New school year starts without exams update for Harrogate and Yorkshire Dales students
Education bosses are being questioned later this morning
As the new school year starts, students across Harrogate and the Dales are still in the dark about whether they'll be sitting exams this year.
It's as the schools minister and OFQUAL - the exams regulator - will be questioned later this morning about what's happening.
A cross-party group of MPs will question the panellists on what need to be adapted from the previous academic year.
It's as concerns focused on grade inflation in academic exams, with 44.3% of A-level grades awarded to 18-year-olds in England at A or A*, up from 25.5% in 2019 before the pandemic struck.
Education unions are calling for some form of allowance to be granted to make up for lost learning.
Sylvia Brett, principal at Harrogate Ladies' College, agrees and said everything can change in an instant.
"This time last year we were told exams would go ahead but I told the staff to prepare for anything and it's a good job we did because they were cancelled again.
"The emphasis on the exams just gone was on assessing the work which has been done and not the whole syllabus and I think that needs to be taken into consideration again because there will be a lot of students who have missed out.
"We need to assess their skills and not just how much knowledge they've gained in a particular time because it is more important that they know what they're learning and how they're learning.
"It's about preparing people for uncertainty because we don't know what is going to happen rather than pretending it is all going to be fine.
"We'll say to our students 'This is what we think you need to be doing now to prepare for the summer, if you need help you can ask us, ask your teachers, and we'll get through this together'".