When I first heard in March that my GCSEs would be cancelled, the reality of the situation hadn’t hit. The developments came at breakneck speed. With the rapid spread of Covid-19, the near future seemed so divorced from the chaos of our new reality that it was not even worth thinking about.
So much was up in the air that to nail anything down about the future seemed futile. So it was not anxiety about the future that I was initially confronted with. My classmates and I were all wrapped up in the rapidly changing present which swept through the country. The idea of the future seemed so foreign that it could not evoke any concern. I hardly thought about the topic of my grades.
As a 16-year-old with very few responsibilities I can perhaps be excused for my lack of long-term thinking, but the Government cannot. As March changed to April and April to May, as the initial shock to the system wore off, I began to wonder how my academic life would pan out come August.
The first thought I had was how absurd it was for us to have to wait until the traditional results day given our teachers already had our grades assessed months before. This was until I learned that, due to the time needed for Ofqual’s algorithms to work (I use this verb in the weakest of senses), our grades could not be immediately returned to us.
Up until that point, I had lived in blissful ignorance trying to enjoy my GCSE-free summer as best I could. The thought that an algorithm would determine our grades exposed me to the reality that many students’ futures involving sixth-form college choices and higher education will be dashed.
Of course the algorithm has been scrapped and teacher assessments will now be used, which is a relief. But I still feel that I have missed out from showing my true potential and my abilities at their peak.
The stress and the breakdowns caused by exam season are so common we accept them
Aside from the uncertainty and anxiety this administrative incompetence has given us, it has shown up the flaws of the GCSE system of weighing the end of course exams as the be-all-and-end-all. That prioritised weighting means all your eggs are put in one basket. The problems with that are all too clear.
The stress and breakdowns caused by exam season are so common in our schools that we have come to accept them as inescapable facts of education. Yet I don’t see end-of-course exams to be absolutely critical to the evaluation of our ability.
At certain points, the reliance on them seems counterintuitive: how could a series of tests two to three hours long, clustered at the end of a course, hope to accurately predict our capacity for sustained problem-solving in the workplace involving month-long projects?
Our absolute focus on the end of the course has made us utterly dependent on the numbered/lettered grade, which has made us vulnerable to Ofqual’s algorithms . It is ironic: a year ago students were up all night because they had exams; now we are insomniacs precisely because we have not.
Perhaps if the grading system was less ignorant about the performance of students throughout the two years we study, and not just focused on the end, I, like many others, would be able to rest easier at this time.
Moyo Fagbenro is a student at City of London School for Girls