What do you think should happen with exams this year?

Disagree...

Aha, it's just my stress talking. I really thought exams should have gone ahead last year, but when I'm the one having to do them under such circumstances I just don't think I can handle it.

Cancel exams and give everybody A*’s and A’s

Just kidding. Tbh, I feel like the government i England is reluctant to cancel exams because of the fiasco that happened this year. If they use the idea of CAG’s, that means they only have two options:

1. Apply the same standardisation they used this year and cause outrage again at lowered grades or

2. Give everyone their teacher assed grades which would no doubt cause massive grade inflation for the 2021 results and 2020 results.

Neither option is good, so I honestly feel like they will push for exams to happen even if it means delaying them until July or August time. Speaking as someone who received CAGs for my a-levels this summer, me and a lot of other people I know would have honestly just preferred to have exams delayed until July and results day in September. Most uni courses don’t start until late September anyway so people would have gotten results in time. Sure, it would have caused an issue for people’s whose courses start earlier or people who needed to go through clearing and adjustment etc, but still, people could’ve joined courses late. Better to miss a few months of uni than be forced to take a gap year.

Idk what will happen with exams, but hopefully they will go ahead. If they do get cancelled and CAG’s get used again, let’s hope this time that exam boards ask for evidence to back up CAG’s so there’s no unfair downgrading or grade inflation. Maybe teachers need to send in 2 or 3 of the most recent mocks to back up a grade, or where a mock was taken use an AP. It’s not a perfect solution, given that there’s no real standardisation with mocks etc, but some evidence needs to be used if CAGs do happen again. I think if the government plan on cancelling exams or are considering using CAG’s, then exam boards should set a standardised mock. That way, every student from every school, private or not, high achieving or not, will have at least one of the same mock done at the same time. Of course, that also isn’t a perfect solution as not everyone will have covered the same amount of content, and some schools could fake or inflate mock answers results. Sigh, there’s really no good solution to this. The best solution is to just do exams as normal as we can. Cancelling them just opens a can of worms.

As a student who received CAG’s this year I can tell you that having teachers calculate grades for you just isn’t the right way to go about it again. I would have done anything to have taken the exams over going through all the stress the CAG’s put me and a lot of other people through. No matter what anyone says they aren’t fairly calculated, teachers can state they had evidence to give you a certain grade but realistically they’re going to put their ‘favourite’ students over students they didn’t get along with as much if it’s a boundary situation. A lot of us had interviews during the mock period and were told that mocks were just used to help US find areas of weakness, but when it came to deciding our grades, they were the main factor to be used. Some schools took advantage of the system and inflated grades for students where they weren’t likely to get those sort of grades in the real exam, and some stuck strictly to the government guidelines. I understand that it hasn’t been easy for you guys and you’re all in a difficult situation (I fully agree with all the points given in the first post) but you’re at least able to prepare for the worst- you have the opportunity to revise for mocks and all other aspects of work as hard as you possibly can. We weren’t given the opportunity to prove ourselves, but rather thrown into the deep end. Believe it or not, I came from a private sixth form and still did not receive the grades I deserved (and no it’s not a situation where I received something ridiculous like 2A*’s instead of 3). At least if you end up taking the exams, you’ll have the chance to prove to yourself that you can in fact get the grades you want instead of having someone take that decision away from you and making that choice for themselves. That’s my opinion on it anyway

I think that cancelling exams was a bad idea.

Do them online at home lol
And don't worry about cheating, just reduce the time available so students won't have the time to cheat

I was surprised that your exams were cancelled so early on, and I thought it was a pretty hasty decision. Like I say, I truly feel for your year. The difference I see though is that schools were closed in March, by which point I'd assume most Year 13s at the time would have almost finished their courses. On the other hand, my year have missed significant time, and as I said in my original post some are still off (including myself).

