Education secretary calls for U-turn on practical assessment

Nicky Morgan has called for Ofqual, England’s exam regulator, to reconsider plans to remove the assessment of practical work from A-level and GCSE science exams.The secretary of state for education said the new plans, introduced for A-levels last year and set to come into effect from September, would hold back the next generation of scientists. ‘Like many in our scientific community, I fear that such a move could inadvertently downgrade the importance of these practical skills – leaving a generation of chemists, physicists and biologists who leave schools with excellent theoretical knowledge, but unable to perform key practical experiments which form the basis of a future research career.’