Headteachers ‘lose faith in the Government over exams’
School leaders have lost faith in the government’s ability to come up with a credible alternative to holding exams next year, a leading headteacher said today.
Fionnuala Kennedy of Wimbledon High School said continuing with GCSEs and A-Levels is the best option of a “very bad bunch.”
Despite many children missing out on months of schoolwork during the lockdown, and the prospect of future localised school closures, Ms Kennedy said exams are still the fairest way of determining grades.
It comes after GCSEs and A-Levels were scrapped this summer and students’ grades were determined using teacher assessments.
Now campaigners want to delay the 2021 exams to create more teaching time to help next year’s exam students catch up, or for the content of exams to be reduced to take into account all they have missed.
There have even been calls to scrap next year’s exams entirely.
But Ms Kennedy said: “We just don’t have time to work out an alternative system. I am afraid as leaders of schools our faith in the department for education and Ofqual to provide us with that equivalent [to exams] is completely shot.
“So I think the best of a very bad bunch of choices open to us is to continue with written exams in some form.”
She said if a system of ‘centre assessed grades’ is used again to determine final marks, teachers will come under pressure from parents to give students the best possible grades.
At the same time, students will suffer because they will be scared to make mistakes in any work they do for fear it could be used to calculate their final grade.
She said this will particularly hit “perfectionist” students whose anxiety will escalate.
Ms Kennedy, who became head of the £20,000 a year all-girls school this month, said: “I cannot see a system where teachers, who are personally and professionally invested in each of their students, providing grades is going to work without a level of objective moderation.
“I don’t have faith in the ability of the powers that be…I just can’t see it being a priority, or them getting it right.”
A decision on whether next year’s GCSEs and A-Levels will be delayed has not yet been made by Ofqual and the Department for Education.
Children’s Commissioner Anne Longfield has urged the government for clarity on the exams as a matter of urgency to protect the mental health of teenagers.
Ms Kennedy agreed that students are feeling anxious.
She said: “I am convinced this will be massively problematic for the health and wellbeing of a whole cohort of kids.”
She said that asking teenagers, who have spent years preparing for exams to “just casually adopt a mindset where they will be assessed throughout the year and all of those grades will count” is unfair.
She added: “That is a lot to take on board and a lot to ask an already anxious cohort of kids to not be anxious about.
“I worry that our girls, who are very capable, will take that immensely seriously. I have spent two decades telling very academic children that mocks are just mocks and they really don’t matter and you mustn’t get yourself worked up in a lather about them. It’s a complete 180.”
A spokeswoman for Ofqual said: “It is government policy that exams in 2021 go ahead as planned and we are working with the Department for Education to deliver this, in line with appropriate public health advice.”
Education secretary Gavin Williamson has said that a decision on the timetable for exams will be announced in October.
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