First, the good news. Statistics released by the Department for Education on Tuesday confirmed that the full return to school has gone very well indeed.

Attendance by pupils in primary schools ranged between 94 per cent and 96 per cent during the first week back. Secondary schools - many of which needed to operate a phased return because of the logistics of on-site Covid testing - saw attendance rise from 31 per cent to 89 per cent over the same period.

The fact that attendance is so good - in the midst of a pandemic - is a tremendous vote of confidence from parents. It shows the faith they clearly have in the battery of safety measures that schools have worked so hard to put in place.

To strike a note of caution, attendance may prove turbulent over what remains of this term. Inevitably, there are reports of positive Covid cases, and close contacts having to self-isolate. As we said earlier this week, we are not out of the woods yet.

But it is hard to imagine how the first step of the full return could have gone any better - and that is down to you: teachers, leaders and the many other staff who make our schools and colleges such joyful symbols of community cohesion, even in these most fragmented of times.

GCSEs 2021: The next controversy is never far away

However, as this crisis has repeatedly demonstrated, the next controversy is never far away. And hurtling towards us is a juggernaut of anxiety over how qualifications will be awarded this summer.

We’ve already had an over-hyped row about the supposed possibility of “rampant grade inflation”, which isn’t, in fact, anything like the risk that has been portrayed. 

And, this week, another storm blew up over plans to give students advance sight of the exam board-provided questions that can be used for assessment.

It’s easy to see why this caused consternation. We’re all used to Fort Knox levels of security around exam papers, precisely to ensure that students don’t get advance sight of them and put them on social media. So the idea of deliberately publishing them seems like a form of heresy.

But we have to remember that these aren’t exams with a fixed date for each paper to be taken. The intention instead is that the questions provided by the exam boards can be used by teachers at different times during the summer term, simply as a part of the range of evidence that will be used in the assessment of students.

We understand that the exam boards will actually provide a bank of questions that schools can use, many of which will be taken from past papers but some of which will be new. Schools will then be able to select questions relevant to the subjects their own students have studied, and to set assessments based on those.

And, frankly, there’s no point in making the questions confidential, because students could easily put the questions they have answered on social media - and these won’t necessarily be the same questions that other students in other schools and colleges are asked at a later date. Some students will see them, some won’t, the questions may crop up in the assessments they sit, or not.

So the decision to publish the whole bank of questions at the outset is actually pretty sensible. It should help to prevent a situation in which lots of potentially misleading and confusing information is circulating online about what may or may not come up in assessments. And it means all students have the same opportunity to see the questions that may be asked, which is actually fairer than allowing chaos to reign.

It could, in fact, be quite a positive thing if students use that bank of questions to embed and hone their knowledge - much in the same way that they do in any year with past papers.

Exams: Keeping teachers in the dark

The real problem here is not with these nuts and bolts. It’s with the fact that schools and colleges have still not yet been provided with the long-awaited materials and guidance from the exam boards on how they will assess their students. 

And in this vacuum - without the full picture of how the suite of assessment evidence might work - it is easy to see how an isolated piece of information provokes concern and uproar in equal measure.

Now, this isn’t entirely the fault of the exam boards. They have actually been given until the end of March to supply the materials and guidance. But it does point to the importance of ensuring that they hit this deadline.

The most frustrating aspect of this whole situation is that it could - and should - have been planned for in advance. The Department for Education and Ofqual - despite repeated warnings - clearly did not have a Plan B fully worked up and ready to go in the event of exams being cancelled.

Back in early January, the education secretary assured the House of Commons that a range of contingency options had already been worked up but that the details would need to be “fine-tuned”. Given that three months will have elapsed by the time schools and colleges receive the guidance and materials needed to assess their students, this is an extremely prolonged process of fine-tuning.

But - as we find ourselves saying rather a lot during this crisis - we are where we are. The important and urgent next step is for the guidance and assessment materials to be distributed to schools and colleges as soon as possible so that they can put their plans in place.

Because every lesson a student will be asking a teacher: “How will my final grade be decided, Miss?” And it’s unacceptable that, all these weeks on, our teachers still can’t give a definitive and reassuring answer to a question so basic.

So, yes, we are where we are. But such uncertainty around the details of the summer’s assessment cannot prevail much longer. It’s not fair to teachers. And it’s most definitely not fair to our pupils.

Geoff Barton is general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders