Commenting on the Education Policy Institute’s proposals on exams
and grading in 2021, Geoff Barton, General Secretary of the
Association of School and College Leaders, said:
“We agree with the EPI’s conclusion that the broad plan being put
forward by the government is the ‘least bad’ option for grading
students in lieu of exams, although all of this could and should
have been sorted much earlier as a ready-to-go contingency
system.
“However, we are where we are. The fact is there is no perfect
solution given the scale of disruption to learning caused by the
pandemic, the difficulty of trying to mitigate the widely
different extent to which learners have been affected, and the
need to make assessment as consistent as possible in such
turbulent circumstances.
“Within this broad plan there are a number of detailed questions
which need to be resolved and we’ll be submitting our response on
Friday having consulted with members. There is a difficult
balance to be struck between giving the maximum amount of
flexibility in how students are assessed to reflect differential
learning loss, while also providing system-wide consistency. Our
view is that the first of those considerations is the most
important, particularly in light of the further disruption caused
by the extended lockdown, and our response will be shaped on that
basis.
“We are interested in the EPI’s idea of the right to repeat a
year for students who have experienced extreme learning loss. In
principle, this is worth consideration, but in practical terms it
would need to be confined to small numbers or otherwise it would
create a logjam in the system which would leave schools with more
pupils than they could accommodate.”
