Education Minister Peter Weir announces temporary changes to pupil assessments and school reporting requirements

The Minister has also a placed a temporary suspension on the collection of exams data, following the decision to cancel the summer 2020 examination series.

Each year, schools are expected to produce a report for each pupil as well as statutory assessments at the end of each key stage.

Peter Weir said: “During the current public health emergency I have been considering ways to ease the requirements on schools in relation to statutory assessment and school reporting arrangements.

“In these challenging times, it is not practicable for schools to spend the significant amount of time required to complete these detailed reports.

"Instead, I have decided that, this year, schools will not have to submit assessments. I am also introducing temporary modifications which will provide schools with a high level of discretion to decide what should be included in school reports.

“This will allow teachers time to continue their excellent work in providing distance learning to their pupils.”

Guidance will be published for schools on these new measures.

The Minister continued: “These changes will enable schools to issue pupil reports before the end of the current academic year. More importantly, I hope that it will provide parents with reassurance on their child’s progress and enable them the opportunity to raise any concerns with a school before the end of the academic year.”

In addition, following his decision to cancel examinations in summer 2020, there will be a temporary suspension to the collection of qualifications results data.

Concluding, the Minister said: “I have instructed my officials not to collect qualification outcomes through the Summary of Annual Examination results (SAER). This is in line with the approaches taken in England and Wales.

“I am also instructing the Education and Training Inspectorate that the outcomes from the summer 2020 exam series should not be formally used in any future inspection processes, nor should those results be published in any inspection reports.”