LAST UPDATED- 7th April 2020
The dust is starting to settle on the complete change to our way of life that COVID-19 has caused, we are two weeks into our first three week stint of social distancing measures, and now seems like a good time to take stock of the current situation in education. Over the coming weeks, Total Maths Tutoring will be doing our utmost to keep you up to date on the developments regarding school closures, exam grades and what the plans are for reopening.
School closures
Schools are currently on their Easter break, due to return in a week or so, although this is fairly obviously not going to happen. It seems unthinkable that schools will reopen until we have gone well past the peak of COVID-19 infections. It seems that we may be nearing this peak in a week or so, however it looks like being several more weeks until social distancing will be eased gradually. It would be extremely surprising if schools were to open again for students before the May half term, with a likely return date sometime in late June or July. But what then? It seems logical that there will be two options; Students sit the normal summer term, go on their summer break as usual and we start a new school year from September, or students get no summer holiday and spend July and August in school making up for lost time. The second option seems unlikely. Exams have already been cancelled for year 6,11 and 13 students, with calculated grades given out. Would a lot be gained from having students in over the summer holidays, cooped up in school all summer having been cooped up at home for 2-3 months previous, unlikely. Consensus from education insiders seems to suggest school may be out until September, with the rest of this year being written off entirely. This is all speculation at present and I guess we won’t know for sure for a while yet.
Exams for GCSE, A level and SATS
These have all been cancelled, with students receiving a calculated grade based on past performance and teacher’s judgement. The system for this is complicated, but to summarise:
- Teachers will give a “centre grade” for each student, taking into account past performance and work. They must do this fairly and in line with the performance of their school in previous years. In other words, they can’t give all of their students high grades if this is not inline with the schools usual performance. Research shows any change for a school in terms of results will be quite small from one year to the next, and schools will need to respect this.
- Teachers will also need to rank each student in the year group, within the grade they have assigned. For example, everybody who receives a grade 5 in maths will be put in order from the “highest” grade 5 student to the “lowest” grade 5 student. This will help the calculated grades to be standardised by the exam boards.
- Exam boards will then moderate these results to make them roughly fit in line with previous years, in terms of the number of students achieving each grade for each subject. If schools have over egged their results, the lowest ranked students in each grade may be moved to the grade below, and vice versa.
- Calculated grades will be released to students in July, much earlier than when they would usually receive them in the middle of August.
- There will be an appeal process, and students will get an opportunity when schools reopen to sit their exams, should their grade be less than they need to move on in their studies.
A student-friendly break down of this can be found here
College and University applications
Essentially, nothing here should change, with Universities using applications and calculated grades to admit students, and colleges doing similar. There was a host of Universities last week, giving students unconditional offers or amended offers to try and fill courses up fast, worried about the possibility of poor applications and the financial implications that could bring, however this has now passed due to the government banning this practice for a few weeks at least. Anyone worried about universities and the application process should follow this link to find out more.
Universities, governing bodies and schools are all working together to make sure COVID-19 causes as little disruption to students’ educational journeys as possible, and the proposals in place seem to cover most bases. There will be many students feeling aggrieved when results are published, maybe those who didn’t take their mock exams seriously will be disappointed, maybe those who were coasting along but were going to knuckle down when exam season came around. However, in the large majority of cases, students will receive the grade they would have got in the summer had they sat their exams.
Over the coming weeks we will be continually updating this article and will post all updates on our Facebook page as well!