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How GCSEs must change after Covid-19

The GCSE examination system has been plunged into chaos. When the pandemic is under control, we cannot simply return to the status quo. Chloe Testa proposes a new approach


If you had told me in January that the rigid backbone of the English schooling system, the dreaded overlord known as GCSE, would be cancelled within a matter of weeks, I would have laughed in your face.

Surely nothing could ever stop the tsunami of public examinations, a force that has been in motion since 1951? And especially not with the exams themselves a mere two months away?

But one minute we were planning interventions and Easter catch-up sessions, and the next the proverbial rug had been ripped out from underneath us.

The pandemic threw the entire world into new and completely uncharted territory. We have been left to scramble around in the dark, pull grades from proverbial hats and assign what we thought students would have gotten if they did sit the exams without any of this happening.

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