NI exam students want answers on how grades will be decided

That is according to A-level student Cormac Savage, who leads a students union set up following the debacle surrounding the cancellation of exams and the awarding of grades last year.

The cancellation of this year’s exams was announced at Stormont by Education Minister Peter Weir on Wednesday.

But when pressed by MLAs in the Assembly, Mr Weir declined to spell out what arrangements would be put in place to award grades in the absence of formal exams – stressing the need to get the arrangements “right” rather than moving too quickly.

Mr Savage, a 17-year-old A-level student at St Patrick’s Grammar, Downpatrick who has recently accepted an offer to study at Harvard University in the USA, said students need to know what they will be working towards this year in the absence of exams.

“It’s disappointing that the education minister stood up and made the announcement without telling us how our grades will be decided. A lot of young people are feeling the anxiety that has been brought with that,” he said.

“We (Secondary Students’ Union of Northern Ireland) have been seeing a lot of students reaching out to us, desperate for answers.”

He added: “But overall we think this does give the minister a chance to come up with a proper, robust system for calculating grades that is going to trust our teachers and leave our students confident that the grades they are given will be deserved. We do wish there had been an announcement sooner.”

Principal of Lagan College, Amanda McNamee, said she and other principals had made their views known to the exams body CCEA on possible ways forward.

“I have been on a CCEA principals’ group and I have to acknowledge that CCEA have been discussing contingency plans with principals in the background,” she said. “Whilst we don’t yet have a contingency plan issued, they have certainly been discussing contingencies.”

She added: “In Lagan College we would certainly have advocated for exams if it was possible for children to undertake exams, but as term one continued it became increasingly difficult for school leaders to see how that would be tenable.

“Now, with the second lockdown being called, I understand why the Northern Ireland Executive and the education minister has had to move to considering alternative contingency plans.

“In terms of centre assessed grades, our school would feel very readily able – knowing the individual students as we do, their potential, and the progress they have been making in term one – to tak part again in allocating centre-assessed grades. I would envisage that we will have more clarity soon.”