A GENERATION HUNG OUT TO DRY

No exam system could be perfect in the fallout from Covid. But in this blistering personal critique of the chaos and incompetence behind this week’s grades fiasco, SARAH VINE says it’s the final betrayal of disadvantaged children hit hardest by lockdown

WHEN my son sat GCSE mocks a few weeks into the spring term, I didn’t pay much attention — nor, I rather fear, did he. He was doing two of them early, in strong subjects for him: history and PE. His plan — like that of so many teenagers — was to treat the mocks as a dry run and revise hard for the real thing in May.

It was, of course, not to be. Along came Covid and like hundreds of thousands of other schoolchildren he never got the chance to sit the actual exams.

We await the final outcome next week, when the GCSE results are released, but neither of us is particularly hopeful. I am only grateful that this wasn’t his main exam year: that comes next spring and will present its own challenges, given how much schooling he, like every other pupil, has missed.

Even so, I know how fortunate we are given what confronted pupils and parents in England and Wales this Thursday, when A-level results were released.

The feelings of so many were summed up by one distraught friend. Her eldest child was predicted all As but the grades she was awarded fell well short.

As she so poignantly put it: ‘Our kids’ futures have been downgraded. First they had their exams taken away, then their final months of school — the central focus of their lives for the past 14 years — and now they are being punished by an algorithm. It’s just so cruel.’

The family plan to appeal, but that in itself is likely to be a long, drawn- out process, with no guarantee of success and a whole lot more stress besides.

Perhaps understandably, the university for which my friend’s daughter was holding a conditional place is refusing to budge, even though she is just one estimated grade off her offer. And that’s because for every pupil for whom the Computer Said No, some will have achieved the grades required.

Indeed, as the Government points out, the marks have actually improved overall, year on year. So why the universal despair felt by parents and pupils?

Because when you drill down into the results, a pattern emerges. The ‘standardisation’ models used to ensure a fair assessment by teachers of potential performance — the Centre Assessment Grades (CAGs), the most likely grade a student would have achieved if exams had gone ahead — actually turn out to be a cruel and pretty blunt instrument.

The regulators assumed that idealistic teachers would take an over-optimistic view of pupils’ potential, with grade inflation the result. So determined were they to account for that by algorithm that they appeared to ignore the inevitable individual injustices that would follow.

In their zeal to get the picture right overall, thousands have lost out — 40 per cent have had their scores downgraded.

Worse still, it is the bright, hard-working youngsters in historically underperforming schools who have been penalised, while average performers in high-flying schools have had the unfair advantage.

The result — somewhat perversely for a Conservative government that has, over the years, placed so much emphasis on the importance of highquality education for children from poorer backgrounds — is a situation where better- off, privately educated schoolchildren have fared significantly better ( an unprecedented increase in As and A*s of almost 5 per cent) than those in the state sector. Which means those with the poorest life chances — for whom school is often their only real hope of a better future — have been most adversely affected.

So the overall picture that we have ended up with is one of chaos and, dare I say it, incompetence, not only practically but also politically.

Put bluntly, parents and pupils may not forgive a Conservative government that, in their eyes, has hung them out to dry. And, quite honestly, who can blame them? We all understand the circumstances are unprecedented. We all appreciate the challenges of the situation. But surely we could have done better than this by our young people?

In times of crisis we want to look to our leaders and feel at the very least there is some kind of plan in place.

Sadly, the last few emotional and disordered days have delivered the opposite impression.

For the Class of Covid-19, it must seem as if the adults have left the building. It is hard to see how this opportunistic flipflopping, policy- on-the-hoof approach to something so vital to their futures can feel like anything other than the final insult of a very difficult year.

And make no mistake, it has been very difficult.

Let’s not forget, evidence is growing that the coronavirus has very little effect on children. This week it was confirmed that just one previously healthy child had died of Covid-19 in England. Nor do they readily transmit the virus.

Had we known this earlier, the Government might never have taken the decision to close schools, or might have done so selectively, perhaps even allowing years 10 and 13 to remain in class and sit these exams as normal. But they

‘Children are being cruelly punished by an algorithm’