some, the series has been plagued by delays and errors over measures to mitigate the loss of learning experienced by the 2022 GCSE and A-level cohorts, as well as uncertainty caused by Covid resurgences.

“As with many other aspects of schools policy through the pandemic, exam provision for 2022 suffered from a prolonged national leadership vacuum,” says Robin Bevan. headteacher of Southend High School for Boys in Essex.

Mr Bevan says that it was clear even in March last year that those due to take exams in summer 2022 had already experienced ”unprecedented disruption in their studies”, and while the Department for Education and Ofqual needed to be looking 15 months ahead, they could at that time “barely see beyond the next few weeks”.

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So what has the process been like for teachers this year and how will this year’s grades differ from recent years’? We look back on a turbulent return to the exam hall.

GCSEs and A levels 2022: The timeline for the return of exams

September 2021: Ofqual and the DfE reveal 2022 plans 

In September last year, the long-awaited plans for the next exam series were finally announced. 

Both Ofqual and the DfE set out that exam grades would be settled at a median between pre-pandemic levels and 2021, when teacher assessment led to higher grade inflation than previous years.

And Dr Jo Saxton, chief regulator of Ofqual, revealed a “two-step” plan to return to the pre-pandemic grade profile, with exam boards using prior attainment data with the profiles based on an average of the 2019 and 2021 results for each subject. 

Mitigations were also announced for certain subjects such as GCSE maths, in which students would be provided with formulae sheers, and GCSE physics and combined science, in which students would be given equation sheets. 

And in some subjects, certain topics would be ruled out of the exam papers.

While the decisions were welcomed, some school leaders criticised the delay in the release of advance information, saying the decision to wait until February 2022 meant students would be caught in a “topic lottery”.

Clarification over the awarding of grades

In the same month, Ofqual also revealed that there would be “at least a 10-day gap between exams in the same subject” so that the chances of students missing all exams in one subject due to Covid would be reduced. 

This would allow students who missed one or more exams in a subject to be able to achieve a grade through the special consideration process, “so long as they have completed the assessment for at least one component of the qualification”.

November: Schools told to run ‘exam-condition’ mocks

In November the government announced the outcome of a consultation that it had run on contingency plans for exams in the summer of 2022.

It reiterated that it was “firmly committed to exams going ahead in summer 2022”.

And while it said that advance information for GCSE, AS- and A-level exams would be published no later than 7 February 2022, the DfE added it would decide whether the advance information should be published earlier due to Covid disruption. 

It later decided against early publication.

The government also confirmed that if exams were cancelled again in 2022 then it would plan to use teacher-assessed grades (TAGs) like 2021, as a “plan B” - something the government was criticised for not having in place when Covid led to exams being cancelled last year.

It also confirmed that there would be a national approach rather than a regional one, and that if it proved necessary to cancel exams and implement TAGs in some parts of the country, exams would be cancelled for all students and the TAGs approach rolled out nationally.

But while the government confirmed the return of exams in September, just two months later schools were told to assess students in “exam-like” conditions to store evidence for teacher-assessed grades (TAGs) in the event that the exam series did not go ahead.

The government said it was putting the contingency plans in place for “the unlikely event that exams [had] to be cancelled again because of the pandemic”.

While the exams did, in fact, go ahead this summer, at the time headteachers said it was “ridiculous” that the extra guidance had only just been published.

December: New Covid variant causes disruption

In December last year, the new Covid variant Omicron ripped through schools, forcing leaders to prepare for possible closures in the new year. 

At the time there were uncertainties over whether remote learning would once again be introduced, as Sajid Javid, who was health secretary at the time, said he could not guarantee schools would not close again due to the pandemic.

On 8 December, the government confirmed it would be moving to new national Covid measures as analysis suggested cases could be doubling in as little as 2.5 or 3 days at a time. 

