Earlier this month, education secretary Gavin Williamson announced in the House of Commons that the summer set of GCSE and A-Level exams was to be cancelled. Whilst not totally unpredicted, it was still somewhat of a shock to those who had dedicated a year to studying for them.
Year 11 student Arlo comments: ‘On one hand I’m relieved I won’t have to be put in an exam hall to either casually complete an exam and feel okay or rapidly spiral into a tunnel in my own head and want to dissolve. However, the other part of me is worried, with what happened to last year’s exam students, and I can’t shake the feeling that out government is incapable of sketching a new plan’.
These concerns are not baseless. Last year’s GCSE and A-Level students found themselves rife with tension as the government flitted back and forth between a triple lock system and teacher assessments, finally coming to a decision no more than a week before the results were due to be sent out to students.
Watching the madness of last year, the exam-taking students of today are justifiably worried that they will not receive the grades they need, or deserve. Williamson mentioned that the government had learnt from last year, where the impact of the government’s inability to make their decision was felt ‘painfully by students and their parents’. Although students have been reassured that events will not unfold like the year prior, there is little trust in the leadership who have continuously proved to be unable to make the right decisions for their people.
