Teachers’ leaders have condemned the government for its approach to GCSE and A-level grading this year, saying that the teacher-assessed grading system is putting “massive pressure” on teachers and students.

Students have reported feeling under serious strain because of the number of mock exams and assessments they are sitting to generate evidence for their grades, and some have said this has led them into a spiral of depression.

Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the NEU teaching union, said: “It’s unfortunately inevitable that more students will be very stressed because of the amount of tests they’re taking in school.

“Their teachers will do everything they can to try and support and help them - they don’t want to be doing this to their pupils, but they understand that their pupils’ futures are based on how they substantiate the grade they have awarded. So there’s this massive pressure to get evidence.”

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“I think teachers are trying to do two things, and they obviously do try and give emotional support to students, but there is no doubt that even if you’re giving emotional support, if a student’s going in and doing nine tests that week, then no matter what emotional support they get, that student’s going to find that level of testing to be really stressful.

 “And again the responsibility for this goes back to the ineptitude and incompetence of Gavin Williamson,” she added.

GCSEs and A levels 2021: Students ‘stressed’ by the amount of assessment

She was speaking after a student-led Twitter account had compiled several troubling reports of how students are faring under the increased pressure to produce evidence for their grades.

“Hold Ofqual and Government to Account” shared anecdotes from students, who described the past few months as “extremely difficult and confusing”.

#GCSEs2021 #alevels2021 All students wanted, as well as teachers and parents of GCSE and A-Level students, who want a fair appeals system this year, as well as much of a level playing field, or even feel the mini exams this year have been unfair: please DM me or comment below!

- HOLD OFQUAL & GOVERNMENT TO ACCOUNT #StudentsSayNo (@SchoolCrisisAug) May 15, 2021

“We thought our exams were cancelled and [were] told that our grade would be mostly coursework,” one student wrote.

‘We thought exams were cancelled’

They said their coursework was meant to be completed over five months but they eventually had just three weeks to start and finish their only draft, before being informed that exams were “back on” in school but that they would be told what content they would be assessed on.

“History and English did this but psychology didn’t, which made it super-hard to revise for,” they said.

“We had mocks and the final exams in the same month, and neither had anything to do with the other, so we basically sat six A-level exams.

“There was little support from teachers or the college in general during lockdown, and I ended up getting diagnosed with major depressive disorder and general anxiety four months in.

“I lost a close friend the day before my first exam due to him not being able to cope with exam stress and I believe that could have been avoided if more care and consideration had gone into the course of our education and exams.”

Another student said they had been told that GCSEs were cancelled, but said they felt that “we are still doing exams that are most of our grade”.

“It almost feels as if we are still doing our GCSEs but earlier, which makes no sense as we have lost so much learning time,” they added.

‘It’s been extremely stressful’

“It’s been extremely stressful and I’ve always felt so behind on revision and preparation for exams, especially because I’ve been so unmotivated. My friends can relate and I’ve seen many other GCSE students relating to having no motivation,” the student said.

“We’ve reached a point where it’s been affecting our mental health so much that we just want it to be over, which isn’t beneficial for our grades.”

They added that some students had benefitted from having private tutors using 2019 and 2020 past papers with them for revision purposes - which schools might use to assess students during mocks - which they described as “extremely unfair”, fearing this would lead to higher grade boundaries.

Another student said: “I am concerned [by] the lack of parity between schools.... and also the parity between this cohort and the previous cohort. Some schools have finished already...and some are timetabled to be in until late June. There seems to be no level playing field in any aspect.”

A parent of a GCSE student said: “The different teachers give different grades, and they have been inconsistent with teacher reports.

“When my daughter did approach the school, they were saying that classwork doesn’t count and that they did not have much data. Like a normal year, all of the emphasis is going on these mini-exams that are going to be sat in the first two weeks of June.”

‘Very bright state school students will lose out’

And the parent of an A-level student said they feared that inconsistencies in approaches between schools would lead to state school students being disadvantaged.

“I’m comparing my daughter’s large state-funded sixth form to a local independent secondary school, where I know the teachers and how they are assessing their students,” they said.

“The latter are doing a different way, which, in my opinion, is more indicative of the students’ performance now, so is therefore fairer than the large state sixth form, which is using a lot of old assessments as well.

“The independent school isn’t cheating or being unethical, but I think their way of doing it will still make their students look better...Very bright state school pupils will be disadvantaged once again.”

And a student in what they described as a “rural” sixth form said that at their school evidence towards teacher-assessed grades was compiled from a mixture of work during the first year and mini-assessments over the past few weeks, but that they had taken no assessments in the exam hall, whereas the other local sixth form had sat many mock papers.

“I think it’s so unfair using evidence from first year as we didn’t know that it would count towards our final grade - if we had then perhaps we would’ve prepared more,” they said.

“Every single lesson we are reminded that everything we do is going towards our final grade and they are also using our work remotely over lockdown, which I think is ridiculous as not everyone has access to a stable internet connection so may not have been able to access the remote lessons or online content.”

Students ‘put through a cruel process’

A tutor reported that the process was hardest on students, who “were struggling anyway.”

“Many have been through a cruel process and many are the ones who were struggling anyway, but hopefully we can be there for them if the results don’t pan out,” they said.

Dr Bousted said the stresses on teachers and students were a result of a lack of planning over the exams and grading processes this year.

“The arrangements for the grading have been so badly done, initiated so late ≠ and teachers got the guidance so late - that it has resulted in a huge amount of unnecessary stress and pressure for both teachers and their pupils,” she said.

“And the work that pupils have been doing has overwhelmingly been timed assessments. They’ve come back to school and rather than having an education recovery, they go back into an awful lot of timed assessments because teachers have had to generate evidence for their awarded grade.

“And undoubtedly this will be very stressful for young people, particularly those who weren’t able to engage effectively with online learning or who missed proportionately more of their teaching because they were away from school more often.

“So it’s not difficult to see that things are more stressful for pupils. I’m not at all surprised.

“But what we have to realise here is both teachers and their students are the victims of a government which refused to put forward a plan B, kept believing that you could implement an exam system when clearly it became obvious that you couldn’t, [and] didn’t act as Scotland and Wales did in coming earlier to an alternative to the exams.”

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said that “swirling uncertainty” over this year’s plans would have added to students’ sense of confusion over how they would be graded.

“We’ve heard a number of stories about students being stressed about the situation with assessment this year,” he said.

“It is extremely worrying to hear of such cases and we would urge anybody in this position to alert their school or college and seek help if they have not already done so.

“Schools and colleges are acutely aware of the pressure that students are under and have very good pastoral systems in place to provide support. In fact, this is something they do every year in normal times because of the very great level of stress caused by public exams.

“It may not necessarily be the assessment process itself this summer which is causing stress - at least not any more so than in a normal exam year - but the swirling uncertainty that there has been over exactly what would happen.

“The guidance to schools and colleges came very late in the day, is very complicated and can be applied in many different ways.

“One can easily imagine how confusing and worrying this has all been for young people, who will be conscious of the importance of these qualifications in a system which is, frankly, much too high-stakes.”

The Department for Education has been contacted for comment.