Under the announcement, people were asked to work from home if they could. Schools remained open but began to report an escalation in disruption caused by high levels of staff and pupil absence.

January: Omicron wave hits schools 

In January, as the country remained under the government’s “Plan B” Covid restrictions, headteachers called on ministers to release the advance information for exams “as soon as possible” due to the disruption caused by the Omicron wave at the end of the autumn term, continuing into the spring. 

At the time, Sarah Hannafin, the NAHT school leaders’ union’s senior policy adviser, said that there was “no need” to wait until February, adding that the government “can and should do more”, and that there needed to be “a greater consideration of how the pandemic has affected learning and teaching this year, especially over the past few months”.

Late January: Ofqual refuses to ‘switch off’ its Plan B

Ofqual’s chief regulator said there were no plans to “switch off” contingency measures that schools were taking in gathering evidence in case TAGs needed to be used in the event of exam cancellations. 

While some had called for the measures to be removed, Dr Saxton said “the need to collect evidence of student performance in case exams don’t take place [was] important”.

February: Advance topics released but leaders say it came ‘too late’

The beginning of February saw the release of the advance information first mooted by the government in September, the details of which were confirmed in November. 

At the time, Dr Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the NEU teaching union, said the release had come “too late” and there were ”grave concerns” among teachers that the advance information would not be sufficient to “fairly mitigate the disruption these students have experienced over two academic years”.

Dr Bousted said that amid the continued Covid disruption throughout the academic year, learning had been disrupted and the earlier release of topics could have been used to ”plan powerful learning and maximise classroom time”. 

Looking back, headteacher Mr Bevan says that some mitigations ”simply came too late and exposed students to a form of ‘curriculum bingo’ in which they may have already spent time on discarded sections of the specification”.

“All this, of course, was unfolding alongside the mammoth parallel task of planning, administering, marking and grading multiple assessment tasks and mini-exam scripts for every candidate in every subject,” he says.

“A challenge that was all the more onerous as individual absentees had completed different tasks provided, regardless of how many variations had already been set.”

February: Ofqual chief speaks on Plan B tests

In February, Dr Saxton wrote to schools to say leaders should use their “own judgement” over whether they needed to continue collecting evidence for TAGs.

She also said that exam contingencies should “help rather than hinder” students’ preparation for GCSE and A-level exams. 

March: Further Covid disruption

In March, as pupil and teacher absence rose once again and some schools were forced to send year groups home because of Covid, leaders became increasingly concerned about exam arrangements. 

And schools also reported that they were facing increasing demand for more room space and invigilators, as the number of students experiencing anxiety soared.

The NAHT’s Paul Whiteman said that further disruption to learning could be “seriously damaging to pupils’ exam chances and education recovery”.

Heads also questioned the decision to remove free Covid testing from 1 April, with Ms McCulloch calling the move “nonsensical” and Mr Whiteman saying it was “irresponsible”.

And in early March, a poll carried out by the Chartered College of Teaching revealed that most teachers thought that the mitigations put in place that provided pupils with advance information would not be enough to aid those most impacted by the disruption caused by Covid.

March: Schools told to ‘bank’ TAG work to focus on exams

In the middle of March, Robin Walker, who was schools minister at the time, told schools to put the evidence gathered for teacher-assessed grades (TAGs) “in a drawer” and fully focus instead on exam preparation.

At the time, Mr Walker said that the department wanted that evidence to be available “because we all know from the pandemic so far that you can’t necessarily predict what happens in the future”.

But he said that if schools had the “sufficient evidence”, he now wanted them to “bank it”.

“I want them to effectively put that in the drawer and focus on exam preparation, rather than having to gather new information on TAGs,” he said.

April: Concerns over the end of free Covid testing

In April, the government’s long-awaited “Living with Covid” plan was rolled out.

The end of free Covid testing for most of the population in April also sparked fears about both the spread of Covid and students missing exams due to an expected infection.

