Today Ofqual and the Department for Education revealed how they believe GCSE and A-level grades could be awarded by teachers again next summer if Covid disruption leads to the cancellation of exams for the third year in a row.
The exam regulator and DfE plan will be subject to a two-week consultation on whether teacher-assessed grades (TAGs) should be used. The key proposals include:
GCSEs and A levels 2022: The contingency plan for teacher-assessed grades
Gaps between exams
Ofqual says there will be “at least a 10-day gap between exams in the same subject to reduce the risk of students missing all exams in a subject”.
It adds that “students who unavoidably miss one or more exams in a subject” will 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”.
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TAGs are better than the disruption of a new system
Ofqual and the DfE say they considered if grades could be awarded in a “better way” to students if exams are cancelled in 2022.
“We believe that an approach based on TAGs is the best possible approach, given the firm expectation that exams will be able to take place in 2022, the need to prioritise teaching and learning given the disruption to students’ education caused by the pandemic, and the uncertainty about why and when any decision to cancel exams might need to be taken,” the consultation document says, adding that the introduction of a different approach that teachers had to familiarise themselves with could be “more burdensome still”.
There are lessons to be learned from 2021
Ofqual and the DfE said that when evidence requirements for TAGs were set out in 202,1 they knew that they needed to be “as broad as possible” to give schools and colleges the flexibility to respond to individual circumstances at short notice.
“One consequence of this, which we have heard from teachers and students, was that in many schools and colleges, students were assessed multiple times in a short timeframe, reducing the already limited teaching time available,” the consultation document adds.
“Some students and teachers raised concerns that different approaches to gathering evidence were being taken in different schools and colleges, which they considered to be unfair.”
TAGs will be based on ‘tighter guidance’
TAG grades in 2022 would be based on “tighter guidance”.
Schools should aim to build in assessment opportunities for TAG evidence in advance - for example, before Christmas - “to protect against further disruption”.
Those assessments “should provide students with an opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding across the full range of content they have been taught”, the document says, adding that “teachers will want to guard against the risk of over-assessment”.
It says that students should be tested once a term.
Tests should be in exam conditions, and students should be told if they are for TAGs in advance
The consultation advises that tests should be in exam conditions, to ensure that work is “authentic”, although these can take place in a classroom.
It adds that schools “may wish to aim for a total assessment time that does not significantly exceed the total exam time for the specification”.
Students should also be told before “they take the assessment that their performance in the assessment would be used to inform their TAG if exams were cancelled, to ensure they have time to prepare”.
“They should be told the aspects of the content the assessment will cover, but not the specific questions.”
Don’t decide TAGs until exams are cancelled
It says that “teachers must not determine a TAG unless exams are cancelled nor tell their students what their TAG might be”.
