Teachers: Training

(asked on 20th April 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what additional training his Department has offered to teachers on (a) assessing and (b) moderating (i) GCSE and (ii) A-Level exam papers in the 2020-21 academic year.


Answered by
Nick Gibb Portrait
Nick Gibb
This question was answered on 27th April 2021

The Joint Council for Qualifications has published clear guidance for centres to support them to determine teacher assessed grades. The guidance provides detailed information to schools and colleges on the grading process and the different factors that need to be accounted for. Teachers have the flexibility to use a range of evidence to determine students’ grades, including the use of optional questions provided by exam boards.

The sets of questions with mark schemes were provided to centres on 31 March 2021. Exemplar responses were provided to centres on 12 April, to assist teachers with marking these questions and making fair, objective, and consistent judgements of the standard of a student’s performance. The sets of questions were made openly available on 19 April.

In addition to the guidance and the assessment materials, exam boards have provided grade descriptors and exemplification materials to support teachers in making an evidence-based judgement of the grade at which each student is performing. This will ensure that there is a common basis to all teacher assessed grades.

To ensure qualifications are fair, students will be assessed only on what they have been taught. Centres can draw on a range of evidence to make their assessment. This range and flexibility in the assessment approach means that qualifications cannot be moderated in the way, for example, that non-examined assessments can be in normal years. We trust teachers to make judgements of the grades reflected by their students’ evidence. They are best placed to understand their students’ performance. To support teachers, exam boards will check centres’ approaches to assessment and provide external quality assurance, including the review of a sample of grades. Head teachers will also have to sign a head of centre declaration form to confirm they support the grades submitted. Parents and pupils can have confidence in the grades awarded this summer. As set out in the guidance, this year’s quality assurance process is not designed to moderate grades but will support teachers to do what is needed and ensure centres adhere to the exam boards’ requirements, in order to ensure outcomes are as consistent as possible.

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