Assessments: Finance

(asked on 14th June 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether (a) schools and (b) teachers in England will receive additional financial support to carry out the work associated with providing pupils with teacher assessment grades.


Answered by
Nick Gibb Portrait
Nick Gibb
This question was answered on 22nd June 2021

This year, due to the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 outbreak, students are being awarded grades determined by their teachers and based on a range of evidence. Assessing students and determining their standard of performance is an important part of teachers’ roles in a typical year. Nevertheless, many elements of the approach to awarding qualifications in 2021 have been designed with workload in mind. The Department is regularly engaging with teacher unions and other sector representatives to ensure the processes developed, and the guidance that supports them, reflects their feedback. The Joint Council for Qualifications and the exam boards have published extensive guidance and materials for schools and colleges to support teachers with their assessment, marking and making their judgements of students’ performance in these challenging circumstances.

Exceptionally for 2021, the Department is providing additional funding to centres for teachers to process priority appeals following results day. This will be £75 per each priority appeal. In addition, we are providing funding to awarding organisations so that state-funded schools will not need to pay a fee for formal appeals this year. Last year, we announced the biggest pay rise the teaching profession has seen since 2005, with above-inflation rises to the teacher pay scales. We are also committed to introducing a £30,000 starting salary.

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