Letter to Y11/Y13 students, parents and carers

Dear Parent/Carer,

As you will be aware, following the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, the government has decided that the Summer 2021 examination series will not go ahead as planned. Instead, teachers will determine grades for qualifications this summer, based upon a range of evidence. These grades will be reviewed by the exam boards who designed each course, before awarding the final grades which reflect each student’s performance on content that has been taught, and allow students to confidently progress to the next stage of their education or into employment.

We have setup a dedicated webpage of our website that contains all of the latest information and our Centre Policy and documentation for this summer’s Teacher Assessed Grades (TAG) process. This webpage will also be updated with our arrangements for results days. A-level results day is Tuesday 10^th August 2021 at 10am. GCSE results day is Thursday 12^th August 2021 at 10am.

This can be accessed at this link: http://www.havelockacademy.co.uk/Summer-2021-Key-Information

Teachers will initially determine grades, which will then be reviewed by the Academy’s leadership teams and exam boards. The professional judgement of teachers will only be based on what students have been taught and teachers will use a range of evidence from across the course of study to make their decision.

Teachers can assess based on:

• Records of performance on the content that has been taught over the entire course of study.
• Non-exam assessment, often referred to as coursework or internal assessments, even if not fully completed.
• Work produced in tasks set by the Academy that reflects the specification, format and marking of exam boards. This could include substantial classwork, homework, internal tests or mock exams. The Academy had a mock examination series running between 4^th and 17^th May 2021.
• The Academy also have the option to set tests in order to gather further evidence. Teachers can develop these tests or use assessment materials provided by the exam boards. Importantly, these tests are not formal exams, nor are they designed to play the role of exams.

The academy will also consider (and has a system in place to identify) reasonable adjustments, access arrangements and cases of special consideration when assessing student evidence. Special consideration requests will not apply in the usual way this summer because students will not be taking exams. If you think that your child’s performance in an assessment has been affected by illness or personal circumstances and that we may not be aware of these, you should contact Mr Lamming (Head of Year 11) or Miss Woodhouse (Head of Sixth Form) as soon as possible. It is important that you raise any such instances before the academy submits your grade.

The Academy has an appeals procedure for this summer. If your child believes an error has been made in determining their grade when they receive their results, an appeal can be made in the first instance to the Academy. Appeals can be made for the following reasons:

• Where your child believes we have made an administrative error, e.g. submitted an incorrect grade; we used an incorrect assessment mark when determining the grade).
• Where your child believes we did not apply a procedure correctly, e.g. we did not follow our Centre Policy, did not undertake internal quality assurance and/or did not take account of access arrangements or mitigating circumstances, such as illness.

I have included the link to the JCQ guidance for students, parents and carers for this summer and the appeals process here: https://www.jcq.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/JCQ-Guidance-for-Students-and-Parents-on-Summer-2021.pdf. This can also be found on our dedicated webpage. 

Year 11 students will finish school on Friday 25^th June 2021.  Year 13 students will finish school on Friday 28^th May 2021.

Should you have any queries or questions relating to this summer, you can contact Mr Lamming (Head of Year 11)/Miss Woodhouse (Head of Sixth Form) and/or the academy’s enquiries email address (enquiries@havelockacademy.co.uk) and someone from the team will get back to you.

Yours sincerely

Emma Marshall

Principal

Havelock Academy