Responding to the government’s announcement on GCSEs and A-levels
in 2021, Geoff Barton, General Secretary of the Association of
School and College Leaders, said:
“This solution to next year’s A-level and GCSE exams will make
them as fair as they can be in the circumstances. It is not
perfect. Nothing can be given the fact that learning has been so
disrupted by coronavirus and that pupils have been affected to
vastly different extents.
“But various options have been discussed exhaustively, and,
frankly, schools and colleges just need a decision. The
uncertainty has gone on for much too long and they need to be
able to get on with the job of preparing their pupils for these
important exams.
“Advance notice of exam topics, and exam aids like formula
sheets, will help pupils know where to focus their energies in
the time that remains before exams take place. Together with
making grades more generous and the planned contingency
arrangements, this represents a reasonable package of measures to
mitigate the damaging impact on learning of the pandemic.
“We had argued for more optionality in exam papers, by which we
mean giving pupils more choice over the topics on which they can
answer questions. We suggested this solution in order to address
the fact that some students will have experienced much more
disruption than others, and may not have covered all topics in
sufficient depth.
“However, we have been told it would be prohibitively difficult
to design exam papers in this way. We accept that decision, and
we will now focus on doing everything possible to make the chosen
approach a success.
Inspections and school performance tables
“We are pleased that the government has listened to our call for
routine Ofsted inspections not to resume in January and for
school performance tables in their normal form to be scrapped for
this academic year.
“It is vital that schools and colleges are able to focus on the
immensely complex task of simultaneously delivering learning,
catch-up support, and Covid safety measures without the added
burden of having to worry about inspections and performance
tables which could not possibly be fair in the midst of such
disruption. This decision will be widely welcomed, and will come
as an immense relief to school and college leaders who are
working under relentless pressure.
“We support the idea of Ofsted monitoring visits to struggling
schools in the spring term, as long as these are genuinely
supportive.
“However, we are disappointed that the government has not
cancelled primary school SATs. Even though these won’t be used as
the basis for performance tables, holding a set of statutory
tests still represents an unnecessary extra pressure.
“Nevertheless, this announcement, taken as a whole, is a good
outcome to the many discussions which have taken place with the
government over these issues over the past few months.”
