Students could face yet another year of cancelled exams because of Covid absences, headteachers have warned, the I newspaper reports.
Schools across England are already making preparations for a third year of cancelled GCSE and A-Level exams in 2022.
The Government published contingency guidance in November, which told schools to hold three sets of mock exams in class to provide evidence of pupil performance. But even those tests, some of which were due to be held in January, are now in jeopardy as Covid cases soar.
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of school leaders’ union NAHT, said: “With soaring Covid-related absence rates this term, schools are aware that education could look very different in January, and we could be talking about a very different type of provision at the start of next year.
“That has huge implications for things like exams and assessment. School leaders will therefore be making contingency plans in case the situation gets worse. That is just the sensible and responsible thing to do.”
A local council education chief in the South West added: “It’s a question of whether it would be fair on those students who have already missed weeks and weeks of schooling to put them through the full exam process.
“If schools are forced to close again to the pandemic that would be the final straw, and make the cancelling of all exams again a near certainty.
“But, even without a return to online learning, we’re heading in that direction.”
The story comes as commentator Celia Walden wrote in The Telegraph that the prospect of children returning to online learning in January reduced parents to “deep, shoulder-shaking sobs”.
She said virtual learning should not be accepted as a “fait accompli” and other mitigations such as vaccines and might “save a generation of kids from online purdah.”