THE Covid-19 crisis has meant that this year, out of necessity, GCSE exams have been abandoned in favour of teacher assessment. 

There has been a reluctant admission that teachers do in fact know the capability of their pupils and can be trusted to grade them. 

Current Year 10 pupils will have missed months of their education so far with more disruption expected. 

Schools, of course, have been working valiantly to provide meaningful work to pupils while they are at home, but this is no substitute for face-to-face interaction. 

It also puts at a disadvantage those without access to technology. Many pupils are still waiting for the promised laptops and 4G routers from the government, or those without access to private tutors. 

It would be unfair to ask them to sit a GCSE exam next summer with such a massive break in their education. 

This is not the case for all pupils, of course. I’ve been told by teachers at private schools that some schools have been gloating about how they can exploit this situation. 

With access to top-of-the-range technology and learning platforms, many have been able to continue lessons with very little interruption — though the impact on the wellbeing of staff and pupils is another matter.

In response to this, a petition has been set up calling for a reduction of curriculum content for Year 10 and 12 students who will sit exams in 2021. 

The petition has received over 100,000 signatures already. While the intentions of this are good, I would go further and suggest that what better time is there than now to scrap these outdated exams for good?

Kenneth Baker introduced GCSEs in the late 1980s in his term as education secretary. 

Back then, it could be argued, they made sense, but even he believes their time has come. 

Back in the ’80s for many pupils the age of 16 was the end of their school career. Having a single, standardised test made sense. 

Now, all pupils are required to stay on in school, college or apprenticeships till the age of 18. 

What is the point of having a high-stakes exam at the age of 16, two years prior to another series of high-stakes exams? 

Britain is the only European country to have high-stakes testing at 16. Instead other countries have a system of teacher-moderated assessments and low-stakes testing to check that pupils are making progress. 

As well as being the only country with high-stakes exams at 16, we’re also lagging well behind other countries in terms literacy and numeracy. 

Countries like Finland have children starting school at a much older age than us, yet regularly trounce us in educational measures.  

Such a narrow focus has also led to a narrowing of the curriculum, and schools are now turning to a three-year GCSE course, meaning that 60 per cent of some children’s secondary education is spent studying for their GCSEs. 

Hand in hand with this is a decline in creative subjects as schools try to game the system and focus their energy on just the subjects that “count the most.”

Most worrying for some is the rise of the “knowledge-rich curriculum” — what we used to refer to as “learning it parrot fashion.” 

Rote learning is now the fashion, with pupils having to learn by heart hundreds of quotes, poems and statistics. 

So, with all these issues stacked against it, why does the government persist with this system? 

It does so because the point of GCSEs is to force a fake market system onto schools. 

In the 1980s the Tory government started to introduce “new public management” (NPM) into Britain. 

The idea of this was to blur the boundaries between the public and private sectors. With it came the idea of “incentivisation” to improve against targets. 

GCSEs allow the government to place schools into a national league table. 

These league tables then allow parents to make a “choice” about where to send their children to school. 

In reality this choice is only really for those who can afford to move into the catchment area or have the free time or inclination to attend church sessions. 

The pressure put on schools is then compounded by Ofsted which will swoop down on any school falling behind or even “coasting.” 

This pressure is then, needless to say, passed on to teachers. 

A YouGov survey found 75 per cent of teachers in the UK reported symptoms of stress. 

Teachers feel pressured to “teach to the test,” reducing autonomy and increasing alienation. It’s no wonder that burnout is so common in the profession.

GCSEs are also a drain on school budgets. The weighted average price of a GCSE exam is nearly £40 per pupil (4.6 million 16-year-olds took GCSE exams in the UK in 2019), per exam and these are constantly rising. 

In fact, the price of exams has risen by 17 per cent in the past three years, driven by another false market system for exams, meaning a huge and pointless cost to schools. 

Then there is the cost to parents: revision guides, online packages, private tutors. 

These high-pressure exams are also a leading cause of stress in young people. 

Childline reported thousands of calls to its helpline in the lead-up to GCSE tests from children overwhelmed by the pressure they feel. 

A survey conducted by the National Education Union found that 73 per cent of respondents believe that student mental health has worsened since the introduction of reformed GCSE exams. 

Top civil servant Gus O’Donnell who served under both Labour and Tory governments warned us about this back in 2018 when he said that the exam factory is leading to a “troubled generation.” 

Coupled with this stress is a massive decrease in funding for children’s mental health services, creating a perfect storm. 

So let’s use the Covid-19 crisis as an opportunity to get rid of GCSEs, improve pupil and teacher wellbeing and save a fortune while we’re at it.