Awarding Qualifications in 2021 and 2022

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

My hon. Friend raises a very important point. Teachers, support staff and headteachers have worked incredibly hard in schools and colleges during the pandemic, making sure that schools are covid-secure, adapting to remote education, teaching both remotely and in class, and keeping schools open throughout the whole period for vulnerable children and the children of critical workers. We do absolutely have teacher workload at the forefront of our minds as we devise policy.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

My local schools have collated and moderated hundreds of pupil grades, while facing a mental health crisis and catch-up, with none of the assistance from the exam boards that the Minister spoke of—presumably they have all been on full pay throughout. Can he guarantee that the A-level students of next year who missed their GCSEs last year will have in-person exams? Can he also guarantee, for a profession that in west London has significant staffing gaps and faces burn-out, that teachers can now have five weeks completely offline, or are they going to have nasty surprises as they did last year? His boss, again absent, seems to think that the holidays have already started.

[Nick Gibb]

Teachers have been very well supported by the exam boards, with guidance, training and grade descriptors. We want to try to ensure that we are doing everything we can to support teachers through this process. We know that, despite all that support, it has been a big task for teachers to get these grades, and it is a remarkable achievement that a very high proportion were delivered by schools on time by 18 June. That training and those grade descriptors have ensured, I believe, that we will have consistency and fairness in how grades are awarded in 2021. For 2022, it is our very firm plan that exams will go ahead, because, as I said, it is the fairest way of assessing young people.