There should be no assumption that exams in 2022 will be run in the same as they were in 2019, a teaching union leader has said.

And teacher assessment should feature more prominently in the process of assessing students from now on, Kevin Courtney, the joint general secretary of the National Education Union told Tes.

Mr Courtney’s comment comes as Ofqual’s interim chief regulator Simon Lebus cast doubts on whether the school system will go back to “full-fat exams” next year.

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Mr Courtney said: “There should be no assumption that exams are going to be the same as 2019. That can’t possibly be the case.

“The worry will be that the government will just think you can fill all the gaps in curriculum knowledge by cramming, and that will not be the right response, and we are looking to establish that and want the government to be clear on that as soon as possible.”

“I think that teacher assessment should form part of the assessment for children next year.”

He also claimed that a focus on terminal exams has made the assessment system “brittle”.

Mr Courtney added: “What we have seen this year is that changes that have been made since 2014 when Michael Gove started...making assessment all based on terminal exams has made the system very brittle, when the stress of Covid has been applied to it it shattered, because it was so brittle.

“We need more teacher assessment in the process of assessing students.”

Mr Lebus said yesterday that Ofqual was investigating different options about what should happen in 2022.

He added that while there was an appetite for exams to return, it was also recognised that this must be considered in the context of learning loss and disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic.