No exams next year

With the government`s appalling test and trace system "needlessly disrupting" thousands of children`s education, and "94% of schools with pupils who have had to stay at home" because of Covid symptoms, it doesn't require a degree in rocket, or even moonshot, science to conclude that GCSE and A-level exams next year are in jeopardy (Star,18/09/20). Having an education secretary as on the ball as Gavin Williamson, one can assume therefore that he has ordered all examination boards both to give details to all secondary schools about the type of sample work of pupils which will be needed to justify the teacher assessed grades, and to make the necessary appointments of grade moderators! The need to avoid the use of an algorithm to enforce norm-referencing on state schools` examinations should be obvious to Ofqual, and perhaps even to Williamson, but no doubt private schools will still manage to dominate the so-called "top" universities with grade inflation allowed to continue unabated in their Pre-U exams. With a second wave now inevitable, teachers need to be told to prepare pupils for another year of exam-free assessment, and to set assessment exercises such as "mocks", classroom tests, and research or homework tasks which can be marked and sent to examiners for checking, and verification or amendment, of teachers` grades. To shorten the process, schools could be told that sample work will be required from any pupil, and then when work completed, asked for the work from, for example, numbers 1, 4, 7 and 12 in the teacher`s "order of merit", from a class of twelve pupils. For classes of 5 and under, work would be required for all pupils. Unions need to be involved, but a sensible secretary of state would have started preparatory work on this already.