'No solution is water-tight' - education ministerpublished at 09:04 British Summer Time 17 August 2020
Education Minister Peter Weir says his decision for teachers to grade GCSE exams but not AS or A-levels is "justified" and an "unprecedented step".
"There’s no solution which is water-tight or ideal," he told Good Morning Ulster, however, he highlighted that a lack of "prior data" on GCSE pupils meant that any appeals process would be "extremely difficult".
He says GCSEs "effectively have an internal market" in Northern Ireland, with more A-levels set by bodies elsewhere in the UK.
There is a "need to ensure there is comparability with the rest of the UK market", he adds, suggesting the best approach for AS and A-level is "the very wide, robust appeals process that we've put in place".
“We’ve got to ensure that whatever is happening in the wider context, particularly between ourselves, England and Wales, have a level of compatibility between each other, or we’re going to be advantaging some pupils at the expense of disadvantaging others," he continued.
“Clearly, if a national decision was taken, I would want to make sure that our pupils are not disadvantaged and therefore I think that would lead inevitably to a level of change and I think that would also result in terms of the issue of comparability between those students who are doing English board examinations and Northern Ireland board examinations.
"So there’s got to be a very close link between what we do in Northern Ireland and what happens particularly at an English level."