Pupils in hard-hit areas may be given higher marks
Exam-board chief says tailoring grades by region could ensure students are not held back by pandemic
STUDENTS in the areas hardest hit by Covid could receive “special consideration” for their exams, the head of the UK’S biggest exam board has said.
Allowing pupils in certain regions – where pupils’ schooling has been severely disrupted – to be graded more generously is one of the options under consideration for next summer’s GCSES and A-levels, according to the chief executive of AQA. This would be a way to ensure that students in areas hardest hit by the coronavirus are not disadvantaged by the pandemic.
“One of the things that’s being talked about is the notion that we could apply some kind of regional special consideration,” Colin Hughes told the Times Education Supplement magazine.
“So this particular region was hit really hard or even this particular school had it really hard.”
At the moment exam boards sometimes give “special consideration” to candidates who are “disadvantaged due to illness or unavoidable circumstances” by adjusting their marks.
Mr Hughes cautioned that setting regional grade boundaries would be difficult to implement in practice and may not go far enough to address the upheaval that the most deprived children have faced. He said the idea of giving special consideration to entire regions “seems attractive on the surface”, but added: “The reality is how are you actually really going to measure that across space?
“The other thing is, if you did it regionally, is it fair that in order to do something for students in a rundown inner-city area comprehensive and just down the road there’s a fantastic private school and those students will get bumped up fro ma B to an A ?”
The Welsh Government has already cancelled all exams on the basis that dis- ruption caused by the pandemic has s made it “impossible to guarantee a level l playing field”.
Instead, pupils in Wales will undertake a series of assessments, some of which will be overseen by teachers s while others will be externally marked but taken in the classroom. Schools will be able to decide when pupils should d take the tests.
Meanwhile in Scotland the National 5 exams – which are equivalent to GCSES – will not go ahead next spring and the awards will instead be granted based on n coursework and teacher judgment.
Downing Street has so far insisted d that exams in England will go ahead next summer with a three-week delay to allow for more teaching time.
Earlier this week, Labour called for a “regional approach” to be taken to grading GCSES and A-levels next summer.
Kate Green, Labour’s shadow education secretary, pointed to the particul arly l ow attendance rates in the
‘One of the things being talked about is the notion we could apply a regional special consideration’
north-west of England, where a far greater proportion of students have been sent home for a fortnight to selfisolate than their peers in the south or south-west.
An Ofqual spokesperson said: “We are continuing to discuss contingency options for all likely scenarios with school and college leaders, and other stakeholders. We will provide advice to the Government before it determines and confirms contingency arrangements for 2021 with the sector this month.”
The president of the Girls’ Schools Association has said that next year’s GCSES should be scrapped and replaced with school-based assessment. A-level exams could have less content or fewer papers, so students spend less time being examined, added Jane Prescott, head of Portsmouth High School.