GCSE and A-Level Exams 2021: Three lessons the government needs to learn if it wants to avoid the failures of 2020

If you fail to prepare, prepare to fail. That’s good advice for students taking exams. It’s also good advice for the organisations setting and moderating exams.

In 2020, the sudden arrival of COVID-19 left the government without enough time to prepare an adequate alternative to GCSE and A-Level examinations. This may help explain why the substitute system had several failures.

Teacher assessments were fed through a controversial algorithm that yielded disappointing results for legions of young people and their families.

As teachers, leaders and students alike told us at our roundtable on the subject, repeated government U-turns induced anxiety and confusion on a mass-scale and disrupted progression to next stages of education. The appeals and retake procedures have also been beset by criticism.

“Even if you try, it’s quite hard to separate exam results from the political upheaval. Ultimately, when it comes to elections in the next few years, the government will be losing my vote and the same goes for lots of other young people too.”

– Hanifah Smith, student, CfEY GCSE Results Roundtable

In the run up to 2021’s GCSE and A-Level exams, it is vital that the missteps of 2020 are not repeated, so that young people can be confident in the qualifications they receive.

With this aim in mind, we’ve distilled three key criteria for success for next year’s process.

1. Transparency

What went wrong in 2020?

When teacher assessments were settled upon as a substitute for 2020’s exams, there was a well-founded concern that 2020’s exam classes may earn much higher grades than previous years. Ofqual’s algorithm was designed to keep any errant grade inflation under control and ensure fairness for previous and future cohorts.  Unfortunately it refused to submit the algorithm to the scrutiny that could have stress tested and improved it.

Organisations such as the Education Policy Institute, Royal Statistical Society and Open Data Institute raised concerns about this. They argued that Ofqual’s processes needed to be open to feedback from outside experts. These calls were ignored and led to the inclusion of problematic elements in the algorithm which were easily spotted by trained statisticians once it was made public.

According to the Education Policy Institute, transparency could have had the added  benefit of helping teachers produce centre assessed grades that were more in line with previous years’.

Thirdly, transparency could have helped maintain trust in the examination system. Research in data ethics emphasises that the public are surprisingly sanguine about the power of algorithms to improve their lives, but want to understand how they work and why they are selected.

What does this mean for 2021?

As the government considers various ‘Plan B’ options, they should prioritise transparency in order to maximise trust and scrutiny, minimising the risk of unsettling U-turns.

2. Consultation

What went wrong in 2020?

When deciding what assessment procedures to put in place, Ofqual held an open consultation and published their findings. While they cast a wide net and attracted 12,000 respondents, their consultation process was in some respects, incomplete.

Firstly, consultees reported feeling that the process was cursory and did not lead to any real change to the governments’ plans. For example, Head teacher Sally Anne Huang said she felt Ofqual had already made their mind up in advance. The consultation also left out important issues such as the use of teacher assessments. Ofqual also ignored concerns over planned procedures. For example, over a third of consultees felt that using historical school performance data would be unfair on students – a perception now shared by many.

“I feel like teachers were being made very vulnerable. Students can obviously take it very personally when they’ve been graded by a teacher and its gone down. That can bring on a period of conflict between teachers and students. The government did not really plan for that.”

– Emma Wijnberg, Deputy Head of Sydenham School, CfEY GCSE Results Roundtable

Secondly, while 1,400 students participated in the consultation, the survey questions they were asked do not look accessible to young people. This may explain why very few statements from students were provided in the summary of consultee responses . A more thorough and targeted student consultation could have identified many of the issues related to perceptions of fairness that were only brought into focus after results day:

“No one has any idea what’s going on. A lot of my friends are upset and want to appeal their grades but the school doesn’t know how. You can’t really comfort anyone because you don’t know what’s going to happen, how any of it works”

-Davina Dinguana, Student, CfEY A-Level Results Roundtable

What does this mean for 2021?

As the government plans for 2021, it needs to run a wide-ranging consultation (including with young people), in which participants have access to all the relevant information (such as a menu of all the assessment options under exploration, data on exams in 2020) they need. The government also needs to demonstrate that it has considered and accounted for all the key concerns that are raised.

3. Urgency

What went wrong in 2020?

When schools closed on March 20^th 2020, the government only had a matter of weeks to produce an alternative assessment system, consult on its suitability and explain the new system to schools.

This time-pressure contributed to several of the policy’s inadequacies.

What does this mean for 2021?

While the government seems settled on a normal (albeit slightly delayed) exam season for 2021, they are currently consulting with “key stakeholders” on suitable contingency plans. An announcement on the plans is expected before the end of December.

Urgency is important here. As Baroness Estelle Morris, the former Secretary of State for Education and Skills, noted last week: “An announcement at the end of December is not suitable for schools. For policymakers, this seems ample as it looks like 9 months until results day which allows plenty of time to resolve any issues. But for schools, this leaves them with only 15 weeks to prepare before exam season.” The sooner schools are informed, the better.

Equally, the government needs to maximise time for consultation and communication to ensure schools have space to get to grips with the process.

Concluding thoughts

It is very difficult to predict what the COVID situation in summer 2021 will be. In order to manage this level of uncertainty, the government needs develop robust contingency plans.

Whatever shape these plans take, we believe that any systems that are put in place need to be transparent, open to meaningful consultation and communicated with urgency. Only with this degree of preparation, we can hope for a 2021 exam season that avoids the failures that short-changed so many schools and young people in 2020.