THE headteacher of a Worcester school has said he is ‘extremely disappointed’ with the Government’s decision to replace GCSEs and A-levels in England with teachers’ estimated grades this summer.

RGS Worcester Headmaster John Pitt spoke out after education secretary Gavin Williamson confirmed plans for GCSE, AS and A-Level examinations to be scrapped in England after schools across the country closed as part of a third nationwide lockdown.

Mr Pitt, said: “We are extremely disappointed with the Government’s decision to cancel the Public Examinations and introduce a grading system.

“We believe that this decision has been made too early and without a proper alternative ready to put in place.

“We are really very sorry for pupils who have worked so hard and will want to demonstrate what they can achieve in the examinations.

“We believe it should have been possible to introduce an approach that would still have achieved fairness and given students the opportunity to sit the exams with a sense of achievement so important for them at this time.”

Steve Powell, the headteacher of Nunnery Wood High School said he was glad that schools now ‘have an early indication’ of what will happen.

“Of course what we’re desperate to hear is the actual mechanism for submitting grades,” said Mr Powell.

“My strong preference is that it is the system that we used last year, which despite reports, only showed minor inflation of grades - but we’re fearful that any kind of nationally imposed system is going to automatically disadvantage the individual.

“I think the sensible approach from the Government would be to check that their internal process has that kind of rigour, but I’d say that if Gavin Williamson is saying you have to trust teachers then he actually has to do that, because you can’t say the trust is there and then impose a mechanism which will automatically mean students are disadvantaged.

“From my experience, schools put in several layers of moderation internally.

“Our process was extremely rigorous - of course, we don’t allow anything to cloud our judgement; it’s evidence based over a long a period as we are able to bring into play and we use several steps to check the grade allocated is justified by the evidence we have."