Teachers’ anxiety levels were “unnecessarily heightened” by delays to decisions around exams in summer 2021, according to Ofqual research published today.
A study commissioned by the exams watchdog also recommends that time should be “taken to review whether any key lessons can be learned” about how assessment organisations and exam boards communicate with students in periods of “uncertainty”.
Today’s report says many individuals were “frustrated that the decisions to change the assessment arrangements were announced too late in the 2020 to 2021 academic year” and this had a “detrimental effect on their ability to tailor their learning effectively to the new arrangements”.
“They also felt strongly that anxiety levels for students, parents and teachers were unnecessarily heightened by the delays in reaching conclusions about which approaches to assessment would be followed,” it adds.
Exams were cancelled in 2021 for the second consecutive year and students were awarded teacher-assessed grades (TAGs).
The decision to cancel exams was announced in January 2021, with today’s report noting that the “decision [was] made too late in the opinion of many”.
However, the report also says that once this decision had been made, “a different set of concerns became evident”.
Student uncertainty over cancelled exams
The research for the report, carried out by Dr Tina Isaacs, an associate professor at the UCL Institute of Education, and Professor Roger Murphy, a professor emeritus at the University of Nottingham, was mostly made up of a focus-group approach to collect evidence over an 11-month period.
Today’s report says “it seemed to be left to teachers to explain the situation to their students, among whom the level of understanding varied considerably”.
And the researchers add that “the fact that there was another long lockdown in the spring 2021 term only exacerbated the situation”.
Focus groups also revealed “fears from students, teachers and parents about potential bias in TAGs that were only partially ameliorated by the internal standardisation of marking and grading that was put in place by centres”.
The study also says that for students the experience of the pandemic “was made worse by high levels of uncertainty about assessment”.
“None of that has helped with the considerable mental health issues that were reported both to us and have featured widely in other detailed research reports throughout the pandemic,” the researchers say.
Dr Isaacs and Professor Murphy say: “This concern over uncertainty has emerged from our study as one of the strongest issues that could inform future strategies, were a similar situation to arise again.”
The study was originally created in order “to keep Ofqual continually appraised of stakeholder perceptions throughout the period, on a phase-by-phase basis”.
The project began in November 2020 and was completed in October 2021 over the course of six phases, with each phase including three student focus groups (from Years 11 and 13), three teacher and staff focus groups and two parent focus groups.
In the summer of 2022 exams returned with mitigations put in place to help students who had their learning disrupted by the pandemic, including advance information on topics and exam aids, such as formulae and equation sheets.
Results day brought an expected fall in the proportion of top grades and a slight decrease in the overall pass rate for all entries.
