GCSE and A-level exams may not be marked more generously, East Midlands education body says
National exams will go ahead for the first time since the pandemic started
Last updated 15th Feb 2022
It was reported that school and college students would have their exams marked more generously due to the disruption caused by COVID-19, but that may not be the case.
England's exams regulator Ofqual said grade boundaries were likely to be lowered to account for the loss of learning, but an East Midlands education body says that wouldn't be the most effective way to mitigate the impact of the pandemic.
Nick Raine, senior regional officer at the National Education Union East Midlands, says lower marking thresholds wouldn't help students that haven't been taught examination content due to weeks away from education.
"My interpretation was somewhat different. What they're doing is they're giving people more vindication of what may and may not be on the examinations because students have missed so much time.
"There are key components due to coronavirus that they haven't covered with a qualified teacher, so obviously they're at a significant disadvantage.
"We're concerned first of all that the students are okay, because there's been a lot of mental health issues because some of them are very worried that they've missed key components.
"You can imagine if you're studying something like French for example and you've missed a lot of the language, or parts of maths, that obviously if it was on the examination you wouldn't have been tracked fairly - you will have been discriminated against in that respect.
"Some of the reports in the newspapers are actually inaccurate, I mean I don't think anyone reasonable is going to suggest when students have missed weeks and weeks and weeks in cases of learning with a teacher that they're going to be able to sit exactly the same examination as people in previous years who didn't - obviously, it just doesn't make any common sense. So that's the reality of the situation."