With the outbreak of coronavirus, pressure is mounting on the government to clarify what will happen to this summer’s GCSE and A-level exams. 

On Monday, the option of postponing exams until September was discussed in a meeting between education secretary Gavin Williamson and school leaders. 

And today, thousands signed a petition calling for GCSEs and A levels to be cancelled outright, while Kevin Courtney of the NEU teaching union said running exams as normal this summer was “not credible”.

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There are several possible scenarios, and Mr Williamson is set to make further announcements regarding the exams season this afternoon. Here, we explore the likely outcomes of each option.

Exams go ahead on a normal timetable

If exams go ahead, there is still a high probability they will be disrupted. In the event that schools remain open, there will still be members of staff and pupils who are self-isolating and who could therefore miss papers. And some schools will be forced to close if they have a number of cases, even if most schools do not.

In that case, candidates are likely to apply for special consideration to adjust their grades, but this week Tes reported that the ex-chief executive of one of the UK’s largest exam boards said the sheer volume of pupils applying for this would leave boards struggling to cope.

They warned that the methods exam boards use to standardise grading from year to year would also be disrupted by the unprecedented outbreak, which could mean grades were “slightly higher” than in previous years.

One option if exams go ahead would be to use spare exam papers prepared by boards in the event of security breaches, so that schools could arrange at least two sittings of each qualification. This could mean that pupils who missed one paper through illness or self-isolation might have another opportunity to sit a different paper, which would give schools the chance to stagger exams and allow more pupils to sit GCSEs and A levels at different times. 

The former head of one of England’s largest exam boards said this might give schools more “flexibility” over how to manage exams season at this time.

Exams are delayed

A key issue here is that later exams could create a minefield for universities. They are on a cycle with the rest of the world, meaning a delay to the start of term could create difficulties in processing applications worldwide.

Universities with a history of offering prospective students unconditional offers could be less impacted by delayed A levels, as they could admit pupils through the use of predicted grades - in fact, one senior figure in UK admissions has said the spread of the virus could mean “one big unconditional offer” for this year’s prospective undergraduate cohort.

Selective universities might wish to set their own online tests - Oxford, Cambridge and the Russell Group over-offer, and would be unable to accept every candidate offered a place on the basis of predicted grades alone.

Regardless of how this is managed, this would still mean that hundreds of thousands of A-level candidates were sitting exams during their first term of university while adjusting to student life and the demands of their courses.

There would also be issues around the support and guidance of pupils once results were released, which could have particular implications for those sitting A levels, who would need the advice of their school or college about navigating university clearing.

Additionally, there would be practical challenges regarding how GCSEs and A levels would be both administered and marked.

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), said of his meeting on Monday with Mr Williamson that they had discussed whether it would be possible to push exams back further into the summer or run them in September, acknowledging “there are all kinds of logistical areas there”.

The former chief executive of one of England’s big three exam boards said there could be significant issues with delaying exams.

“With delays, if you were saying you’d delay them, when would you delay them to?” they said.

They pointed out that there would also need to be centres available to hold exams, invigilators ready to work, as well as approximately 50,000 teachers available to mark millions of scripts later than planned in the year.

Some teachers might be ill with Covid-19 at that point and unavailable to mark, or they could be on holiday if exams were pushed back later into the summer.

“The later you get the more challenging that is,” they said.

For GCSE candidates, exam delays also present all issues, with some pupils leaving their school to attend sixth-form college or enter a vocational route.

Exams are cancelled

A further option is that exams are simply cancelled for this year. Either pupils could be given marks based on their predicted grades, or they might simply not receive grades at all and would need to explain this to future employers or admissions tutors.

For some GCSE pupils, it may be easier to mitigate the effects of this during their further years of study, but for A-level candidates this could create particular difficulties, in that they are in the final year of education, and so any important qualifications they missed might be challenging to retake in future. A former senior figure in UK exam boards suggests they might need to put “Didn’t take A levels - Covid-19” on their CVs to explain this to employers.

But a petition to cancel this summer’s exams started by a teacher has already gained thousands of signatures. 

Exams are taken online

This seems the least likely scenario. It would be difficult to implement for large numbers of students, and a former head of an exam board has pointed out that there would be issues around student verification and checking “that they are not sitting there with books open cheating”.

Exam boards feel that currently, the fairest and most accurate system to assess pupils is through a paper copy of the exam in one hall, as other approaches could easily be subject to malpractice or technological difficulties.

When exam boards have trialled online assessment models, this has sometimes coincided with the school’s IT department performing a software update. In terms of invigilation and moderation, this approach sounds like it would be too difficult to get any kind of fair picture of pupils’ abilities.