A letter from Director, Henry Pike to all our clients.

“I am writing to update you about important changes to the educational system and exam environment and how this affects your children and their qualifications.

For children in non-examination years:

Tuition can continue online with our tutors in preparation for the next academic year to avoid big gaps in knowledge; our tutors are all experienced and adept at delivering engaging learning via this method.

For children in examination years (yrs 11, 13):

The government has now announced the arrangements to be made to ensure that all students who are completing courses this summer for national qualifications receive their grades.

Based on the details of the announcement below, we are now concentrating our efforts into ensuring that children in examination years who have been denied the opportunity to take end of year exams – an opportunity that for many would have reflected their hard work and efforts over the last months – can still achieve the grades they deserve. Under the new government announcement this can now be done based on ‘assessment evidence,’ which our tutors are well equipped to organise, gather and, importantly, validate, with your child during the next months via online learning. This might include newly marked mock exams, essays, coursework and work done under exam conditions, and is a crucial opportunity for students, so for those students in examination years 13 and 11 we are strongly recommending maintaining your tuition in order to build assessment evidence; this will be a large contributor alongside any predicted grades which your school will be required to provide.

To summarise the announcement:

The summer examinations for national qualifications have been cancelled;

The examination boards will award subject grades for student’s GCSEs, A Levels etc. This will be calculated using a range of data sources from the teachers including mock exams, coursework (if that is part of the subject assessment) etc.

The exam boards will produce the grades by the end of July and will be contacting the schools over the next term to obtain the necessary data and evidence. This will then be combined with other sources of information, such as each student’s previous performance e.g., for A Level students they may look at their prior GCSE performance. This will be done in a systematic and consistent way to ensure that this year’s cohort of students is not disadvantaged.

Those students who think that their grade awarded by the examination boards in July does not represent a true reflection of their attainment will be given the opportunity to sit an examination early in the following academic year.

Students will also have the opportunity to sit the exams in the summer of 2021.

There is also discussion around the possibility of some students being able to take their iGCSEs as these have not yet been cancelled; we will be investigating this option and others.”

All teachers at Crescent Tuition are skilled in delivering online lessons that have the same learning outcomes as face-to-face ones.

Some of the following features for online tuition are used by our tutors in order to guarantee a successful experience:

High-quality realtime audio and video between tutor and student for face-to-face conversation
Interactive shared whiteboards, ideal for Maths and subjects with diagrammatic elements
An easy-to-use forum for communication between sessions
A scheduling system that makes it easy for the student and tutor to find a time that works

To schedule online lessons now contact us using the easy online form.