ASCL’s Tom Middlehurst shares insights from our recent exams survey and the worrying reasons why we may need urgent reform.

Time for a change?

A significant shift is on the horizon for England’s education system as Professor Becky Francis, Chief Executive of the Education Endowment Foundation, leads a review of national curriculum and assessment practices, which will report back next year.

The review will influence not only what pupils study and how they are assessed, but also look at how schools and colleges are held accountable. Change is in the air. The government has promised that any reforms will be an evolution, not a revolution. In many ways, that is very welcome. As your union, we are acutely aware of the workload implications of any changes to curriculum or assessment and will need to be convinced that any recommendations made by the review are worth the upheaval.

However, it is clear that some reform, to some degree, is urgently needed. A recent ASCL survey on GCSEs (www.ascl.org.uk/GCSEsurvey), found very few leaders and teachers – just 4% – said no change is needed at all to the current system.

The survey of more than 4,600 secondary school teachers and leaders in England, conducted for ASCL by Teacher Tapp in June, asked these questions:

• Is the current number of GCSEs that students take appropriate? n Do you think there are too many terminal papers within specific subjects at GCSE?
• What changes, if any, you would like to see to KS4 assessment?
• What impacts have you noticed in your last Year 11 cohort regarding their mental health and wellbeing?

Worrying findings

The most concerning result was that many teachers and leaders (77%) reported seeing signs of exam anxiety in their students and often with detrimental effects.

This included students not attending school (65%); physical reactions to stress (46%); students arriving at or leaving the exam hall in distress (47%); and students withdrawing from exams (28%). About three-quarters (74%) had students with alternative arrangements in place because of exam anxiety.

While exams are inherently stressful, these results show that GCSEs in their current form are causing far too many wellbeing problems. Much of this can be traced back to reforms introduced in 2015 and rolled out in subsequent years that increased content, difficulty, and the quantity of terminal exams.

NHS figures suggest this is part of a wider epidemic of poor mental health among young people. A study by The Guardian (tinyurl.com/3s8eexwp) revealed that over 500 children a day are referred to mental health services in England for anxiety – more than double the number of referrals before the pandemic.

The reasons for this rise in anxiety are too complex to do justice to in this article, but researchers suggested that they include post-Covid trauma, the climate emergency, concern about global conflict, and – you guessed it – concern about exams and what achievement means for their future opportunities and life chances.

Lest we forget, the first redesigned GCSEs in English language, literature and maths were awarded in 2017 with the rest of the subjects following over the next three years, and before exams were cancelled in 2020. Last year’s Year 11 cohort were one of the first to sit a majority of their GCSEs under an entirety of the reformed specifications, and without the centre assessed grades (CAGs), teacher assessed grades (TAGs), grade protections and mitigations of the previous four years.

As in pre-pandemic years, the system means that a third of young people do not achieve that all-important Grade 4 in English and maths, leading to an endless cycle of humiliating resits and ultimately barring them from a number of professions in the future.

Is it any wonder young people are anxious?

What might reform look like?

It is worth noting that there is no clarion call to jettison the system in its entirety. Most respondents to our survey (77%) felt the current number of GCSEs taken by their students – typically in seven to ten subjects – was about right. Few (9%) were in favour of scrapping national assessments at 16.

Respondents were evenly split on whether the number of papers or hours of terminal examinations in their subject was excessive. However, this varied by subject, with English teachers and humanities teachers more likely to say there were too many terminal assessments (61% and 59% respectively).

We also gave respondents a list of possible changes to GCSEs and asked them which they would like to see. The most popular choice (55%) was reducing content within individual subjects, and this was followed by options for modular exams (51%), and the availability of more vocational subjects at GCSE (50%).

It is worth considering the question of modular exams in a little more detail as this is a hotly debated topic. Those in favour argue that it supports students who find the burden of over 30 hours of terminal exams just too much. Those against cite concerns about over-assessment and students having to study for a modular exam every half-term or so. There are probably ways around this that the curriculum and assessment review could consider – a return to some element of modularity without it necessarily being a full-blown modular system. It is interesting to note two things.

1. No specific reform attracted overwhelming support (say 80% or 90%).
2. But we can conclude that almost all respondents do favour reform of some description as only 4% wanted “no changes”.

We might sum the responses up by saying views are mixed on what should be done, but there is a general feeling something must happen. That points to the difficulty faced by the curriculum and assessment review in deciding what should and should not be changed. It’s a tough gig.

Finally, we should also spare a moment on how this links to the post-16 system and the fate of the forgotten third who do not achieve the Grade 4 benchmark in English and maths.

The treadmill of resits they are currently compelled to take is surely a more straightforward question than how we might reform GCSEs themselves. This requirement is brutal and demoralising and should be scrapped. That must happen sooner rather than later.

Please do let us know what you think on any of this. Write to tellus@ascl.org.uk

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The most concerning result was that many teachers and leaders (77%) reported seeing signs of exam anxiety in their students and often with detrimental effects.

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Tom Middlehurst
ASCL Curriculum, Assessment and Inspection Specialist
@Tom_Middlehurst

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