Principal's Letter April 4 · Aitchison Collection Explorer

April 04, 2020 Dear Parents of C2 and students, Please wait until April 7th for Cambridge to announce clearer guidelines as to predicted grades. What we have chosen so far is academically responsible and best for the boys -at this stage! Cambridge has announced that they will require grades to be evidence based, we have no information to suggest that they will accept grades which are not backed up by legitimate school assessments. We also do not know if online testing satisfies this. I cannot imagine that it could. So far, what information we have received is less than clear. Cambridge is due to announce further details regarding the process on 7th April and have set the deadline of 10th April to make decisions. This puts us in the position of having to make our best judgement on the information currently available. We are thinking about this issue constantly. To put this in perspective, the Mock examinations would have taken place just a few weeks before the summer exams and provided a good indication of the final outcomes. Without them, we would be reliant on the results of the Half Yearly examinations. We know from experience that boys make a tremendous amount of progress in the months that follow these assessments and so they would seriously underestimate the final grades. Not to complete an external examination session before a A Level is poor preparation, and basing grades on predicted abilities on what has been assessed at school for C2 thus far is hardly an accurate way to determine standards for an overall group of boys. This may well backfire. It may well look an easy way out to simply offer predicted grades, but the rigour of actually completing a course and benefiting from that work will be lost. Notwithstanding, we will keep an open mind on the matter. Expect an update on this in days. For now, Aitchison is not rushing toward any concrete decision. Michael Thomson M.A., Dip. Ed., M.A.C.E Principal

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