Following the cancellation of GCSE, AS and A-level examinations this summer, the exams regulator Ofqual recently published its consultation on how grades should be awarded this year.
The consultation document proposes that pupils continue with their normal education during this academic year and that they are then assessed by their teachers in a period beginning in May and extending into early June.
Ofqual is proposing that exam boards should provide “guidance and training” to help teachers make “objective decisions”. It also suggests that exam boards make available sets of papers for teachers to use with students “as part of their assessment”, arguing that this “would support consistency within and between schools and colleges.” The consultation asks for views on: the proposal to use such papers; the form any such papers should take; whether the papers could re-use material from past papers; when the papers should be made available, and whether their use should be compulsory.
The consultation document adds: “The teacher, through the marking of the papers, could consider the evidence of the student’s work and use that to inform their assessment of the grade deserved. The exam boards could also sample teachers’ marking as part of the external quality assurance arrangements and to seek to ensure this was comparable across different types of school and college, wherever students are studying. The use of exam board papers could also help with appeals.”
Ofqual is also proposing that teachers should draw on a “range of broader evidence of a student’s work in making their final assessment”.
Teachers would submit grades to the exam boards by mid-June, with external quality assurance by the examination boards taking place throughout the same month.
The results would be issued to pupils once the quality assurance process is complete. This is likely to be in early July.
Any pupils wishing to appeal against their results could do so immediately after receiving them. These appeals would be considered in the first instance by the schools and colleges attended by the pupils, with the appeal to be heard by a “competent person appointed by the school or college, who had not been involved with the original assessment – this could be another teacher in the school or college or a teacher from another school or college.”
A further appeal could then be made to the exam board, but such an appeal would only be allowed be on the grounds that the school involved had not acted in line with the board’s procedural requirements.
The consultation closes at 11:45pm on 29 January 2021. The consultation document and a facility to respond online to it are available here.