Responding to the Department for Education’s announcement on next
year’s GCSE and A level exams, Dr Mary Bousted, Joint
General Secretary of the National Education Union, said:
“Today’s announcement amounts to a dereliction of duty by
government to pupils, parents and education professionals. Pupils
taking GCSE and A levels next summer are in a terrible position.
They have missed five months of in-school teaching – a loss which
impacts most severely on disadvantaged pupils, 700,000 of whom
have no access to the internet which denies them access to remote
learning. Many pupils are missing further schooling, now, as they
isolate at home waiting for COVID test results. It is completely
unrealistic, and unfair, to expect these pupils to take exams
which make no compensation for disruption to school teaching
time.
“In unprecedented joint advice with the other teacher and leader
unions, the NEU advised that GCSE
and A level exams must be altered to include greater choice of
topics, which would enable pupils to be examined on what they
have, not what they have not, been taught. We continue to believe
that greater optionality in exam papers, along with fewer exams,
will be essential to support fairness and to decrease the already
very high rates of pupil stress which are being suffered this
year.
“Why are the government consulting, now, on how exams will be
graded and what the fall back would be if exams cannot be taken?
Ministers have had months to plan for these contingencies which,
as COVID levels rise in communities, become ever more possible.
“Today’s announcement is yet another appalling example of
political ideology trumping practical reality. It demonstrates
that this is not a government which is interested in levelling up
because the impact of these decisions will impact most severely
on the most disadvantaged.
“It is critical for avoiding the great unfairness felt by many
students last summer that government reconsider this position
immediately and introduce greater topic optionality into the
exams. If government will not reconsider and change its mind
quickly, members tell us that exams, even with greater
optionality, are no longer tenable. In which case, the only route
to fairness would be a complete cancellation of exams and the use
of robustly moderated, externally quality-assured teacher
judgements.”
ENDS
Editor’s Note
Proposal for awarding exams grades in 2021, 5 October
2020: https://neu.org.uk/press-releases/proposal-awarding-exams-grades-2021
