New performance measures to assess and compare school standards will be announced early next term, Education Minister Jeremy Miles said today. Published school performance measures, including tables of A* to C grades at GCSE, were halted during Covid and some have been abandoned all together.
Speaking as Wales posted lower GCSE grades after the first sat summer exams for three years, Mr Miles said an announcement on revised performance measures will be made early next term. This will look at more than just qualification results and will include the ethos of schools in line with the aims of the new curriculum, he said.
"We suspended performance measures during Covid and there will be an announcement on that soon. We want to see a range of ways schools are evaluated. Qualifications will continue to be an important part of that, but the ethos of the new curriculum points us to a much wider range."
Read more: You can follow our live GCSEs analysis, updates and reaction as teenagers around Wales formally receive their results here.
School colour code rankings have been abandoned and Estyn inspections, paused during the pandemic, have been revised and no longer have five areas schools are ranked on. The old five A* to C GCSE grades, including maths, Welsh and English, have also been halted.
This summer's exam results cannot be compared with previous years because of the different circumstances and assessment methods, say Regulator Qualifications Wales, exam board WJEC, the Welsh Government and headteachers. Today's GCSE results, like A level results, are lower than last year's record grades under teacher assessment, but higher than those when exams were last sat in 2019.
Mr Miles said the most important thing was that students were treated fairly and could progress. He believes that has been achieved with adaptations to this year's exams: "The focus this year was on making sure young people can progress. That will continue to be the focus.
Exams will be changed again next year to take account of the ongoing impact Covid disruption and remote learning have had. The regulator Qualifications Wales will look at grade boundaries and marks for next summer's exams in the autumn.
"Qualifications Wales will also be looking at giving advance warning about exam content. What they have said is that content will not be reduced but there will be advance information about what exams will contain.
"I think exams have been the fairest way to assess pupils this year. We want the next school year to provide learners with the best possible education that responds to the disruption already seen."
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