Now punish the dunces behind the exams fiasco
I remember once seeing a book to help children to read – it was called What A Mess! Those words could also be given to the handling of exam results by the Education Secretary Gavin Williamson, the Government and its agencies.
Growing up in Ipswich, I was one of many who did not pass the 11-plus examination. It was not until later years that I discovered that the usual success rate from my primary school was just one or two children.
I now feel that we were being socially engineered to accept that we should leave school as early as possible and take either trade or manual jobs – a skewed system arising from deprivation. However, I was not prepared to accept that, and I eventually gained a master’s degree.
The use of an algorithm to moderate students’ grades this summer, which resulted in some being marked down because of the school they attended, was social engineering at its worst.
My message to the Government and Ofsted is: Get things sorted. And my message to the students who have been so affected is: Remember the dunces who created this situation and use your vote to exact revenge.
Graham Day, Stowmarket
The incompetence of some people knows no bounds. They are so incompetent that they don’t realise they are incompetent. Their level of incompetence tends to rise exponentially with their salary. They remain incompetent to the bitter end by not doing the competent thing and resigning.
Alan Sharpe, Melton Mowbray
In the absence of exams because of Covid-19, the algorithm sought to moderate teachers’ estimated grades, so that pupils would ultimately receive an uninflated grade. How can you reasonably expect a teacher to give an unbiased grading to a pupil they have been teaching? There would be uproar if the Government said it was going to let driving instructors decide whether a pupil they had been teaching had passed his driving test.
P. Lacy, Nottingham
I don’t wish to take anything away from the students affected by the exams fiasco, but it is perhaps wise to remember that not every pupil would actually achieve the grade they were predicted, had they taken the tests. Some would have done better and some would have done worse. If they are really so upset, they could always take the exams later this year. A. Freeman, Surrey
In response to those teenagers saying endlessly that their young lives have been irreparably shattered by poor grades, I would like to point out that my father, and hundreds of thousands of other people of that same age, had their young lives somewhat more dramatically altered by a government when going to fight the Germans and the Japanese. And, it must be said, they did so with far less whingeing and moaning than we are getting from the spoiled ‘me, me, me’, ‘I’ve got rights’ and ‘woe is me!’ current generation. Philip Munro, Manchester