This afternoon, representatives of the National Education Union
will hand in its Fair Grade petition to the Department for
Education.
61,216 people signed the petition, which calls on Government to
ensure fairness for all students taking A-Levels and GCSEs in
2021.
Launched in the wake of the Government’s disastrous handling of
this year’s exams, the Fair Grade petition makes the following
demands:
• Reduce the content assessed in GCSE and A-level exams next
summer. Students starting the final year of their GCSEs and
A-levels in September 2020 have missed months of schooling: the
exams they sit in the summer of 2021 must reflect this lost
learning time. They must be slimmed down by making some topics
optional to allow for the different order in which content will
have been taught across the country.
• Work with teachers and school leaders to develop a robust
national system of moderated centre assessed grades in case there
is further disruption to exams next summer because of a second
spike in coronavirus or local lockdowns.
• Commission a thorough independent review into assessment
methods used to award GCSE and A-level qualifications in England,
along the lines announced by the Scottish government. The current
over-reliance on exams increases student anxiety and fails to
give a fair reflection of what students can achieve. All options
should be considered to ensure that young people are rewarded for
their achievements, supported to fulfil their potential and not
held back due to their background.
The hand-in will be led by Dr Mary Bousted, Joint General
Secretary of the National Education Union, alongside Rafia
Hussain who launched a parallel petition on Parliament.uk that
prompted a Parliamentary debate on 12 October.
Commenting ahead of the petition hand-in, Dr Mary
Bousted, Joint General Secretary of the National Education
Union, said:
“This petition was launched before the full opening of schools in
September and prior to the many examples of schools having to
send pupils home due to new cases of Covid-19. Our warnings were
prescient. There is a clear disruption to learning, and a
geographical unevenness. There is an emerging postcode lottery
for exams in 2021.
“In October, made it
even harder for disadvantaged pupils to avoid learning loss. His
actions to impose a legal duty on schools to provide remote
learning, but to then ration already inadequate supplies of IT
equipment to families the next day, are shameful. They are not
the actions of a politician with the welfare of every child at
the forefront of his mind.
“Any sensible observer can see there will not be a level playing
field for exams next year, and it is deeply irresponsible of
to conclude
– as he recently did – that a three-week delay to summer exams in
2021 will be sufficient to make the system fair.
“We need a rethink, and with it a far more realistic expectation
of what should be measured and how. Since August we have been
calling on Government to work with us to address the challenges
facing GCSE and A-Level students, who are studying right now, so
that they are not met with the sort of atrocious handling of
results we saw in 2020. Students need to know where they stand
now, not later.”
ENDS
Editor’s Note
The full text of the Fair Grade petition is here: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/fairness-for-students-taking-a-levels-and-gcses-in-2021/