April: Fears over ‘dire’ shortage of invigilators

In April, schools raised concerns over an insufficient number of invigilators for the summer series, with nine in 10 exams officers saying they were concerned about the shortage.

The government was also warned that the shortage could exacerbate the risk of malpractice.

And unions said at the time that they were receiving “bleak” reports from schools about difficulties with invigilator recruitment. 

The issue was reportedly exacerbated by the fact that many schools were “reliant on retired people to act as invigilators”. Mr Barton warned that this group could be reluctant to invigilate in exam halls amid high Covid levels. 

The ASCL warned that the end of free Covid testing on 1 April could worsen the problem.

Later in April, the government was warned once again that schools were becoming “increasingly desperate” over the shortages and were training staff in order to plug invigilator gaps. 

Exemption for long Covid 

In late April, Tes revealed that schools that had exam students with long Covid would be able to apply for a special consideration exemption if their condition worsened during the exam period.

But the Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ) said that students would only be eligible for special consideration status if other access arrangements were not sufficient.

May: Invigilator rules relaxed to combat shortages

In early May, the JCQ published updated guidance that changed the ratio of invigilators to students from 30 to 40.

The new guidance also detailed that in “exceptional cases”, when schools had “exhausted all other options to meet the revised ratios”, the exam would be able to take place but the awarding body should be informed. 

July: MPs call for fines over errors

After mistakes involving the inclusion in exam papers of topics that were not included in the advance information, Robert Halfon, chair of the Commons Education Select Committee, wrote to the new education secretary, James Cleverly, and Ofqual chair Ian Bauckham claiming that exam boards should be fined over errors around advance information topics. 

While students had been provided with advance information on topics to help focus their revision, Mr Halfon said that some exam boards this year had issued papers that “ignored the advance information, or contained errors”.

Mr Halfon said that exam boards should “automatically issue full marks for questions where errors occurred”.

For the AQA GCSE physics paper, which included a question on energy circuits (not a part of the advance information topics), the exam board has already clarified that all students will be given the full nine marks for the question. 

And later in July, Ofsted criticised schools for being “overly focused” on exam techniques in the summer term as they prepared for the first full series in three years. 

Rob McDonough, chief executive officer of East Midlands Education Trust, says that while this year was a “compromise” and the “best of a bad situation”, the approach taken was as if “Covid had disappeared”, with schools still having students’ education disrupted because of Covid. 

Mr McDonough also found that there was an “additional workload” required this year as schools had to undertake additional formal assessments just in case exams were cancelled, and it was “the worst of all worlds, preparing for both exams and non-exams”.

Overall, Mr McDonough says the past three years have left him wondering whether the current exam system, which he describes as “high-stakes” with everything hanging on a “cliff edge performance”, really is the right one. 

Meanwhile, Mr Bevan is concerned about the narrative of “exceptional dedication” being lost.

He says that while the “dominant narrative of disruption, remote learning and ‘catch up’ is a valid perspective”, it is “far from the whole story”.

Instead, he says it would be more valid to look at the “exceptional dedication in educational delivery by teachers, of imaginative and pioneering approaches to online learning and remote collaboration, of skilled and professional teacher-led assessments, and - above all - of a cadre of students who have shown extraordinary resilience and commitment”.

August: Teachers and students face an anxious wait

This month, a Tes survey revealed how teachers have found the transition to “normal” exams, with results showing that almost nine in 10 teachers are concerned their students will not get the grades they deserve because of Covid disruption.

And teachers were also concerned over the errors made by exam boards in advance information topics, with over half saying they felt their students had been negatively affected by the mistakes.

The survey highlighted previous concerns over the uneven impact that Covid has had on students in different regions that were hit at varying times and degrees by the pandemic.

Teachers also found that exam preparation this year had taken longer than in pre-pandemic years, with almost one-third (30 per cent) of respondents saying they had spent more than 10 extra days making students ready for exams this year, compared with 2019.