Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Northern Ireland exams boss says sorry for fiasco
Hamilton vows lessons learned
THE head of the exam board at the centre of Northern Ireland’s A-level grading debacle has apologised over “mistakes” made.
CCEA chief Justin Edwards was forced to regrade 28,000 pupils after two U-turns by Education Minister Peter Weir despite his repeated defence of his alternative method of assessment.
Mr Edwards, who advised the minister, said he had been directed to find an “alternative approach” which implemented “standardisation”.
However public outcry over more than 10,360 students who saw their 11,000 grades slashed meant a return to teacher predicted grades. At the Education Committee yesterday, Mr Edwards said he conceded the “alternative arrangements may have led to greater concern in an already stressful time”.
He said: “For this I apologise on behalf of CCEA to all students, parents, teachers and principals.”
But it is clear from a letter this week from Mr Weir to principals that Mr Edwards and the CCEA team have been entrusted with next year’s process.
The board chief added: “The lessons learned will feed into how such circumstances are dealt with in the future and to ensure that mistakes aren’t repeated.
“It’s clear that where possible we need to return to examinations and that would be our aspiration.
“We need to consider adjustments to those examinations across subjects for different reasons, both the health reason and to consider the burden alleviation.
“The exceptionality of this year was the decision to stop all exams and all testing.
“In that longer term view of how we would learn lessons, we do have to consider if we in any way use teacher judgments, how do we maintain some standardisation?
“I am conscious that statistical standardisation shouldn’t feature in some of that thought, that we should move to moderation or validation.
“That is a longer term piece of work and at the moment we need to focus on what adjustments do we need to make to qualifications immediately.”
We need to focus on what adjustments we need to make
JUSTIN EDWARDS STORMONT YESTERDAY