Teachers today backed a campaign for “a fundamental reform of the examination system” including a call to research and publicise alternatives to GCSEs and A levels.

Teachers at the NEU teaching union’s annual conference today agreed that the “debacle” over the awarding of grades last year had exposed the inadequacies of the examination system and its reliance on single, high-stakes examinations.

And they backed a motion calling on the union executive to campaign for a “wider, more flexible curricula” that reflects modern society and  “begins to restore a love of learning”.

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Mary Bousted, NEU joint general secretary, said: “The pandemic has exposed the flaws that exist when awarding GCSE and A-level grades even in a normal year.

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“Relying on assessment that takes place entirely at the end of the course and via just one method - examinations - is exceptionally high-risk and does not enable all students to demonstrate what they know and can do. Neither does awarding grades based on how a student has performed in comparison to others. This must change. Students surely deserve to be rewarded on the basis of their own merits.”

NEU delegate Denis White, from Bradford, told the online conference that there was “a culture of the exam factory” that had caused a “mental health crisis” in schools and had “driven so many teachers from the profession through workload pressures”.

And he said teacher assessment was “a fairer system” and that research had shown that it was “just as accurate” as exams in predicting student outcomes.

However, the conference stopped short of voting to replace exams with moderated teacher assessment - by passing an amendment that replaced that demand.   

Teachers instead voted for a campaign for “a fair and well-planned arrangement, which has been widely consulted upon, for students taking examinations in 2022”.

They also voted for sufficient time to be able to moderate next year’s GCSE and A-level exams so they do not face “a huge additional workload” when the time comes.

Teachers also voted to “continue to research and publicise to our members and to the wider educational” sector.