Call: Give final exam students an extra retake this year.
Just like previous years, students in secondary education take their final exam. But despite facing the effects of corona in recent years, they have no adjusted arrangements. Parents are more worried about the impact on their child's final exam. That is why we plead for an extra resit chance for students taking exams this year.
Effect of the corona period
This year’s exam students faced corona’s effects during secondary school. The last years involved school closures, missed lessons from infections, and other limits. Students suffer from this. They often face learning delays and mental issues. In past years, students could drop a subject or take an extra resit. Still, this year they must take the final exam like before corona. Parents also see the teacher shortage as a further limit to catching up on learning delays.
Unfortunately, last year extra teaching assistants were mainly used to replace teachers who were out sick from corona. This and the lack of staff meant there was not enough chance to guide children with delays individually at our school..
Great worries among parents
Parents worry about their child’s final exam. More parents are contacting our advice point about this. They show surprise that exams are not changed. During the corona period, we studied how parents think about corona’s effect on their child’s development. Over 60% of parents were worried about learning delays then. This is not surprising. More than half the parents saw many missed lessons in primary and secondary education. The latest research also showed that at secondary schools, 12% of lessons are missed.
Call for extra retake of final exam
Ouders & Onderwijs understands that the exam must slowly return to normal, so that the value of a diploma is kept. However, the current generation of final exam students has still dealt too much with corona to fully return to how it was before corona this year. An extra retake hardly reduces the required final level for the diploma. An extra retake does give this group of students an extra chance to properly end their difficult school period. Therefore, we call on the government to offer students an extra retake this year. We are not alone in this. The interest group for school governing bodies (VO-raad) and the student union LAKS also pleaded for an extra retake.
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