Exams fiasco proving serious test for our MP
IT’S probably fair to say it’s not been a great week to be a Conservative MP. There’s nothing like a Government alienating a whole generation of future voters to focus the mind when things go wrong.
For Rossendale and Darwen MP Jake Berry, the A-Level fiasco must surely have been an infuriating affair.
Such was his confidence at how the English Government had handled determining A-Level results that on Wednesday last week he wrote on Facebook: “Despite the high profile mess of Scottish exam results this week, it is important to reassure young people in England ahead of their results that we’ve done things differently here, with all sorts of safeguards in place to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
The mess of the results in Scotland – ie students not getting the grades they expected – proved to be very different to England, only in so much as the situation in England proved to be far worse.
Whereas in Scotland, moderation was deployed to sense check grades proposed by teachers – itself enough to cause fury – in England, a computer algorithm was deployed to determine results, often over-ruling teachers and using factors such as a school’s previous A-Level results to decide if proposed grades were correct.
It rapidly became clear that whatever briefing Mr Berry had received from the Government was woefully inaccurate – and that the system he has been assured would be fine was not only not fine, but also potentially putting pupils from areas like Rossendale at a disadvantage due to the way the algorithm worked.
Imagine having your future determined by a computer, so it ‘looked right’ rather than reflecting your hard work. Fancy being a teacher, constantly praised by the Government for doing such a great job during Coronavirus, and then effectively told you can’t be trusted not to inflate the grades of your students.
By Monday, Mr Berry made public he had joined the chorus of Tory MPs concerned about what had happened. Referencing a conversation with the headteacher of Bacup and Rawtenstall Grammar School, he shared a letter he had written to Education Secretary Gavin Williamson.
In it, Mr Berry wrote: “Some students have lost scholarships and places at university based on the changes and there is a widespread feeling that the school has been unfairly penalised based on the standardised grading model.
“All of the indicators that the school are providing me with suggest that there is something fundamentally wrong with the standardisation model at the centre level.”
As criticisms of the Government go, it’s far from the strongest to have come from the Conservative backbenches, and there will be many here in Rossendale who will have wished Mr Berry had gone further.
On his Facebook page, Mr Berry added: “From a personal point of view, I would have liked to have seen more weight given to the predicted grades made by teachers.
“They work with the students every day, will have seen how they reacted to the results of their mock exams, will have marked their coursework and know their students’ capabilities better than anyone.
“I believe this would be a more than acceptable predictor of how well a student could have performed in an exam setting.”
That point could have been well made to the Education secretary too, on behalf of the Rossen
●● Jake Berry, MP for Rossendale and Darwen dale teachers who feel they have been essentially told by the Government they aren’t to be trusted with grading accurately.
Yes, the Government will deny that’s what it thinks, and it’s probably true they are horrified by such an idea – but actions speak louder than words.
It’s also essential Mr Berry shares with constituents why he had such confidence in a system which proved to be so flawed. Exam results week is a stressful time when things are normal, but doubly so when it wasn’t clear until just a few days before how grades were going to be awarded.
What information had Mr Berry been given in advance, and by whom?
How can it be an MP is happy to reassure people everything will be fine with A-Level results, just hours before the biggest mess-up in exam results history?
Whole lives have been changed as a result of last week, and Mr Berry needs to keep demanding answers.