England’s chief exams regulator has said that higher anxiety among GCSE students is “not an exam-specific issue”, in response to headteachers’ warnings about the link between poor mental health and exam worries.
Speaking on GCSE results day, which revealed a wider gap in the achievement of top grades between regions and between state and private schools, Sir Ian Bauckham, chief regulator of Ofqual, also stressed a “need to continue to absolutely focus on” these disparities.
Sir Ian told Tes that he agreed it was necessary to have “a debate more widely about anxiety amongst young people, but I don’t think that is an exam-specific issue”.
He said it was well known that the “current generation of young people have overall higher rates of anxiety and depression” but that the “causes of that are complex”.
The chief regulator was speaking after more than three-quarters of teachers and school leaders, responding to a survey for the Association of School and College Leaders, reported seeing poor mental health related to exam anxiety among Year 11 students in the run-up to exams this year.
Schools have seen a decline in pupils’ mental health in recent years, particularly since the pandemic.
Regional gaps in GCSE results
The gap between regions in this year’s GCSE results barely narrowed from 10.8 percentage points last year to 10.7 this year.
The North East and London remain the lowest and highest performing regions respectively in terms of top grades.
Similarly, the attainment gap between state and private schools grew this year. Nearly half of entries from private schools achieved a grade 7/A or above (48.4 per cent), compared with 21.2 per cent of academies - a 27.2 percentage point gap.
The gap is even wider for secondary comprehensives, where 19.4 per cent of entries received the top grades.
Sir Ian said: “We have a qualification system in England that holds a mirror up to the achievement of the country, region by region, group by group. I think that’s a really important thing for us to have.
“However, where disparities are apparent, I also think it’s critically important that those are taken seriously, and that we, as a system, collectively mobilise to address those differential areas of performance in order to ensure that we have opportunity equitably spread across the country.”
As well as addressing those attainment gaps, the chief regulator said a priority for policymakers should be understanding different patterns of subject selection at key stage 4 - for example, the fact that computer science entries are “heavily skewed” towards boys.
English and maths GCSE resits
A drop in the GCSE pass rates (grade 4/C or above) for English and maths has prompted calls to scrap the mandatory resit policy. In response, Sir Ian told Tes that he believed these two GCSEs are a “well-recognised currency” that help to indicate a skill level “important for future functioning in life”.
The drop in the pass rate for English language was driven by a fall in the pass rate for entries from students aged 17 or over to just 20.9 per cent.
Leaders across the sector have called for reform to the GCSE resit system because many students currently never pass.
However, Sir Ian said it was important to enable students who do not reach the grade 4 threshold at 16 to get to that point in further education.
Asked if he had concerns about students having to repeatedly resit, he said: “Of course, I have concerns about them because they’re not reaching a skill level which is important for future functioning, and I think it’s really important that we find ways to enable them to do that.
“The new government has just launched a curriculum and assessment review, and I’m pretty sure that continuing to develop English and maths post-16 will be on their agenda,” he added.
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