Are you aware that Exams in England have gone from being controlled to become Freewheeling?
It is for the second year running, that Boris Johnson's government has needed a replacement exam system. However, what is so remarkable and potentially risky about this replacement system for exam results in England is that it is so freewheeling, with teachers having huge flexibility over how to decide A-level and GCSE grades for their own pupils. Now, depending on your perspective, it's either a liberating outbreak of total trust in teachers - or a roadmap likely to be marked with headlines about "Exam Chaos 2" and some screeching U-turns over the months ahead. Here is then exploring a few facts about this extreme change from exams held under a control freakery system before the arrival of pandemic to a more freewheeling system.
An exam system that eliminates tension in students:
According to the new examination system There will be training and guidance about grading and some random sample checks, and teachers will already have a detailed knowledge of the levels to which students should be working for different grades and have experience of carrying out their own moderation. But the biggest external element will be the test papers that exam boards will send out for each subject in the next few weeks.
Even these will be optional for schools to use and will be marked by teachers. They will "inform" rather than decide the final result, and the test papers will not be taken in exam conditions or have any fixed time limits on how long they have to be completed. The only exam nerves will be among publishers who used to sell revision guides. However, not all teachers agree that these tests should be optional. The second-biggest teachers' union, the NASUWT, said a "golden opportunity" had been missed in not making tests mandatory and externally marked.
A flexible exam system best choice for post pandemic world wherein there is dearth of better options:
Considering the circumstances that surround us most teachers' and head teachers' unions have warmly welcomed a system that relies so heavily on teachers' professionalism and fair judgement. There is also the persuasive argument about a lack of other alternatives, particularly when Education Secretary Gavin Williamson is still bruised by last year's fiasco. For summer 2020 there was an attempt to build a complicated, algorithm-driven external system for calculating grades, but that fell apart spectacularly before, during and after the results were published. And after multiple U-turns, the results eventually reverted to teachers' predicted grades as the last plausible system standing.
Introducing flexibility in exam system may not provide a level playing field for students in the country:
The question that arises with regards to bringing in a flexible exam system then is, How do you know that one school will not be more generous in awarding grades than another school down the road, or in another part of the country?
If one school is completely scrupulous and tough in its internal marking, how would that be fair against another school that takes a more optimistic approach?
How do you factor in the different amounts of time that pupils have lost in school, and the potential levels that they otherwise might have reached?
Last year there were persistent rumours about exam centres, not necessarily schools, which had given students remarkably high grades across the board - but the centre-level results were not published to show whether that was the case.
Exam results can make a big difference to the life chances of young people and the Education Policy Institute think-tank has warned about "inconsistencies" likely to appear in grades this year.
