Special Edition - Summer term | 8 July 2020
Message from Matthew Shanks, DASH Chair
Please see links below to articles related to press release attached. If you want to use these with local media and add your own quotations then please do so.
Best wishes, Matthew
Press Release:
Headteachers united in calling for extensive changes to examinations for all pupils in the summer of 2021
Headteachers representing thousands of schools across the country are calling on the government to make far-reaching changes to primary school assessments and GCSE and A-Level examinations set for the summer of 2021.
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After months of lost learning time - following the pandemic - and the prospect of further disruption to teaching and learning amidst local lockdowns, headteachers require the government to review and overhaul league tables and examinations relating to the Summer series 2021.
In addition, the government must take decisive action to support the mental health and wellbeing of pupils from Reception to Year 13. Without significant adjustments to assessments and examinations their mental health and emotional wellbeing will severely and negatively affected in the forthcoming academic year.
Specific issues and actions required are:
- An overhaul of school performance league tables for primary and secondary schools to ensure that data is reliable when it is published to parents
- A reduction in content demanded in core subjects (Maths, English and Science) for GCSEs and primary assessments. These reductions must go much further than those currently being put forward by the DfE / Ofqual
- Reforms to A-level content
- Consideration of ‘open book’ examinations to support students who must sit up to 30 different GCSE papers in just one month.
- Urgent consultation with parents, students and professionals to support the mental health and wellbeing of pupils taking high stakes examinations and assessments just nine months after returning to full time education.
“The government must strike a much better balance to maintain standards whilst looking after children’s mental health. The idea that pupils will simply ‘catch up’ on months of lost learning is neither realistic nor workable. Just reducing grade boundaries so that they become so low as to become meaningless is highly undesirable. Bombarding GCSE and A-level students with vast content and huge numbers of exams is unacceptable. Pupils do not need to sit five English, three Maths and six Science papers of at least two plus hours next summer.” Jules White, Headteacher, Tanbridge House School.
“Content for content’s sake achieves nothing – surely it is best that students leave Year 11 with deep knowledge and understanding for the next step in their education and careers rather than shallow understanding for the sake of ‘curriculum coverage’?“
Clive Sentance – headteacher – Principal and Chief Executive, Alcester Grammar School.
“Now is the time for consideration of the implications that pushing forward with primary school assessments in the summer of 2021 will bring. Post Covid 19, this is an even more complex and important matter and just doing what we have always done is not a solution. In fact, it creates more problems than ever.”
Brian Walton, Headteacher, Brookside Academy.
‘Worth Less?’ is a non-political campaign group that represents thousands of headteachers from 78 Local Authorities and London boroughs from Cornwall to Cumbria.
For further information and additional quotes from headteachers contact:
Jules White | email jwhite@ths.uk.net
Coordinator/Founder of ‘Worth Less?’
Devon Association of Primary Headteachers (DAPH) &
Devon Association of Secondary Headteachers (DASH)
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