How will the government organise exams next year?

AFTER TWO Covid-affected years, the government will be hoping for a return to exams next summer. But it won’t be quite back to normal.

Recognising the “significant disruption” to children’s schooling caused by the pandemic, the Department for Education is proposing a number of adjustments to exam courses for 2022. It is due to announce its decision next term after a public consultation.

Proposals include offering schools a choice of topics in subjects such as GCSE English literature and history, allowing students formula sheets in GCSE maths and asking exam boards to circulate advance information about “the focus of the content” of exams in other GCSE and A-level subjects. This will help students to target revision rather than expect them to cover the curriculum in the same way as if Covid had never happened.

The biggest challenge, however, will be marking policy. The government wants to maintain the “standard and rigour of qualifications” but how to do that while being fair to those sitting exams next summer is not straightforward.

The replacement of exams by internal school assessments this year and last produced a huge rise in top grades. The proportion of A*/A passes at A-level rose by around 75 per cent from 2019 to 2021, while grade 9 to 7 at GCSE increased by well over a third.

Exam boards have previously met demands to counter grade inflation by roughly maintaining the same proportions of students who achieve each grade year on year. But in the exceptional circumstances of Covid, that clearly has gone out the window.

If the 2019 benchmark were reinstated next summer, grades would plummet compared to the previous two years, disadvantaging students applying for university. They could find themselves competing for places against those who enjoyed this summer’s grade boom but delayed their application for a year.

On the other hand, trying to match the 2021 outcome has problems too. As Sam Freedman, a former adviser to the then Education Secretary, Michael Gove, observed in a paper for the Institute for Government: “This year’s results are so high as to make the university admissions system potentially unworkable.”

On balance, he comes down in favour of using last year’s grades as the benchmark for 2022. There is, of course, a downside: grades pre-Covid will no longer compare to results from 2020, making it harder for employers, for example, to evaluate candidates’ academic record.

Longer term, there could be growing pressure to review the exam system. After their recent experiences, many students and pupils take the view that some form of internal assessment is more equitable than allowing a few hours at the end of two years to determine a child’s fate. B ut it will take a lot to dislodge the government from its belief that exams are “the best and fairest means of assessment”.