Exam season has been cancelled – and now we’re all going to be tested
Just over 48 hours ago, I was chivvying my 17-year-old to get out of bed and do some bloody revision. Because Covid-19 might come and go, but A-levels are an ineluctable fact of life.
Oops. Turns out Mummy is, in fact, fallible. Who knew?
Public exams have been summarily axed; no GCSES, no primary school SATS, and examiners may not cast even a cursory eye over my daughter’s fine art coursework, which has occupied her thoughts since 2018.
She’s downcast, if stoical. I feel gutted on her behalf.
Parents have known for weeks that school closures were inevitable, exasperated head teachers wishing the Government would just get on with it. The kids have been in limbo.
And so the announcement, when it came, was perversely a relief. For a nanosecond.
The 11-year-old was thrilled at an early cut from education, until she grasped it meant no Year 6 perks, like taking part in the school play, no outdoor activities trip, no effusively histrionic goodbyes at the end of the summer term.
As she was processing this egregious injustice, the emotional impact on her elder sister was hitting home in slow motion.
Two years of hard slog and nothing to show for it. Late evenings in the library. Long hours in the art room.
Revision cards, comforting hot chocolates, the sense of impending drama as exam day approached.
I was attuned to her every mood and every need; it was like preparing a racehorse for the Grand National – no coincidence that’s been cancelled, too.
Next week would have been my daughter’s fine art exam, as attested by the clutter of paints, inks, vintage metal and sheets of gold leaf. Scary, yes. Stressful, of course – but exhilarating, too.
Now there is to be no creative challenge. No triumphant sprint to the finish. She will not have the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of her labour and demonstrate her potential.
“I never imagined I would be disappointed at not sitting a load of exams,” she told me. “But I feel robbed after all the work I’ve done. Afterwards, I was going to have the summer of my life. I’m turning 18, but there’s nothing to celebrate and nobody to celebrate with.”
Instead, she and the rest of 2020’s coronavirus cohort will sit out exam season in isolation. Some of her peers are delighted. Others dismayed.
At the time of writing, no definitive marking strategy has been announced. Today, we will learn whether “results” will be based on predicted grades, mocks, teacher assessment or a combination.
Independent schools routinely inflate grade predictions in order to bump up Oxbridge offers. State schools such as my daughter’s are more circumspect.
I dearly hope the attainment divide won’t be widened further by the bullishness of the fee-paying sector. That will not only stymie social mobility, but add a sour note of gerrymandering to the already fraught issue of fair grade boundaries.
My daughter’s predicted results, calculated in late 2019, were solid if unshowy. Enough to gain her a clutch of Russell Group university offers.
But her more recent mocks were so dazzling, even she disputed her grades; it turned out that applying herself with focus and zeal had simply paid off, albeit to no end.
Every A-level student will have followed a different arc. For some, the opposite will have been true. But this final two-month push from students and teachers alike is always a game-changer. Was always a gamechanger.
Now that a national crisis has cancelled the fixture, the sense of anticlimax is palpable as our young people learn a salutary lesson – namely, that life isn’t fair. When
In the coronavirus class of 2020, some are delighted – but others dismayed
Our young people are learning a salutary lesson – life isn’t fair
the sick are perishing, livelihoods are being lost and all certainties are crumbling away, I have no intention of bleating about Generation Z’s fundamental right to invigilation.
Some things are neither cock-up nor conspiracy, but a force majeure. Coronavirus is a case in point.
Coping with unexpected adversity is part and parcel of adult life, but we are on uncharted territory facing an extraordinary, invisible threat.
Battling this highly infectious disease requires collaboration as well as community action.
We need young people to engage, too. Perhaps now that they have both the time and the energy, they will pitch in.
Like every other parent, I’ll be on hand for psychological triage as and when necessary, but wallowing is not an option for anyone. A-level exams may be cancelled, but we are all of us going to be tested in the months to come.