GCSE and GCE A-level: Textbooks

(asked on 14th June 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to ensure that students taking GCSEs and A Levels have access to set texts for upcoming assessments.


Answered by
Nick Gibb Portrait
Nick Gibb
This question was answered on 22nd June 2021

Students should have confidence in their grades this year. Awarding organisations have provided assessment materials, guidance, and training to support centres to make fair, consistent, and evidence based decisions which are without bias. Ofqual has also published information for centres about making objective judgements this year.

For the 2021 summer series, reasonable adjustments for disabled students and access arrangements should have been in place when evidence was generated. Where they were not, centres should take that into account when coming to their judgement. Teachers have had the flexibility to substitute or discount evidence where reasonable adjustments were not applied. For all assessments completed in the summer term, centres should have ensured students had access to reasonable adjustments. Special circumstances that may lead a teacher to disregard a piece of evidence or to replace it with another piece of evidence would cover instances where students were not provided with their approved access arrangements or reasonable adjustments when completing their work. This also applies where temporary illness or injury, bereavement, or some other event outside of the student’s control might have temporarily affected their performance.

This year, teachers have assessed their students based on what they were taught, not what they missed. Regarding the use of set texts, the Department expects students to have been assessed on the specific texts taught by their schools. Schools should follow their own processes for ensuring students have access to set texts, as they would in any other year.

Centres should follow the schools operational guidance on equipment when using classroom based resources, available to view here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/actions-for-schools-during-the-coronavirus-outbreak/schools-coronavirus-covid-19-operational-guidance#system-of-controls.

Where schools have taught remotely, they should follow the guidance on remote education, which refers to the provision of resources, available to view here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/actions-for-schools-during-the-coronavirus-outbreak/schools-coronavirus-covid-19-operational-guidance#system-of-controls.

Where only some of the text has been taught, teachers had the flexibility to focus their assessments on the proportion taught.

Deadline for centres to submit their teacher assessed grades was 18 June so centres have therefore completed their assessments for the 2021 series.

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