The Government’s decision means pupils will not sit A-level and GCSE exams for the second year running because of spiralling Covid-19 rates.
Michael Gove, whose two children were due to take A-levels and GCSEs this year, said students will still be assessed in some way, adding: “I know how hard students across the country have been working.”
Alun Ebenezer, head of Fulham Boys School, said: “Cancelling exams is a terrible, terrible decision. And why now in January?
“Whatever way the Government decides to measure these cohorts now needs to be treated with the same credibility as exams. Otherwise it is very unfair.”
Ashid Ali, principal of London Enterprise Academy in Tower Hamlets, said many pupils will now switch off from learning.
He said it will be more difficult for teachers to come up with “centre assessed grades” — which is how last year’s pupils were graded — because there is not as much data about their previous performance because they have been out of school for so long.
Emma Pattison, head of Croydon High School, said: “For years 11 and 13, the news is absolutely heartbreaking. Everything they have worked so hard for has suddenly changed and their dreams are hanging in the balance.
“I can imagine they will be feeling quite lost, dispirited and wondering what it has all been for.” Professor Alan Smithers, director of the centre for education and employment research at the University of Buckingham, said he hopes there will still be externally set and marked assessments because teacher assessments tend to be overly generous.
James Handscombe, principal of Harris Westminster Sixth Form, said the decision to cancel exams is premature and exams are still “our best hope of fair assessment”.
He added that a reversal of the decision to cancel exams would be “one of the less bad U-turns”.
