Education, education, education.

Why bad algorithms are the least of our worries.

AS DOUBT AND confusion about schools reopening mounts in advance of it finally happening; as downgraded exam students struggle to accept the devastating impact one misfiring algorithm has had on their futures (even after it was overturned), so the rest of us get yet another look at longstanding inequities in our society, exposed c/o the coronavirus crisis. Education, eh? Who knew it was that essential? Who knew taking kids out of classrooms for six full months, attempting to teach them on video links, irrespective of whether they had computers, Wi-fi, or family environments quiet and calm and goddamn mother***king safe enough to accommodate learning, might be detrimental to their academic progress?

And who knew the private education sector elevated its students that far above the 93% of British children who are state educated? That paying for smaller class sizes, prettier grounds and precise, individual-focused learning would make so much of a difference? Would mean that even the most inept exam algorithm favoured that lot, giving just 10% of private school pupils lower A level grades than predicted, as opposed to 25% of state pupils? Or that, according to one report, while an estimated 3% of state primary and 6% of state secondary school pupils had access to live online lessons during lockdown, 59% of private primary, and 72% of private secondary pupils got ’em?

Oh, I dunno. All of us? All of us knew, didn’t we? We just didn’t like to think about it, and – pre the crisis-engendered exam fiasco – we didn’t have to.

As I watched students march over downgraded exams results, listened to tearful testimonies from exceptional, gifted state pupils who’d lost university places because The Algorithm didn’t accept that exceptional, gifted state pupils even existed; as the same lament was repeated, on protest placards and by distraught teachers on news segments: ‘It’s not fair!’ – I could only think: ‘Nope. But then, it never was.’

This recent exam result insanity is merely the most blatant indicator of inequality in our education system. The screaming, ugly new headline on a situation always designed to massively favour the 7% of children who benefit from it. It’s what you pay for, innit? To have your kid lifted high above other kids! To have them supported, prepared, polished, connected and mainlined neat little fast track graduate dodges into the foreign office (I learned all about that during drinks with some private school parents. Oh, it blew my tiny little comprehensive educated mind!), in ways the other kids simply are not. That’s the deal! Pretending it’s about anything else, that it’s about nebulously giving your children ‘advantages’ in an abstract sense, as opposed to advantages over all other kids, doesn’t cut it.

Do I sound chippy? Predictably boringly liberal leftie outraged? Soz. I can get like that over education. It’s just so desperately important, you see. And so desperately unfair. Like all those placards, and all those teachers, said.