A tight spot: exams in 2021

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A tight spot: exams in 2021
Date4th Jan 2021AuthorJames HandscombeCategoriesPolicy and News

The government, exam boards, and Ofqual are in a tight spot. Let’s not try to ignore or diminish this fact: Coronavirus and the associated lockdowns and isolations have hit education this year, have hit it unequally, and, inevitably, have hit the most disadvantaged the hardest. You may think that you could have done a better job of mitigating its effects, but let nobody be under the illusion that this was a crisis that could have been managed away.

The exam season and results days of 2020 were navigated with the assistance of a good helping of fudge and U-turns, and by leaving school leaders to handle the fallout in terms of complaints. We are now resolutely looking forward to 2021, boldly determined to think things through, to plan ahead, and, whatever else happens, to do better this time.

The positives are that we should be able to run exams – any 2021 outbreak seems likely to be better controlled than the 2020 one and it would, in hindsight, and just about, have been possible to run exams last summer. All other outcomes are simply worse (in that they are less fair to students, more work for teachers, and create perverse ethical incentives for anyone who just wants to do their best for the young people in front of them) and so we should hold tight to this possibility and not let it be prised from our grasp.

The challenges are twofold: that more students this year than usual will be unable to take their exams and will need a way of receiving qualifications; and, more taxingly, that a large number of students have missed out on a significant period of lesson time and have therefore learned less than their better-supported peers. These are, of course, merely exaggerations of challenges faced every year: there are always some students who miss exams due to illness and there is always a wide variation in the quality of provision (and it always hits the disadvantaged hardest). Unfortunately, simply saying this does not change the fact that the problem is bigger this year, nor does it do anything to make it go away – so what is to be done?

The first problem is not so hard to fix: exams are to be spaced out so that one period of isolation should not hit more than 50% of a qualification, and students who have been 50% examined can receive their certificates (there is some lack of clarity on the precise proportions here, but the general theory is clear); a mop-up exam is being placed at the end of the usual season to take care of any who miss all their exams in one subject; and the remaining dribs and drabs will receive centre assessed grades.

The second problem is less amenable. There are three proposed measures: the exams will be a little later; the content will be revealed in advance; and some materials will be published for student use in the exams. Taking these one by one, we start with the postponed exams. On the grounds of diminished returns (that extra time once the course is covered is of limited value) this seems to be a sensible and potentially effective move, benefitting most those who have missed most school whilst costing little financially or in terms of unwanted consequences. Unfortunately, the three weeks that have been afforded is considerably less than the impact of the virus on the worst hit; many students have already missed four weeks due to self-isolation so far this year.

Moving onto publishing content in advance, we are left a little perplexed by the government’s statements so far. Qualifications have syllabuses, and so in that sense they do have their content published in advance. The impact of any further clarification would essentially be to specify a portion of the syllabus that would not be covered by the exam. This would benefit students who had not yet covered that portion – but would penalise anyone who had studied it but had not finished the course, because it would increase the proportion of marks given to content not covered. There is no way to ensure that this step benefits those who are disadvantaged, or even those who have missed most content thus far (although probabilistically this works – students who have missed a lot of school are more likely to have missed the bits that you choose to excise). 

Finally, we have the provision of materials for exams (such as formula books or something like an anthology). This is an attractive idea – it will make things a little bit easier, it’s cheap, and it reduces “mindless memorisation” without cutting out important curriculum content. The students it will benefit most will be those who spend most time and get best support in using the additional materials: it’s no use having facts on your formula sheet if you don’t know they are there or if you can’t find them when you need them. Since these materials have not yet been released (I suspect they have not yet been written), schools and students will have limited time to learn to use them. This will benefit those whose education is not disturbed between their publication and the exams (and there’s no way to predict who this will be), and, importantly, it will benefit those who are at schools who have the manpower to analyse the content and alter teaching swiftly to take advantage of it; this will be of great competitive value to highly resourced schools (which is probably not the intention).

It seems that the provisions suggested will do a little to ameliorate the unfair impact of the pandemic. What may be more significant, however, is if they reduce the anxiety of students facing these exams. This is enough reason, in itself, to put them in place: when the dust settles, I think we will find that mental illness has caused more damage to young people over the pandemic period than the virus itself. 

The bottom line, however, is that a large number of students have missed out on education over the last year and that this will be reflected in their exam grades. It’s simply not possible to unravel, in the time we have, the differences in provision and any attempt to stop this impacting on results is an attempt to decouple the exams from reality – something that would cause long term damage to public trust in qualifications. The government, exam boards, and Ofqual really are in a tight spot.

HAW66

James Handscombe is headteacher of Harris Westminster Sixth Form, a high-performing 16-19 free school in London.

Blog 6 has followed developments on exams in 2020/21 closely; click on the 'exams' tag below to see more articles on the issue. It might be particularly interesting to contrast this article, which comments on Ofqual's final proposed mitigations for the pandemic in 2021, with this earlier piece written before the announcement, where Birkenhead Sixth Form College principal Mike Kilbride set out what adjustments he hoped to see.

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