Teachers’ leaders have claimed that the decision to wait until February to give advance notice of next year’s GCSE and A-level exam topics will mean students are caught in a “topic lottery”.

Responding to today’s announcement of the arrangements for next summer’s exams, education union leaders largely agreed that clarity from the government and exam regulator Ofqual had come too late in the day.

But they differed on their views of the final proposals. 

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The Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) said the date set for giving advance information on next year’s exam content was “reasonable”, while the NEU teaching union said it would unfairly advantage certain students.

And while the decision to introduce a “transition year” for grading standards went down fairly well with headteachers’ leaders, Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the NEU teachers’ union, said the move amounted to “picking an arbitrary number out of the air” to determine how many of each grade should be awarded next summer.

Frustration over the wait for GCSE and A-level exam plans

Geoff Barton, ASCL general secretary, welcomed the “clarity” on the arrangements for the 2022 exams, but said the plans “should all have been sorted and announced much earlier”.

“It is frustrating that it has taken to this point - deep into the autumn term and with ongoing Covid-related disruption in schools and colleges - to set out the shape of exams for which young people are studying,” he said.

Paul Whiteman, general secretary of school leaders’ union the NAHT, also said it would have been “far preferable” to have notice of the plans before the start of the autumn term.

And Dr Bousted said the news had come “far too late”.

“We are two full months since the end of the consultation on exam adaptations, which itself lasted only three weeks,” she said.

“This is another example of teachers and leaders being asked to jump at the demand of government, when they won’t replicate the urgency of response themselves.”

Do the exam adaptations go far enough?

The government and exam regulator today confirmed changes to next year’s exams to mitigate for lost learning during the pandemic.

In subjects where no choice of topic is available, students will receive advance information on the focus of exams so they can target their revision more carefully.

This will be released by 7 February at the latest and could come earlier if there is further educational disruption caused by the pandemic.

Mr Barton said the adaptations to the 2022 exam series were “sensible”.

The ASCL leader acknowledged that some people may disagree with the government’s decision to wait until February to provide advance notice of exam topics.

But he said it seemed “a reasonable balance between allowing time to cover as much of the course content as possible and time to focus on topics that will come up in the exams”.

He added that this will need to be “kept under review” as the year goes on.

But Mr Whiteman said giving advance notice of topics in February would “limit the desired impact”.

“Providing this information sooner would help to reduce the differential impact of the pandemic on students so far,” he said.

“It would also enable teachers to do the very best for each of their students, ensuring they cover as much of the specification as possible and that they are well prepared for the exams and assessments which allow them to progress to the next stage of education, training or employment.”

And Dr Bousted said the move would result in a “topic lottery”.

“Being told what the focus of the exam is after teaching and learning has finished is of no use if the focus of the exam is something you haven’t had the chance to cover in sufficient depth, which would be the case for many due to the pandemic,” she said.

“This will have a disproportionate impact on those who suffered the greatest disruption to learning due to Covid - more often than not, the most disadvantaged students.

“It smacks of a complete lack of understanding of the situation faced by many students and of misplaced priorities to suggest that concern over narrowing of curriculum, if this information were to be released earlier, outweighs the unfairness of one student walking into an exam having had less chance to cover the necessary topics than another.”

A staged return to pre-Covid standards

The government and Ofqual said today that GCSEs and A-level students sitting exams in 2022 will be awarded lower grades than cohorts in the Covid years of 2020 and 2021.

Grades awarded in 2022 will use boundaries set at a midway point between the distributions of 2021 and 2019, the last year when public exams were sat, to reflect how 2022 is a “transition” year in which students have still suffered disruption as a result of pandemic.

Ofqual said it plans to return grading standards to pre-Covid levels in 2023.

Mr Barton said that having a “transition year” for grading standards was “understandable”. ASCL had proposed a “direct return” to the 2019 distribution in 2022.

“We recognise there is no ideal solution to the dilemma of where to pin grading standards following two years of turbulence,” he said.

“We welcome that a decision has been made and that everybody now knows where they stand.”

And Mr Whiteman said the approach “seems to be the one which recognises we are in a period of recovery and that will ensure as much fairness as possible for students in 2022 whose learning has already been significantly affected by the pandemic”.

However, Dr Bousted accused Ofqual and the government of “picking an arbitrary number out of the air in order to determine how many of each grade will be issued next summer”.

“Such a random act undermines their argument that exams are the fairest way to assess students,” she said.

“Whilst last summer’s system wasn’t perfect, the grades at least were a reflection of what students themselves had done, rather than simply reflecting how much better or worse they were than their peers.

“We would welcome greater clarity and honesty as to the reasons behind the proposed rationing of success in 2022, 2023 and in a ‘normal’ year.”

Clear guidelines needed on ‘Plan B’

The government and Ofqual also today proposed contingency arrangements to be used if exams cannot go ahead next year.

As in 2021, the regulator said teacher-assessed grades (TAGs) should be used, but added that students should be told if an assessment is to be used for their TAGs beforehand.

Mr Whiteman said the contingency plans “must strike the right balance between flexibility and consistency”, and “should not create significant additional workload for teachers nor add pressure to students who are working hard to complete their courses”.

And Dr Bousted said, while it is helpful to have an idea of contingency plans now, “teachers and leaders have already had to try to guess what evidence to collect of the work students have done to this point”.

“It is right that any such evidence should form part of the normal course of teaching and learning, but teachers and school leaders urgently need clear, consistent guidelines about what to collect, along with resources to support them, to avoid a repeat of the workload government imposed on teachers and students last year,” she added.