Manchester-based exam board AQA plans to cut staffing levels by a third, in functions that ensure students’ GCSE and A-level grades are calculated correctly.
The cuts threaten to create grading errors, as well as delays in students receiving their grades.
UNISON is calling on AQA to stop the “unnecessary and reckless rush towards redundancies.”
Staff fear that reduction in their numbers and the support they provide will have a significant impact on the delivery of GCSE and A-level results in 2014. There will be longer waits and more mistakes as a result of staff no longer monitoring results and not having enough time to check for errors.
As one staff member commented: “They’re not just affecting the future of staff here, they’re messing with the futures of thousands of children.”
UNISON north west regional organiser Theresa Griffin said: “AQA are rushing ahead with changes that will undermine the exam board’s ability to deliver rigorous, multifaceted exams in the future.
“The haphazard cuts will alter the way our examination system is written, designed and marked, leaving no hope of a return to a coursework and modular-based system.
“AQA are responding in a knee-jerk way to Michael Gove’s latest whim, and are throwing away their organisation’s capacity to deliver for students.”