I agree that cancelling exams also brings many problems, but I wonder if it outweighs the ones we're already facing. I imagined a fairer algorithm, although I'm not sure how this would be handled. Taking things like the school's history into account was unfair as it didn't see people as individuals within their institution, so I think that factor would have to be removed for instance. I'm honestly just not sure what would be best anymore. At first I thought standardised mocks were a great idea, but that just seems like we'll be facing the same problems that are seen with the real exams at an earlier time.

I really just can't make up my mind. I'm so stressed.

I completely understand why you'd feel that way. I thought the decision to cancel your exams was so rushed, and it was devastating to see the injustice that followed. I feel for you so much, and I'm sorry you had to experience what you did. I hope you've managed to get through it alright.

I definitely see what you mean. I just don't think there's an easy way out of this unfortunately.


Same here in the case of the year above. I'm just concerned about how much learning has been missed and if it's even possible to catch up. I feel like I'm drowning in work with zero motivation.


Lmao, people will find ways round it unfortunately.

Yeah they were cancelled so early, it was definitely a hasty decision. You know for a fact that the government didn’t actually think it through, hence why they couldn’t figure out how grades would be awarded and when they did figure out, it was stupid. In terms of the current year group though, idk. I personally feel that doing the real exams is still the best option over CAG’s, befuddled no matter how much you try to standardise CAG’s, you can’t. It’s not possible to standardise them enough for them to be fair, a real exam of some sort needs to be done. No option or idea us great atm, and as I’m sure you know our government is useless. I just hope for your years sake that they don’t decide to go ahead with exams and then cancel them closer to the exams.

I think that there can be grade projections, if students cannot take all 4 or 6 units but have taken some units.
This is what we did when exams in HK and Macau are cancelled on 13th October because of a T8 (Typhoon Signal 8).

I don't know about that, I can think of two ways they can get around it, have a former A level student who is their mate do it for them or pay someone else to do it. From what I have seen, the vast majority of people both students and teachers just wouldn't take part in this unethical practise even if money were involved. However if they are rich kids then they could have just enough money to bribe someone

As a student who received CAG’s this year I can tell you that having teachers calculate grades for you just isn’t the right way to go about it again. I would have done anything to have taken the exams over going through all the stress the CAG’s put me and a lot of other people through. No matter what anyone says they aren’t fairly calculated, teachers can state they had evidence to give you a certain grade but realistically they’re going to put their ‘favourite’ students over students they didn’t get along with as much if it’s a boundary situation. A lot of us had interviews during the mock period and were told that mocks were just used to help US find areas of weakness, but when it came to deciding our grades, they were the main factor to be used. Some schools took advantage of the system and inflated grades for students where they weren’t likely to get those sort of grades in the real exam, and some stuck strictly to the government guidelines. I understand that it hasn’t been easy for you guys and you’re all in a difficult situation (I fully agree with all the points given in the first post) but you’re at least able to prepare for the worst- you have the opportunity to revise for mocks and all other aspects of work as hard as you possibly can. We weren’t given the opportunity to prove ourselves, but rather thrown into the deep end. Believe it or not, I came from a private sixth form and still did not receive the grades I deserved (and no it’s not a situation where I received something ridiculous like 2A*’s instead of 3). At least if you end up taking the exams, you’ll have the chance to prove to yourself that you can in fact get the grades you want instead of having someone take that decision away from you and making that choice for themselves. That’s my opinion on it anyway

I definitely agree. I was completely shocked at how quick it all seemed. Ah alas, if only this virus had never appeared. Life could have been so different

I know there's no point lamenting what could have been but this whole thing seems so insane and impossible.

I've actually considered that last part a lot, and it's almost a dangerous suggestion. I've been talking to a close acquaintance recently and she thinks that the government have only said they won't cancel exams so that we don't waste the academic year, but believes that they will inevitably be cancelled closer to the exam season. It's like a conspiracy theory or a 'blip'; I don't really have enough evidence to make it rational but I can't help but let this hope affect my behaviour. I'm just doing whatever work I can to keep my head above the water with no real plan to catch up for exams, because I have this feeling I won't end up sitting them. I call it a "hope" purely because I'm stressed and want them to find a magical solution for me, but I know how silly this may sound. Like you say, CAGs as we know them are certainly not desirable. I just can't help having this faith that someone will find a system to make them work though.


