England has one of the most exam-driven educational systems in the world. In 2019, partly in response to parents’ and teachers’ reports of the pressures these tests were exerting on the young, the Labour party proposed scrapping SATs for 7- and 11-year-olds in its election manifesto.
'The US, France and Germany have a much lighter touch and are far less dependent on dozens of sittings,' said Eddie Playfair, Senior Policy Manager at the Association of Colleges (AoC). Germany and Scandinavia have more teacher assessment while the French Baccalaureate is a sit down exam but has far fewer papers than our A-level model.
The sheer scale of public exams in England is phenomenal and collapsed overnight because, unlike other countries, we have come to rely on a do or die, pen and paper assessment in an examination hall at the end of a course of study.
Coronavirus showed that this system was not fit for purpose. In fact, it had just about everything wrong with it: social distancing put paid to examination halls, there was no course work and no prior units banked that could count towards the final grade.
How did it end up like this?
It wasn't always the case. we used to have coursework but the government decided that was 'too easy'. AS levels used to count towards the final A level mark and in the old GCSE maths schemes, pupils often had an official assessment at the end of individual maths units.
Politics shaped the current system,' said Matt Wingfield, Chairman of The e-Assessment Association, 'Michael Gove was a big influence on our current approach to exams, reducing coursework assessment to almost zero, and switching the political focus of the exam from assessing students to measuring the performance of the school.'
