Education: A Testing Issue
The Briefing Room
BBC
4.8 • 731 Ratings
🗓️ 22 October 2020
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Scotland has cancelled its National 5 school exams next summer - should the rest of the UK follow?
On The Briefing Room David Aaronovitch asks if exams should go ahead next year, and can governments ensure assessments are fair?
Contributors:
Branwen Jeffreys, BBC education editor
Prof Anna Vignoles, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge
Laura McInerney, former editor of Schools Week
Natalie Perera, executive director at the Education Policy Institute
Prof Lindsay Paterson, University of Edinburgh.
Producers: Kirsteen Knight, Bob Howard and Rosamund Jones Editor: Jasper Corbett
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:07.5 | Welcome to the briefing room with me, David Aronovich. |
| 0:10.9 | You, me, top experts of virtual meeting room and 28 minutes. |
| 0:16.3 | This week, should school exams be abolished in this pandemic academic year? |
| 0:29.7 | There are plenty of casualties of COVID-19, and education in schools has been one of them. |
| 0:35.8 | There was the massive examinations row in August, |
| 0:38.7 | and the issue of what to do about children coming up for assessment in 2021 |
| 0:42.4 | is now becoming urgent. |
| 0:44.9 | In all four countries of the United Kingdom, |
| 0:47.5 | the approach looks like being different, sometimes very different. |
| 0:51.9 | So should we just abolish exams in this pandemic year? Come inside the briefing room |
| 0:57.0 | and together we'll find out. Because education is devolved, we need to start by looking at the |
| 1:07.5 | picture seven months into the pandemic across the four nations of the UK. |
| 1:13.0 | Brownwyn Jeffries is the BBC's education editor. |
| 1:16.5 | Brownwin, announcements this week suggest that some nations within the UK are taking different decisions about keeping schools open. |
| 1:23.5 | Can you tell me what decisions have been made and maybe we should start with Wales? |
| 1:27.1 | Well, in Wales, the whole country is going into a short, sharp national lockdown |
| 1:32.2 | in which secondary schools, when they reopen after the half term, |
| 1:37.1 | it'll only be for children in years seven and eight. |
| 1:41.2 | That's the first two years in secondary school. |
| 1:43.9 | The other older pupils, |
| 1:45.9 | including those studying for GCSE's, AS&A levels, will continue their learning at home for an |
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