Next year’s A-levels are a massive headache:
- do we give as many As and A*s as this year or last year?
- to hit either of those, will standards drop? Or grades?
[The secret correct answer is obv: “don’t banjax the system by guessing at grades for a year”]

- Do we make allowances for school differentials in lockdown?
- Similarly, will there be allowances if towns are moved back into lockdown?
- Do we choose between assistance, basically, for poor kids? Or accept a collapse in the exams’ predictive validity for a year?

- What plans in case exams are off again? Perhaps in a few big cities? Because we don’t control when and how this pandemic will time its runs?
- Whatever happens, universities are going to be asked not to use these exams for conditional offers.... right?

- The year after, mind you, you’ll have a cohort with no reliable GCSE grades at all, no AS levels, no coursework. So HEIs better get inventive about this stuff.