Dear Parent/Carer
Following the Secretary of State for Education’s announcement today, we wanted to keep you updated.
As it stands, GCSE and A-Level examinations in the summer are cancelled. These will be replaced by a form of “teacher assessment”, the nature of which is still uncertain and we await further guidance from the Government. This means that it is vitally important that all students continue to fully engage in online learning and the courses that they are currently studying.
Teachers will continue to plan and deliver high-quality online learning and assessment. With two terms still to take place before the end of the year and submission of grades, the work undertaken between now and then will be extremely important in the awarding of grades in the summer, in whatever form that may be.
In the announcement, there was no inclusion of vocational examinations for awarding organisations such as BTEC, OCR Nationals, City & Guilds or CACHE. With this in mind, it is essential to know that the Year 11 and 13 vocational examinations will continue to go ahead as planned over the coming weeks. We believe it is right to provide students with the opportunity to take these exams as we know that students have studied hard in preparation for these.
We understand that parents and students will be anxious about sitting these assessments. Our protocols ensure that the school’s examination rooms are Covid secure and that they are as safe as possible.
Under these difficult circumstances students may be anxious about their readiness to undertake these examinations. We completely understand and as we have previously said – you have our complete support should you choose not to undertake them at this time.
As ever please do not hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions.
Mr S Gilby
Headteacher