The schools minister Nick Gibb has said the government is ruling out the use of teacher assessment to award GCSEs in the long term, as record-high results are recorded for a second year.
Today’s GCSE results revealed an expected growth in the proportion of top grades and a slightly smaller rise in the overall pass rate for all entries.
After public exams were cancelled for a second year in 2021, students were awarded grades by their teachers based on a range of evidence, including classwork, coursework and mock exams.
More on GCSE results 2021:
Congratulating students on their results this morning, Nick Gibb thanked teachers for administering the “difficult and challenging” grading system, but said the government had no intention of using teacher assessments to award GCSEs in the long term.
He told BBC Radio 4‘s Today programme: “We should be congratulating those hundreds of thousands of young people getting their GCSE and other grades today, enabling them to go on to T levels or A levels or an apprenticeship.
“They have worked hard in very challenging circumstances over the last 18 months.
“And also to say thank you to the teachers who have administered the teacher-assessed grades system, with all the guidance they have received and the evidence they have needed to compile and send into the exam board, so thank you to those teachers for administering that difficult and challenging system this year.”
Asked whether the government was ruling out using teacher assessments for GCSEs in the long run, Mr Gibb said: “Yes. We did have controlled assessment, teacher assessment in GCSEs prior to 2010 and they took up a vast amount of teaching time that should [have been] better spent on teaching young people.
“And, also, the regulator did not feel that they were a fair way of assessing young people’s achievements.”
School assessment as plan B?
Mr Gibb’s comments come after Dame Alison Peacock, head of the Chartered College of Teaching, said that, although teachers did not want to see a repeat of teacher-assessed grades “in the same way” as this year, she had discussed with the Department for Education whether there was a way schools could be encouraged to “keep assessment records…that are a bit more robust” that could be used as a plan B if certain areas had to cancel exams again.
“So we were discussing [with the DfE]: is there a way in which schools can be encouraged to start to keep the kinds of assessment records that you would hope that most schools would do anyway, that are just that bit more robust? So should we be in a situation next January where we suddenly need to turn round and say that, for whatever reason, exams can’t go ahead across the whole country or in regions, is there something that we’ve got that’s a plan B?
“I think the likely or potential scenario of having some regions that have to cancel exams while the majority can go ahead is something that needs to be thought about.
“And at that point, my view would be, given everything we’ve talked about this morning, the teacher-assessed grades that would have to happen in that situation would need to be valued as highly as any examined grades in the same year, were that to happen. Because we just cannot have a system that says this grade is valid but this grade isn’t.
“We have to do the best we can across the whole system. But definitely, a call to say not TAGs in the same way, not with the same level of intensity because it felt like it was too much.”
The NASUWT teaching union has this morning called on the government to confirm mitigations for the 2022 series, as well as contingency plans to be used in the event exams are cancelled for a third year.
Patrick Roach, NASUWT general secretary, said: “Teachers too have faced huge challenges in drawing up centre-assessed grades, not least due to the delays and failure of ministers to put in place timely contingency plans, despite the chaos which ensued over grading last summer.
“It is therefore of real concern that the government has not yet confirmed any mitigations to ensure that next year’s exam cohort will be assessed fairly and not disadvantaged.
“It is already clear that, regardless of the trajectory of the pandemic in the coming months, mitigations for the class of 2022 will be needed to address the disruption pupils have experienced.
“Young people and their teachers urgently need the detail of what measures are to be adopted for next year, along with what contingency plans will be in place in the event that exams cannot go ahead as planned, so that they have the best possible opportunity to plan, prepare and achieve their best.
“In developing all their proposals, ministers will need to ensure that the unacceptable and avoidable workload pressures teachers and school and college leaders have experienced in the last academic year are not repeated.”
