New details have emerged about exam grading in 2021 - as well as some clues about what 2022 might look like.
Here are the latest updates on GCSEs and A levels as reported by Tes.
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In full: GCSE and A level 2021 Ofqual and DfE proposals
The Commons’ Education Select Committee met with acting Ofqual regulator Simon Lebus and schools minister Nick Gibb today to discuss the arrangements for GCSE and A level grading in 2021.
Mr Gibb revealed that the government is still deciding how schools’ progress will be calculated through the Progress 8 measure in future, after Sats exams were cancelled in 2021 for the second year running.
“We will be making decisions in due course about the consequences for Progress 8 in terms of those students that have not had Sats in the future and we’ll have more to say about that as we address those issues,” Mr Gibb said, adding that it would be up to inidividual schools to decide if they wanted to set baseline assessments for their Year 7 cohort.
Mr Gibb refuted the idea that the cancellation of GCSEs for the second year running in 2021 could mean that they were scrapped long term.
He said they were a “gold standard” qualification and that he disagreed “wholeheartedly with those that say that GCSEs have had their day”, adding that the government wanted to get back to an exams system as soon as possible.
Mr Lebus said that students could query teachers’ choice of assessments as a basis for their grades if they did not feel they were a fair reflection of the best of their ability.
He said that prior to schools submitting their grades to exam boards on June 18, “there’s an opportunity for a student to say if they think the evidence being used doesn’t accurately reflect the best of their ability, to say ‘Actually I don’t think that’s fair, we should have used other evidence,’ or ‘I would have liked to have been tested’”.
Mr Lebus also said that GCSEs and A levels next year could be adapted to compensate for students’ learning loss during the pandemic.
He said that the process of recovering lost learning during the pandemic was “going to take several years”, adding “so as far as 2022 is concerned, the thinking at the moment is about adaptations along the lines that had been originally contemplated for this year when exams were still to go ahead”.
There are also concerns that, with no exam board or Ofqual moderation in the usual sense this year, teachers could be held responsible for the fallout from a flawed system when results are released later this year.
Tes news editor William Stewart writes that “the vagueness over where grades should be set sounds like it is the result of deliberate political decision to avoid any association with the word ‘algorithm’ that became so toxic last year”, and warns that it could be teachers who end up paying the price for grading inflation.
