As exams draw nearer, 15-18 year olds across the country begin the enduring and seemingly endless task of revision. But with the new recently published advanced information, how much lenience will the government provide students with this exam season?
Just months before the start of the GCSE and A level exam period, all exam boards released topic lists covering what will and will not be assessed this summer. Students were provided with topic-specific specification points to follow in order to maximise their revision following the disruption caused by Covid-19, which had a large impact on education.
A 16-year-old from Twickenham who will sit ten GCSE exams this summer stated that the usefulness of the information provided ‘depends on the subject’, with the content of certain subjects like biology and history being ‘massively reduced’ while ‘maths and chemistry are pretty much the same’. She also stated that many of her friends felt that the advanced information was ‘confusing and convoluted’, and had her teacher not talked her through it, she ‘wouldn’t know where to start’.
The teenager also spoke about her experiences of the impacts of the disruption of Covid-19 on education. ‘There will be huge disparities between students in advantaged and disadvantaged areas as a result of the disruption of Covid-19. Some of my friends were given laptops and had online classes every day, while others did very little work during lockdown or isolation periods’. The different resources schools were able to provide during remote learning will potentially still have an impact on the grades of students this summer despite the actions taken by exam boards in an attempt to eradicate any unfairness.
Whilst students continue to work hard for exams this summer for the first time in three years, the anxiously awaited results day in August will surely be telling about the real impacts of Covid-19.
