With a 16-year-old son due to take his GCSEs, I care a great deal about what the government might do with next year’s exams. I also ran a leading exam board for five years and so it’s not difficult for me to understand the challenges faced by everyone involved in the exams system, even if the scale of them is unprecedented.

In addressing them, there are some hard facts that can’t be ignored. Research shows that around 50 per cent of teachers over-predict grades - let’s call it the benefit of the doubt. And there is a significant amount of unconscious and social bias in a prediction system, before we start debating the veracity of any regulator’s algorithm. This is accentuated when teachers know their judgement will be the sole determinant of their students’ grades, which actually explains why we have exams.  

Around 50,000 teachers are examiners each year, millions of A levels and GCSEs are sat every year and not one year goes by without problems, whether it’s question errors, rogue examiners, leaked questions or just poorly performing exam papers.

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In my years at OCR, I lost count of how many problems we had to deal with. Even though a tiny fraction of the students were affected, this still meant hundreds of students might have had their lives impacted and weren’t being treated fairly. The system has ways of dealing with these and, ultimately, it is why we have a robust appeals system. But it can’t cope with hundreds of thousands of students appealing, so there has to be fairness for the majority through the assessments used and the results that are published each year.

GCSEs 2021: A workable solution

Awarding exams is an art, not a science - no matter what anyone says. Unless we move to bland multiple-choice assessing knowledge with no judgement of skills and competency, we have to rely on human judgement, which will always have its challenges (recognising that humans aren’t that reliable).  Exam boards plant pre-marked papers in examiners’ bundles to ensure they are marking accurately, they standardise examiners and re-mark where there are concerns. This is a complex system, but on the whole it works. 

So what is the solution for summer 2021?  We have to lighten the load, remove the burden about mass exams for weeks on end, and allow learning to take place without fear of unfair judgement at the end of so much hard work. In an unprecedented situation, with time rapidly running out, it is time for the great British compromise. 

There must be some form of external benchmark to avoid unconscious bias and over-prediction. We also need an element of external assessment, but we can lighten the burden on students and schools by limiting it to one paper covering the whole syllabus, and that can include multiple choice. This would set the benchmark. 

Blended with teacher assessment which could confirm the grade or move it up or down (just) one grade, we then have a set of results that can be reliably standardised by the assessment experts to provide grades that would reflect ability through external testing and teacher input. But teachers need to know what evidence they should be collecting and assessing. In the vocational learning sector, we know that online formative assessment works, and so why isn’t the government providing tools to teachers such as this to assist with this enormous challenge?

Imagine the recent Liverpool versus Arsenal cup match about to go to penalties and then the players are told the result will be based on the referee’s judgement of the game. The closer we get to next summer, the closer we are getting to the same confusion for students and teachers as to how their performance will be assessed. Teachers and students need to know the rules of the game now and we need to support them both during an incredibly challenging period for not just them but parents, schools and all those involved in the exam system.

Mark Dawe is chief executive of The Skills Network