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The government is getting itself in a terrible tangle about assessment and qualifications. In truth, it always spells trouble in making policy when you’re as focused on what *can’t* or *mustn't* be a solution as on the goal you’re trying to achieve.
In this case, the government is desperate not to be accused of having ‘an algorithm’ or of ‘exams by the back door’. Focusing on this, rather than the actual goal – how we are going to be fair to young people – risks an outcome in August much worse than last year’s.
If ‘no algorithm’ is taken to mean ‘no use of past data’ and ‘no exams by the back door’ to mean ‘no common assessment taken under standard conditions’, then we really are lost. There is no respected jurisdiction-wide testing system which does not every year make use of both.
Without either, we have no way of ensuring fairness. Systems of moderation – by definition – require common tests or tasks undertaken under common conditions. Likewise, systems of double marking. In every system, the meaning of a grade is given by past performance.
This isn’t some weird education thing. Think of any respected system of rating or measuring quality (chess players, turbine blades, coffee, hotels) and it will be based on standard performance tests under standard conditions…
…together with judgements against a historically established standard applied as consistently as possible to the new situation. This is not an accident. It is what a fair and useful quality measurement system is.
If you start worrying more about being accused of having ‘exams by the back door’ than about making the system fair, then you might focus on ways of making a test less like an ‘exam’ – for example, having no exam security; having people sit it at different times;...
...making it optional; using past questions – even though these things also make a test a lot less fair and a lot less useful. And this is precisely what is happening: https://ofqual.blog.gov.uk/2021/01/29/consultation-update-and-a-proposal-for-externally-set-papers/
