News

Exams Update

Wednesday 1 April 2020

UAL qualifications

We are awaiting further clarification from UAL on how your grades will be calculated for your qualification.

Until then, it is essential that you continue to engage with your Class Team & Tutors and complete all your work to the best of your ability. 

We will continue to deliver the FMP, to ensure that you are not missing out on developing essential skills and building your portfolio to support your next steps. 

Creating work for internal progression is extremely important and conditional offers require you to achieve Merit or Distinction at FMP. We therefore are considering issuing notional grades for FMP work to assist with this.  

Likewise, it is essential that any students attending English and Maths should continue as directed.

Those who were planning on going to University, should be very mindful of using this time to develop their portfolio. We want to support you to be in a strong position ready to face the current uncertainty around university admissions or later employment.

We are also considering ways of creating some sort of alternative end of year show - more details to follow.

The news item below, and the information on the following link, should be read in conjunction with this update.

https://www.arts.ac.uk/partnerships/ual-awarding-body/stories/ual-awarding-body-covid-19

GCSE English and Maths Grades 2020

Exam boards will provide a calculated grade to each student which reflects their performance as fairly as possible. All grades awarded will go through a moderation process to ensure that the grades are consistent across all exam boards (Pearson and AQA for East Surrey College).

In order to ensure grades fairly reflect ability Exam boards will be asking teachers, who know their students well, to submit their judgement about the grade that they believe the student would have received if exams had gone ahead. It will not be solely based on predicted grades.

Teachers will be asked to take into account a range of evidence and data including performance on practice assessments but also non-exam assessment/class work produced. At East Surrey College and John Ruskin College, teachers will review the progress that students make in using the Century on-line teaching, learning and assessment tool when submitting proposed grades.

Exam boards will then combine this information with other data, including prior attainment, and use this information to produce a calculated grade for each student, which will be a best assessment of the work they have put in.

This process needs to be finalised and more details and guidance will follow, however between now and the planned exam dates it is important that you complete all work set by your teachers and produce work that truly reflects your best knowledge to help support accurate tutor assessment.

Monday 30 March 2020

Information for students, families and guardians

We know that many of you will be concerned about the position on examinations and assessments that were due to take place in May/June 2020.  The following information has been received from Ofqual which sets out the position at this time.  We will of course be keeping students updated with regard to their particular qualifications as soon as more information is available.  However, it is ESSENTIAL that students continue to commit to their studies and to completing assignments and all other work set by teachers.  By continuing to complete work to the highest standards, this places students in a strong position to impact on their final grade award but also to demonstrate their skill development for progression.  Further clarity is being sought for those studying UAL qualifications.

All students undertaking English and maths GCSE and Functional Skills have received additional information concerning the importance of committing to improving their skills.  This includes the regular use of CENTURY software.
 
We are rapidly working up plans to implement the arrangements the Secretary of State for Education has set out for exams this summer, and with exam boards and teaching bodies, are making considerable progress.

Students understandably want reassurance, and teachers urgently need to know what to do, and when. We expect to publish detailed information about the process and timetable which will apply this summer next week. This will include the steps we would like teachers to follow and more detailed guidance on how to consider the full range of evidence they will have available when submitting their assessment grades. We are talking to teaching representatives to make sure that what we are planning is manageable and appropriate, so that students, parents, carers and teachers can have confidence in the approach.

We will outline by Easter the process we will follow to make sure grades are fair across schools and colleges, as well as our proposals for appeals. We will also say more as soon as possible about the arrangements for additional exams in the new academic year.

We want to reassure students waiting for news that we are doing everything we can to make sure they are not disadvantaged by these unprecedented circumstances.