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Students demand: ‘Gavin Get Gone!’ ENRAGED students are calling on Education Secretary Gavin Williamson to resign after the A-level “fiasco” in August saw hundreds of students lose out on university places. With exams cancelled due to Covid-19, 39.2 per cent of teacher-predicted grades were ‘moderated’ down by the external exam board, Ofqual, using an algorithm and schools’ previous results. After days of confusion and outcry across the country, the Government announced that teacher-estimated grades would instead be used. As well as celebrating this U-turn, Martha Storey and James Fenwick went ahead with a protest against the stress caused, which had been organised for the following day in Leeds. Martha told Educate they were now calling on Mr Williamson to go: “The Government thinks that by performing this U-turn everyone will forget it had five months to sort out an exam solution. It didn’t work, and then the Government stuck with it for five days. We need accountability.” James is also angry that Ofqual’s grading formula hit state school students hardest, and that BTec and vocational students were not initially included in the U-turn. “We’re calling for an end to entrenched elitism within the education sector. Justice for BTec students,” he said. BTec students later had their grades reassessed in line with teacher-predicted grades, receiving them up to two weeks late. According to the admissions service UCAS, more than 15,000 A-level students originally rejected by their first-choice university now have the grades to go. However, the chaos and delay of both A-level and BTec grades is likely to affect whether many students can now get a place at their chosen university.
Students – including James Fenwick (left) and Martha Storey (third from left) – gathered in Leeds to protest against the Government’s A-level debacle PHOTO by Terry Bambrook
Ofqual head takes rap for exams chaos A WEEK after the U-turn, head of Ofqual Sally Collier resigned. NEU joint general secretary Kevin Courtney said: “Someone had to take responsibility for the exams fiasco, but the issues run far deeper than the actions of one chief executive. “We have no sure way of knowing where the balance of fault lies, but we can be quite certain that Gavin Williamson gave direction to Ofqual that there should not be grade inflation and all candidates should get a fair grade. He must have known that those directions are incompatible.”
Reduce the content assessed for A-levels and GCSEs next summer x
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#FairGrade2021 The NEU wrote to the Government calling for fairness for next year’s GCSE and A-level cohorts, and launched a petition at bit.ly/3hazC2M to ensure they’re not disadvantaged. NEU Cymru has a launched a similar petition calling for exam fairness in 2021 at bit.ly/3gvXnBt
Fairness for next year’s students MORE than 145,000 people have signed a petition started by NEU member Rafia Hussain calling for curriculum content to be reduced ahead of next year’s exams. Rafia, an A-level social sciences teacher in Sheffield, set up the petition out of “sheer frustration” that students will be tested on the same content as normal, despite missing 16 weeks in the classroom. “Getting through the volume of content in A-levels, even in a normal school year, is a nightmare,” she said. “You barely have any time left for revision at the end. Every year I feel that students are not 100 per cent ready, purely because they don’t have enough time.” Teaching remotely does not allow for the same level of assessment or opportunity to check students have understood topics, she added, and children from particular ethnic minority groups and working class backgrounds are likely to have struggled most with remote learning. The petition calls for students in years 10 and 12 to be tested on a reduced curriculum.
educate Your magazine from the National Education Union (NEU)
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