Williamson messed up last summer. He’s now repeating his mistake

Instead Ofqual had to cobble together a consultation, published last Friday, leaving us weeks away from any resolution for perplexed teens and their parents. Moreover, the options available for replacing exams are much diminished from what might have been possible had plans been put in place earlier. For instance, assessments could have been run last term when pupils were in school, but that’s no longer an option.  

The remaining options are all highly problematic. Ofqual say in their consultation that they want teachers to grade pupils on the basis of existing standards, rather than how they might have done if the pandemic had never happened. But they also acknowledge the reason for exams being cancelled is the huge and differential loss of learning suffered over the course of the past year. In other words, it’s not possible to assess the course but the only way of providing a grade is to assess the course.

They propose to square this circle by essentially creating a range of mini-exams — using new scripts or past papers — covering small parts of the course and then letting teachers decide which bits to grade. By doing this you at least assess on something pupils have actually learnt. Unfortunately, it will be different content for different pupils; and teachers will also have to use coursework and potentially other examples of work to come up with the grade.

This lack of consistency not only makes meaningful grading impossible but also means there’s no way for examiners to properly moderate between schools or for a logical appeals system, except for cases of egregious unfairness. Given this reality, the most important thing is to ensure that we don’t place too much significance on these grades. This means that, for A-level students, ministers need to work closely with universities to ensure that offers are not conditional on precise grades but are much more flexible. With GCSEs, schools need to make sure pupils have guaranteed places in a sixth form or college. We cannot find ourselves in the same place as last summer with young people in tears because they fear an unfair grading system had cost them their future.  

The ultimate purpose of exams, in nearly all cases, is to provide a stepping stone to the next stage of education. Even if the exams aren’t there, we need to make sure the stone is, and if that means being generous and providing more places than usual then that’s a small price to pay. Catch-up programmes will need to look beyond schools and provide colleges and universities with the means to give students some of the foundational learning they’d usually be expected to have by this stage.  

The Department will also need to ensure both this and last year’s GCSE cohorts are not permanently affected by the inability to offer proper grades. Universities typically put a lot of emphasis on GCSE results in recruitment and they’ll need other sources of information. And exams for future cohorts will need to take the learning loss they’ve suffered into account. Covid will continue to wreak havoc with our education system long after everyone has been vaccinated. We have to hope that the Government can work a bit harder, focus on the right questions, and start acing a few papers.

Sam Freedman is chief executive of the Education Partnerships Group