Although she returned to the personal exams this year, Ms. Saxton told the conference she wanted to see students receive qualifications that were not “impaired to the point that they could not serve the purpose of advancement or employment.”
“The right thing to do is to get back to normal … We want to get back to assessment before the pandemic,” she said, adding that students really, really want to take their exams.
“They want to prove themselves in what they consider to be the fairest form of assessment that answers the same questions as their peers at the same time, in the same way and marked by impartial adults.”
Girls love difficult math
Her remarks came when the children’s commissioner said the girls “like difficult math” as an obvious criticism of comments from another government, king of the girls’ reluctance to study A-level physics.
Speaking also at the CST annual conference, Lady Rachel de Souza said she had opened Sir Isaac Newton, a free school of mathematics and science after 16 years in Norwich, adding: “I just want to tell you that I think girls love difficult mathematics .
“And the girls in Big Ask [her survey of children post-pandemic] with whom I spoke we talked about the importance of female role models for STEM, it was more of a problem to enter the classroom when there were all the boys in physics. Not that they couldn’t do difficult math. “
Dam Rachel added that in the Big Ask study, when she asked why children are worried about exams, she found that “it’s not about exams and continuous assessment and it’s not a lack of willingness to work hard.”
“They were worried about the nature of the high stakes in terms of moving on to the next stage and the possibility of finding a job.”
Earlier this year, Catherine Birbalsing, king of government social mobility, said “physics is not something girls like” and that “there are many difficult maths that I think they prefer not to do.”
Dam Rachel also told the conference that the number one priority for schools and academic trusts would be to return children to school in September, so she set a 100 percent attendance target for the autumn 2022 deadline.
“Whether it’s the Secretary of State or anyone standing here, we want the resources to go.”
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