The Chief Regulator sets out the support for students taking exams and assessments this year, including advance information and a fair approach to grading.
Good morning, everyone. Bill: thank you so much for inviting me. I’m thrilled to be with you, in spirit if not in person.
I first met Bill in something like 2008. I went to see him in his office somewhere high up in Millbank tower. It had the most stunning view across south Westminster. Bill deployed me as a literacy consultant, and not long after, I found myself in a particularly tough new academy in the East Midlands. At that time, challenging educational circumstances on the ground did not include providing and complying with public health measures, and it did not include devising and determining high stakes assessments on top of everything else. Your response to the scale and pace of the change required by the pandemic in the last 2 years is simply breath-taking—more so than any view.
Let me give a sense of scale. Thanks to your commitment and efforts, and those of many thousands of other sector colleagues, despite exams being cancelled, last year 1.2 million students received grades for GCSE, AS and A levels. You, and staff at schools and exam centres, submitted 5.7 million Teacher Assessed Grades for students in England last summer. That includes over 750,000 A level TAGs.
And, in the spring and summer of 2021 alone, thanks again to your efforts, awarding organisations were able to issue over 1 million qualification results to students taking Functional Skills qualifications, Core Maths, International Baccalaureate diplomas, Cambridge Pre-Us, Applied Generals, Tech Levels and others.
2022 is still very young, yet as at today, over 500 regulated assessments and exams have taken place, that’s 480,000 entries, or 89% of the January series will have been undertaken, which is extraordinary, given the pressures of the Omicron variant. Once again, in very large part because you have adapted staffing, prioritisation and invigilation, and many of you will have even reorganised your facilities to enable COVID-safe exam sittings to go ahead.
None of us would have chosen this turn of events, and whilst media commentators are right that it has shown the extraordinary purpose, commitment, drive and dedication of those who work in colleges, sixth forms and schools – for which I, and Ofqual of course applaud you – I think there is a bigger point here, and it is about adaptation.
As Darwin and Wallace posited in the 1890s, it is the ability of a species to adapt to its environment that determines its success. The versatility you have all shown over the past 2 years – and the scale of change to qualification and assessment policy and practice that you have realised – must surely exceed that of any generation of educators, certainly in recent history.
And as you know, there are more novel and important adaptations to come, in the form of advance information next month, together with a measured approach to ensure fair grading in the summer. I want to talk to you now about both of these; how they were conceived; why I believe they will help your students, and why they will mark an important staging post in our move back towards normality.
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