A Month Without A-Levels – Now What?

It’s getting harder and harder to remember what life was actually like before Covid- 19. Before lockdown. Before ‘global pandemic’ wasn’t just a motif of a post-apocalyptic film. 

Pubs are shut; the Olympics are postponed; theatres, gyms and even Parliament have closed their doors. It seems pretty fair to declare summer 2020 cancelled.

Last week, I should have had my first three A-Level exams and therefore would have been fully immersed in a deceptively long month of revision, test papers and stress. Instead, I am confronted with at least ten notebooks filled to the brim with work and very little I can do with them. It goes without saying that on day 64 of lockdown I would much rather be analysing the Middle English satire of Geoffrey Chaucer. 

18th March 2020: Exams Cancelled

The sudden cancellation of GCSE and A-Level exams seems like a lifetime ago but it is still posing some questions. The unexpected nonchalance with which Gavin Williamson announced this halt in the year’s public examinations was staggeringly surreal. A-Levels, in particular, have been a pivotal part of the British education system since 1951. The culmination of thirteen years at school and for many students, the all-important gateway to university. 

The majority of Year 13 students were in shock and devastated when, in the last few indispensable months before exams, everything fell away and bewildered teenagers were left a mere 2 days to say goodbye to the friends and teachers who had been so important to them in the last 18 months. 

GCSE and A-Level grades will now be assessed by other means. Performance calculated from past assessed work, mock exams and coursework. Teachers will supply new predicted grades. Students will be grouped by grade and ordered by performance, and then given official results in August.

What now?

This year, many teenagers will not have their future decided by a set of all-or-nothing exams. 

“Why would we ever revert back to a child’s whole future depending on stand alone exams?”

Which poses the question of whether this should continue after schools, colleges and sixth forms open their doors again. In the months ahead, there is a serious question about whether we need this ritualistic system in an already methodical society. 

The UK is the only country in Europe to thrust its students into weeks of anxiety and immense pressure not just once, at the age of 16, but for a second time only two years later. Overnight there was a national call for grades to be calculated in a different mixture of ways. Why would we ever revert back to a child’s whole future depending on stand alone exams? 

To make fish climb trees is quite simply behind the times.

When some normality returns, the abandonment of this year’s exams could start a whole metamorphosis of British education in the years to come.

Jessica Sharkey

Follow @jessmsharkey
Image courtesy of   ken19991210 on Pixabay.