A few thoughts on today's exam announcement (1/7)
The big challenge is how/whether the grading system can reflect the massive disparities in 'learning loss' which have already happened. Digital poverty, time spent isolating etc. have affected some students more than others.

This impact has already hit and extra ‘catch up’ support can't fully compensate for it. Teachers &
centres are best placed to quantify this and the 'Validated Teacher Informed Assessments' could be useful for all students; to inform grade awarding & mitigate lost learning. (2/7)

The measures on advance notice of topics, contingency papers & additional exam aids are welcome.These mitigate for some of the disruption experienced by students but not the full differential impact of disruption.(3/7)

The grade profile for 2021 will be based on the 2020 grade profile which flowed from centre assessed grades (and did not increase disadvantage). We could make more use of teacher judgements in 2021 too. (4/7)

Colleges ran the largest exam series of the pandemic last month (130,000+ GCSE English and maths) and will be running some very large exams again in January (50,000+ Applied General). The additional costs of running these safely are substantial. (5/7)

Colleges also need to know as soon as possible what further adaptations will be made to assessment on vocational and technical qualifications. (6/7)

Final thought: Exams are not the only fair way to judge students' performance, there are many other valid methods available. In the longer term we need to question England's over-reliance on high stakes terminal written exams. (7/7)