Last week, Munira pressed the Schools Minister to be clear about what end of year assessments will look like in 2022. Pupils, parents and teachers have suffered exponentially over the past two years with assessments, and deserve to begin the Autumn term with a clear framework in place. GCSEs, A-Levels and vocational qualifications have been hugely disrupted, leading to increasingly high levels of anxiety and stress for many young people, at this critical stage.

In response, the Minister for Schools stated that exams in 2022 will go ahead and schools will teach the full curriculum. However, it was not confirmed when a final plan would be communicated.

Munira asked:

“In my recent visits to secondary schools in Twickenham, year 10 and 12 pupils told me how anxious they are because of the lack of clarity on exams in 2022—whether they will even go ahead, how they might be assessed and what they might be assessed on. Teachers told me that, with all the disruption, they want to focus their precious face-to-face teaching time on parts of the syllabus that will definitely be assessed next year. Can the Minister please commit to putting pupils, parents and teachers out of their misery by providing a clear steer on 2022 assessments, and not sometime in the autumn but by the beginning of September?”

The Schools Minister responded:

“We published the consultation, jointly with Ofqual, on 12 July, and it sets out our proposals for how we will conduct exams in 2022. The Secretary of State has made it very clear that our plan is for exams to go ahead, and we want schools to teach the full curriculum. The purpose of the adaptations is to make the exams as fair as possible for students and to give them confidence in taking those exams, given the disruption they have suffered over the past 16 months.”