Measures to grade GCSE and A-Level exams following pandemic are welcomed but don't go far enough say Leeds headteachers

Students taking GCSE and A-level exams next year will be awarded more generous grades to compensate for disruption to their schooling during the coronavirus pandemic, the Education Secretary has announced.

Gavin Williamson said pupils in England will receive advance notice of some topics ahead of tests - as well as exam aids when sitting papers - to ensure this cohort of students is not disadvantaged.

Additional exams will also be run to give students a second chance to sit a paper if the main exams or assessments are missed due to illness or self-isolation, the Department for Education (DfE) said.

However, he added that he hoped the different levels of infection and restrictions in different parts of the country would be taken into account.

Mr Mallinson said: "We are still in uncertain times, with vast areas of the country experiencing different infection rates which continue to have significant impact on students having to isolate. I am hopeful that attendance of students will be taken into consideration in relation to their exams and that disadvantaged students remain at the forefront of all the decision making by the DfE."

It comes after the fiasco around grading of GCSE and A-level students in the summer, when exams were cancelled amid the coronavirus pandemic and school closures. Thousands of A-level students had their results downgraded from school estimates by an algorithm, before Ofqual announced a U-turn, allowing them to use teachers' original predictions instead.

But, David Holtham, Executive Principal of Post-16 at The Gorse Academies Trust said he didn't think the measures went far enough.

He said: "Covid-19 has presented the DfE with a set of challenging circumstances around how to ensure 2021 A levels are fair to all students.

"Based on the details that have been released, the latest concessions made by the DfE do not appear to go far enough to ensure reliability and validity for students across different sections of society. It cannot be underestimated how different the experiences will have been for students across the geographical landscape, with areas in the North being particularly hard hit by COVID.

"What it will come down to is the detail around the guarantees that can be given to students. At present, this isn’t expected to be released until January which is far too late into the academic year and puts further pressure on both teachers and students."

Other measures in the package will see students given aids, such as formula sheets, in some exams to boost their confidence and reduce the amount of information they need to memorise, as part of the measures and a new expert group will be set up to look at differential learning and to monitor the variation in the impact of the pandemic on students across the country.

But it is understood that grading changes simply based on the region you live in have been ruled out.

Under new contingency measures, students who miss one or more exams due to self-isolation or sickness, but who have still completed a proportion of their qualification, will still receive a grade. If a student misses all their assessments in a subject, they will have the opportunity to sit a contingency paper held shortly after the main exam series.

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