High levels of persistent absence and mental ill health have undermined pupils’ GCSE results to be published later this week, headteachers have said, as education experts warn of 300,000 fewer top grades being awarded in England this year.
School leaders who spoke to the Guardian said they experienced unprecedented numbers of pupils failing to turn up or walking out in the middle of exams.
The government in England has already warned that GCSE results released on Thursday will fall significantly this year, as part of its plan to bring grades down abruptly to pre-pandemic levels after three years of generous grading. But headteachers warned schools had been struggling with abnormal levels of anxiety as well as the aftermath of Covid and the effects of the cost of living crisis hitting disadvantaged families in particular.
Evelyn Forde, the headteacher of Copthall school for girls in Mill Hill, north London, said: “This is not a normal year. I know we are all trying to get back to normal, but there are things like the mental health crisis which mean it isn’t normal.
“We had more students absent from exams than we’ve ever had before. We had more students walk out of an exam than we’ve ever had before. I think that’s to do with the whole stress and anxiety they are facing.
“School leaders have tried as much as we can to prepare them, but for some of them, mentally and emotionally, they just found it too much.”
Earlier this year the Guardian reported that one in 10 pupils taking GCSEs in year 11 were absent from school in England each day, an increase of 70% since before the Covid pandemic.
Forde said high absence rates among teachers and the pupils facing exams were likely to depress GCSE results.
“Some of my girls had not had a substantive science teacher for the whole year. We’ve got three unfilled science posts,” Forde said.
Ben Davis, the head of St Ambrose Barlow RC high school in Swinton, Greater Manchester, said high absence rates and the severe disruption caused by Covid had made it difficult to embed good learning habits in the lead-up to this year’s exams.
“I think this year is the one where people are most nervous and most uncertain. They’ve definitely been impacted more than previous year 11s, that’s very evident in the absence statistics,” Davis said.
“Most schools are carrying a large number of pupils who have been persistently absent and that will impact on their overall figures. The immediate concern is for the young people themselves, because they’ve not had the adjustments that previous years have.
“What we’ve seen is a significant impact on young people’s mental health and wellbeing and we think that will play out in their results. Young people who are at some kind of disadvantage because of social or family circumstances, or special education needs are more at risk, undoubtedly.
“A lot of schools have really struggled to do their best by their pupils because the system has worked against them. We’ve all done our absolute level best but it’s been difficult.”
Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said this year’s results would affect how schools in England were treated by Ofsted and in league tables despite so many factors being outside their control.
“This could lead to reduced life chances for these young people and to schools serving disadvantaged communities being penalised by the government’s accountability regime,” Barton said.
“The government has failed to provide young people affected by these factors with sufficient support and it has failed also to reform the school accountability system to make it less punitive and more supportive. Both things need to happen.”
While regulators in Wales and Northern Ireland have opted to be more lenient in the way exams are graded this year, the government in England has pressed ahead with enforcing pre-pandemic grading on this year’s GCSE and A-level results.
Alan Smithers, professor of education at the University of Buckingham, said last week’s A-level results – with a record fall in the proportion of top grades issued – was a “strong pointer” that the exam regulator Ofqual would carry through the plans.
Smithers said the return to 2019 outcomes would mean a record drop in 7, 8 and 9 grades, equivalent to A* to A, affecting an estimated 100,000 students.
“Although the percentage changes may not look much, given the huge number of entries it amounts to a major change, resulting in about 300,000 fewer top grades,” Smithers said.
“This will come as a shock to young people and their parents but it is necessary to restore the value, precision and accuracy of the grades, which got out of hand when examinations could not be held.”
In 2019, 20.6% of entries in England were awarded grades 7 to 9. But with exams scrapped during Covid, the proportion rose to 28.5% through teacher assessment in 2021, before falling back to 26% when exams returned last year.
