tasneem's rants

  A-Level and GCSE students experienced a very turbulent period ever since exams were cancelled back in March, but particularly over the last few weeks of August, resulting from the effects of a flawed algorithm on pupils’ results, and the withdrawal of these grades a week later. The damage these decisions has caused has not been reversed, however, and many are furious at both Ofqual’s and the government’s incompetence, with the Ofqual chief Sally Collier having announced her resignation and even the permanent secretary of the Department of Education set to be replaced, but there is much debate about who is most at fault. Students’ future prospects and mental health were badly affected, both for those receiving results and those waiting for them during an incredibly uncertain period of time. Although there were bound to be difficulties, the government has had the most agency over both its own decisions and the decisions of Ofqual, and it was the body which primarily decided how gra...

Image source: thesun.co.uk Since A-Level results have been published in England, there has been widespread protest and outrage about the allocation of grades to pupils on the basis of a clearly biased algorithm, favouring those from more privileged areas over students from more disadvantaged areas as it is based on schools' previous performance rather than honouring the predicted grades given by teachers. Teachers had to rank students depending on the likelihood of students achieving each grade, using evidence including mocks, unit tests, and in some cases KS2 SATS results. For example, out of the students who were predicted Grade 9s, the student with the top rank would have had the highest probability of achieving a Grade 9, whereas the student with the bottom rank might have been just as likely to achieve a Grade 8 as a Grade 9. When the government's standardisation came into effect, many students who were lower down on the ranks moved down and achieved much lower grades to m...