Calls for exams to be focussed on coursework next year

Tony Diver

THE GCSE and A-level exam system should be redesigned with As-level style assessments, coursework and later exam dates to prevent a fiasco on next year’s results day, unions and the Labour Party have said.

Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said Year 11 and 13 students should begin to sit exams as early as this October in case final assessments are affected by coronavirus again in 2021.

Year 11 students could be assessed very soon on the content they studied last year, he said.

The move would see the exam system returning to “modular” assessment, which was scrapped by Michael Gove in 2013 in favour of all-or-nothing

‘If every child did an AS, of course you would have had a standardised halfway assessment through A-levels’

exams at the end of the academic year.

“The decision to scrap As-levels has wreaked havoc, because if every child did an AS, of course you would have had a standardised halfway assessment through their A-levels, as these were always a pretty good predictor of how a child would do at the end of the course.”

As-level qualifications, which were examined at the end of Year 12 and counted towards the final grade, were scrapped in 2015 by Mr Gove, now chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.

The union’s comments came as the Labour Party called for exams in May 2021 to be delayed to June or July. Kate Green, the Shadow Education Secretary, said Labour also supported the move towards modular assessment.

“We don’t want to be dependent on one solution,” she told The Telegraph.

Although Gavin Williamson, the Education Secretary, is consulting on plans to delay 2021 exams, Government sources said there were no plans to reform the exam system.