What about next year’s GCSEs?

Dear exam boards, 

First, I owe you an apology. For years, I have complained about the harshness and vagueness of some of your questions, your mark schemes, your raw marks to uniform mark scale conversions. I still feel I had good reasons to, as the results did determine the future of students and the future of my, sadly optional, subject.

The sword of Damocles over subject leaders’ heads is a real thing, and I am one of the lucky ones whose school is understanding and believes in what is humanly possible.

And now that I have to help to determine my students’ grades, I HATE it. I hate not having the evidence that an exam would have provided, even if I would then have complained about the unfairness of certain questions in said exam. I am still wondering about the wisdom of this. Will future employers/ universities/ colleges pay any heed to the 2020 exam results? Would the fairest thing not have been to say to Year 11 students, “You had no exams, you have no results, the new schools or places of work you will join need to contact us and trust our judgements”?

My biggest worry now is about next year’s exams and even the years after.

We teachers have worked hard. We work hard all the time. Since 23 March, where I work we have even surpassed our own standards. We have learned and regularly used ICT skills we never suspected we could master so quickly; we have juggled dozens of passwords; we have emailed students individually. And we have delved deep into our best psychological potential to find the right words to tell our students at the appropriate time; we have thrived, some of us, with the preparation and the delivery of lessons, which is what many of us went into teaching for; we have missed, oh so missed, children “getting it” and the joy it gave us. 

But, as strange as it may seem, we have also missed input from you exam boards. In all this, you have been weirdly silent. This is not going to affect just the 2020 cohort. You will need 20/20 vision to provide the correct exam  - and revised exam syllabus - for 2021 and most likely 2022. What are you going to remove from the heavy syllabus that key stage 4 and KS5 students have to cover? Assuming that things go back to “normal”, so many skills will have been lost that no amount of cramming will cover. Lockdown has shown us that students need the physical guiding presence of a teacher to make education democratic. Surely you can’t keep exams as they are, hoping that those who managed to get online win and those who didn’t lose? Surely you don’t expect teachers to prepare even more catch-up lessons/materials, sacrificing their family life even more than they usually do?

So at what stage are you going to send us guidance; how many months of stress from students, teachers and parents will it take to tell those Year 10 and Year 12 students that they can’t possibly be tested on all topics of the crammed specs? It’s Mental Health Awareness Week; information about future decisions is one way to help us stay sane.

Sylvie Géal-Wilkes
St Ninian’s High School (Upper School), Douglas, Isle of Man

The chance to tackle inequality in education

How sad to see the rush to return children and teachers to unevidenced-safe classrooms obscuring the potential for change that this crisis has offered. I noticed that the worthies who run our growing business empire of multi-academy trusts are trailing the flag of “disadvantage” in their press releases. Profiteering can rarely have been so grotesquely masqueraded. To paraphrase from a recent House of Commons Prime Minister’s Questions session: “The levels of inequality [in our schools and those school populations] are now so deeply ingrained that only transformative change is going to do something about it.” Why is that debate not taking place instead of a politically motivated one about arranging children in “bubbles” so that “normal service can be resumed” - at all costs?

Professor Bill Boyle
Tarporley, Cheshire

Let’s cut class sizes

We now have the time to insist that the teacher-student ratio should be correct. For years, teachers have been teaching enormous classes. One teacher with 30 pupils faces a difficult task - individual attention, remembering names and being able to deliver wonderful work. How can we? When teachers return to schools, teaching small groups or classes of 15 students, they will appreciate the difference this makes.

We now have the time to demand higher salaries and more teachers, as well as support staff. We now have the time to receive respect. Parents have had the time to understand the skills, talents and devotion that teaching demands.

Education offers all the answers.

Anne Adams,
London

Go Jo!

In these troubled times, it is good that Jo Brighouse is still writing for Tes. Though I taught teens and she teaches young children, hers is the authentic voice of the classroom teacher.

Long may she write for Tes.

Anthony Silson
Bramley, Leeds