School Exams Must Be Cancelled

[fmttmadmin]

Can you imagine thousands of school kids taking exams in any conditions in May, a month that could be peak for the virus? It could make a nightmare type spike for them or their families.

 

[uncle_rico]

They're going to use mock results and predicted grades to give results more than likely. Not ideal, but these are unprecedented times.

 

[Lefty]

My son’s a bit annoyed. He felt he was well on track to do well in his A levels. Courses were pretty much all completed and it would be revision from now on anyway, which can be done pretty well at home, with online tutoring. Seems a bit premature to definitely cancel the exams now. Late June might be a different situation.

I don’t know how the universities are going to select now.

His year has had something unusual to deal with every exam, from being guinea pigs on changes to marking systems, harsher marking, Goves stupid reforms making the virtually useless religious education compulsory, thus denying him a more useful subject that he was interested in and good at, and now this.

 

[bear66]

Looks like it's predictions from mock exams, coursework etc., although a university admissions guy has just said one possibility is that conditional offers already made could become unconditional.

 

[Duffman]

There are more questions than answers at the moment. DFE will issue a significant update on how grades will be awarded tomorrow. On the plus side young people will not face the anxiety and pressure of terminal exams that for most seek to justify and measure 5 years of learning in a couple of hours. On the downside until it is made clear and fully understood what will happen a new worry will emerge. For many their mock scores will have been way down on their expected grade. Hopefully by the end of tomorrow we will be a little wiser but cancelling rather than postponing exams seems the only option the government had available in the circumstances.