Exams should be scrapped next year to take away tension and fear, says Michael Morpurgo

Rui Vieira/PA Wire
Anna Davis @_annadavis30 September 2020

Exams should be scrapped next year to take the “tension and fear” away from pupils who have missed so much work during the pandemic, one of Britain’s best loved children’s authors said.

Michael Morpurgo called for the 2021 GCSE and A-level grades to be based again on teacher assessments, as they were this year after exams were cancelled due to the coronavirus.

The War Horse author said: “The teacher assessment was the only way to do it that made any sense at all. Teachers know the children best, and to take the tension off it should be so again.” He said grading should be “teacher led and teacher judged”.

Referring to the algorithm which was originally used to calculate grades, he said: “How did we arrive at a situation where a child’s future could be determined by a computer rather than a human being? It makes me so sad we arrived at that situation.”

It comes as the heads of Birmingham and Sheffield Hallam universities also today called for A-level exams to be cancelled saying it would be “simply wrong” to waste time on assessment rather than lessons.

Mr Morpurgo said now is the perfect time to overhaul the school system, which he believes is fixated on testing to the detriment of everything else.

“Take the tension and fear away — there is a chance now. It would be wonderful if people could sit back and rethink what it is we are educating our children for,” he said. “Give teachers a chance to teach how they would like to teach, rather than how they have been told they must teach for the test.”

Michael Morpurgo
PA

It comes after a summer of exam chaos, when students were given grades based on teacher assessments moderated by an algorithm. The algorithm was quickly discredited and marks were recalculated based solely on teacher assessments

Mr Morpurgo said: “The Government singularly failed to observe respect for the teacher.

“The exams were supposed to be teacher assessed and they changed their minds because they thought the teachers might be somehow overstating the marks... we have got ourselves fixed into these grades meaning everything and they just don’t.”

There is now a campaign for next year’s exams to be delayed or modified to take into account the huge amount of work missed while schools were closed. Education Secretary Gavin Williamson has promised an answer in October.

A spokeswoman for the Department for Education said exams are expected to take place next year but measures including a “short delay to the exam timetable and subject-specific changes to reduce pressure on teaching time” may be introduced.

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