Date: 03/12/2020

By Alan Hardie, CEO at NCEAT

Last Sunday saw the beginning of Advent and the countdown to Christmas Day. When I was at school, this meant that we knew the Blue Peter presenters would show us how to make an advent crown out of wire coat hangers, tinsel and candles. I’ve no doubt that today our firefighters would strongly advise against this, but as a child, it was an exciting beginning to the preparations for Christmas. It also reminded us that Christmas was about much more than just Christmas Day itself.  

The first advent candle is the Candle of Hope. This week we have been given real hope of a return to a much more normal life with the approval of the first Covid-19 vaccine. This is an amazing breakthrough for Science and is thanks to the sort of effort and collaboration we normally only see during wartime.  

After the year we’ve experienced, the vaccine is a genuine light of hope for a better and safer future. I don’t think anyone will underestimate the scale and difficulty of planning to vaccinate an entire population, but at least we can now hope that this could be completed by the summer. 

As well as giving schools the hope that we can have a normal school year from September, this morning’s Government announcement has given us some much needed clarity on what will happen with exams this year. It has taken a long time to get to this point, but we at last have some clear plans. There is a lot to take in, so I’ve attempted to briefly summarise everything in order of age group:

• Year 2: No Key stage 1 tests this year. Teacher assessments will still take place.
• Year 6: SATs will take place, but a week later than planned. There will not be a SAT test for grammar, punctuation and spelling this year.
• Year 11 and Year 13: A combination of measures are being put in place for GCSE, A level and vocational exams. These include more generous grading, advance notice of some topics, the use of exam aids (like formula sheets), meaning less needs to be memorised and extra exams are also being made available if the main exams are missed because of illness. 

Earlier in the term, I wrote about how concerned I am for the pupils in our schools taking exams in the summer. Although the Government’s plans aren’t what I would have suggested to tackle the problems of assessing children this year, I do recognise that there was never going to be a perfect solution to a very difficult situation. I welcome the fact that they have removed some of the barriers to pupils catching up all of the work required for their exams. At least pupils and teachers have a greater degree of certainty that they will not expect to prepare for a ‘normal’ set of exams after such an extraordinary year. 

Many of us who lead schools in the north of England will fight on and try to get the Government to recognise that the impact of Covid-19 on pupils since September has been very uneven; further support is needed to make things fairer for our pupils. Although Northumberland has been quite badly affected, there are other areas much worse off, where secondary schools have been forced to close year group bubbles three times over, meaning pupils have missed 6 weeks of teaching since September. In other parts of England by comparison, there has been virtually no disruption. At the very least, there needs to be an appeals process for exam results to take this into consideration. 

However, I am writing in hope, and I can say that today’s announcement does give me more hope that our children will get the exam results that their efforts deserve.