28th November 2012 9:00
By Blue Tutors
As news came out this week that one of the most significant changes to the new A’ level system is a ban on resits, critics have emerged saying that this discriminates against students. As private tutors, one of our most common requests is to help students prepare for resits, as we are often called in after a student has achieved a disappointing result in their original exam.
Scrapping January resits is intended to avoid marking discrepancies such as that which occurred this summer. However, whilst these changes help Ofqual clear up the mess after grade boundaries were changed between January and June, they do this by penalising students even further. Students who have suffered illness or bereavement will be forced to wait an entire year to take their exams, and those who cannot afford to stay at school for this extra period will lose out dramatically.
Further, forcing students to wait a year means that opportunities they might have taken advantage of, such as work experience or focussing on university applications, will be lost. One of the key points to be raised here, is the new system works on the assumption that taking more time to be ready for an exam is a bad thing. An A grade in June should be considered the same as an A grade achieved the following January.