This is actually really interesting to know! Thank you for sharing. I may look into this as I had no idea, and I'd like to see how successful it was, and if there were any problems with grade inflation/devaluation, etc.

I'm not sure how this would work as our exams are completely linear in most cases though, and it sounds as though yours might not have been? Either way it's nice to know more about the world.

This is actually really interesting to know! Thank you for sharing. I may look into this as I had no idea, and I'd like to see how successful it was, and if there were any problems with grade inflation/devaluation, etc.

I'm not sure how this would work as our exams are completely linear in most cases though, and it sounds as though yours might not have been? Either way it's nice to know more about the world.

Yeah I get you, the concept of CAG’s is actually slightly appealing. If you work hard all year, and you’re teachers are fair, you could walk away with good grades without having to actually sit the exam. One the exam day, you could get unlucky and a few questions from your weak topics could come up and you could lose a tonne of marks. It’s annoying isn’t it really? On the one hand, doing the one real exam is desirable because it means that you can lodge yourself and get a fair grade, but on the other hand, getting CAG’s is desirable because it means that you’re being rewarded and recognised for your consistent work. It doesn’t matter if in the real exam you would have gotten unlucky, your consistent work shoes your average grade is an A so you’ll get given an A. But like we have just been discussing throughout this whole thread, CAGs only work well in theory. In reality, they’re a giant mess. But we can’t act like going ahead with real exams isn’t a giant mess of its own. Yeah, that’s what I think as well, that I can’t help but shake the feeling that the exams will get cancelled closer to the exam season. It’s weird though if that’s the case isn’t it? Despite how incompetent our government is with everything, I’d have thought they would have learned not to repeat the same mistakes. The biggest mistake they made this year was cancelling exams without a plan. And then failing to share those plans with teachers properly. Really, if they’re thinking of cancelling exams they should just announce it now so students and teachers can prepare.

I think that if you took Paper 1 and Paper 2, but your mum caught COVID the night before Paper 3 and you have to self-isolate, your marks for Paper 1 and 2 will be used to predict what you would have gotten in Paper 3.
This has also happened in Singapore when some students had their papers stolen in 2018.

Ngl I been working my butt off for all my subjects for them not to go ahead.

My predicted grades are decent but I’ll be totally upset if it wasn’t at-least in my control, regardless if they’re good or not.

I've never heard this argument before. I go to an independent so I'm interested.

By your exams being harder do you mean the internal ones? If so, wouldn't your teachers be able to show where you would be compared to the rest of the nation? I'm also curious at how you know that they're significantly harder, as I would assume you have to do past questions just like everyone else. Not trying to deny your claims, but I'm curious at to how much harder they can make them; some state schools also use hard questions in mocks so that students are potentially prepared for anything in the real exam, as I've seen with some of the ones around me.

The internal exams are significantly harder, yes. For example, in my GCSE January mocks most of my year came out with grades ranging between 3-6 (they construct papers, we don't use past papers), and in the GCSEs we came out with 8s/9s. Say if that happened this year, our teachers would have to log those gross mock grades in and we would have been seriously underpredicted.

I mean, I have no idea if the teachers would be able to show that. All I know that is a LOT of Year 13s in my school got underpredicted, and missed their uni places. I just hope exams aren't cancelled because I don't want that huge fiasco happening again

Wales is likely to cancel 2021 GCSES and limit the A level Exams. I think Emgland and Northern Ireland will follow suit. I think exams should be cancelled and teachers should use teacher assessed grades. Then once grades have been submitted, exam boards ask schools for evidence for random students to ensure everything is fair, I'm going gcses and haven't been in school once this term due to positive cases in my bubble.

Teacher assessed grades are widely inaccurate, unstandardised, biased and lead to massive grade inflation.