By More generous grades to be given in exams next summer
GCSE and A-level students in England will be given more generous grades and other help to compensate for disruption in schools during the pandemic.
They will also have advance notice (at the end of January) of some exam topics and be able to use aids like formula sheets, the Government has annnounced.
Additional “backup” exams to be held in July will give students a second chance to sit a paper if they have to miss main exams or assessments due to illness or self-isolation.
A new expert group will monitor variation in the impact of the pandemic on students across the country.
In extreme cases, where a student misses all their papers, a teacher-assessed grade will be given.
The announcement comes after the summer’s chaos around GCSEs and A-levels when thousands of students had their results downgraded from school estimates by an algorithm, before a U-turn was announced.
Education Secretary Gavin Williamson told Sky News he could “absolutely” give a cast-iron guarantee that exams will not be cancelled.
“Tens of thousands of students have been taking those GCSE and A-level exams all the way through [the latest] national lockdown, and that’s been done safely and securely and successfully,” he said.
“I have every confidence if we’ve been able to run a whole set of exams for GCSEs and A-levels during a national lockdown, we have every ability to run those same set of exams in the summer of next year.”
