Understanding Summer 2023's Exam Changes: What Might they Mean for Grades?
Whether it’s GCSEs or A-Level results that you’re most focused on in 2023, the dates in question are fast approaching— it’s officially reached calendar-watching season, where educators and learners alike have to play the waiting game.
Whether it’s KS2 SATs, GCSEs or A-Level results that you’re most focused on in 2023, the dates in question are fast approaching— it’s officially reached calendar-watching season, where educators and learners alike have to play the waiting game.
It’s been a more business as usual kind of exam season than in the previous few years. Learners have headed back into the exam halls, teacher-assessed grading has largely shifted back toward traditional coursework and exam mark systems, and more of the grade safety rails have been removed, meaning that marks on the whole will return to pre-pandemic standards of assessment. But what do all these shifts mean for our learners?
Although the pandemic is over, it’s still making its presence felt in education. What might we be looking at when children and young people check their emails and open their envelopes this time around?
A return to pre-pandemic national grade breakdowns? Dr. Jo Saxton, head of England’s exams regulator Ofqual outlines that GCSE results will be similar to pre-pandemic levels after being significantly higher in 2020 and 2021 as a result of safeguarded assessment structures to compensate for pandemic conditions. “There’s no doubt that the pandemic has cast a long shadow, and that’s partly why we’ve put some protections in place,” Dr. Saxton commented to the BBC. “A student should be able to get a grade that they would have got had there not been a pandemic, even if the quality of their work is a little bit weaker.”
Higher results in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland? GCSE and A-Level Grades across other UK countries look like they may potentially come in higher on average than England’s own, as exam regulatory bodies in these countries have chosen to maintain ‘Covid-era’ modifications to exams, instead of removing the majority of them as England has done. This means that pandemic changes to grade boundary setting and assessment structures still have the potential to ‘boost grades’ as many argue that they did during the previous couple of exam seasons.
Less marks lost on incorrect formulae and equations than in England in 2019? One of the few Covid-era changes that England has opted to keep in for the 2023 exam season is continuing the practice of supplying certain relevant formulae and equations on maths, chemistry and physics papers. This means that there’s less pressure on learners to remember these structures and replicate them successfully in the exam; meaning more chance of correctly applying them and less chance to lose marks in these questions by misremembering or confusing the item.
More retakes, especially at end-of-stage? Learners taking end-of-stage exams might opt to retake more than in previous years. As assessment criteria is pulled back in line with 2019 standards, we’ll be looking at a set of exam-takers who have suffered from the pandemic’s effects on learning, but won’t be subject to anywhere near as many of the grade safeguards that have been in place during pervious assessment seasons. As we move out of the pandemic era, we’re also likely to see higher learning institutions and programs be less lenient with required grades… meaning that more learners might need to make another attempt at gaining entry.
More STEM focus in college and university choices, and less Humanities entrants in 2023? It's good news for STEM careers: Statistics, Maths and Computing GCSE entries are up by 18.4%, 5% and 14.5% respectively. The trend doesn’t continue into the humanities and languages, with marginal dips in entry for Art, Drama and Music across both GCSE and A-Level, and varying moderate drops in the number of entrants into Modern Foreign Languages at GCSE and A-Level like German, Spanish and French. This means less university entrants in these subjects, and more in STEM... but will the grades add up?
It's an interesting set of predictions. Safeguards have been dialled back, and learners are facing an exam assessment structure very similar to the one that they’d have faced in 2019, but we’re still dealing with a cohort of learners who have spent a long time learning in isolation, away from their class teachers, and might not have developed skills that accurately represent their full potential.
It's also interesting to note that an extended period of economic uncertainty in the UK has likely prompted learners toward gravitating into subjects with more ‘definite’ career paths at the end of them, like Stats and Computing— but what of the distribution of results on the other side, when learners whose strengths and interests really lie in the humanities may have made STEM-based choices as a means of trying to create a more secure career foundation for the future?
Only the results will tell, and it’s set to be an interesting year for educators, especially those who have taken an end-of-stage class through to exams this summer.