Teacher’s view on grades

From: Gareth Robson, Kent House Road, Beckenham.

RUTH Dacey’s article (The Yorkshire Post, March 6) quotes Geoff Barton, General Secretary of teaching union ASCL, who calls for fair and consistent allocation of GCSE grades across “the country”.

Laudable; but impossible. What has he in mind? A quota of each grade for each region? Good luck with that.

Last year’s farce was the crude way the cohort’s results were mapped onto the previous year’s performance in each subject at each school.

This year’s will be a hasty reaction, driven doubtless by the less responsible elements of the media (from which I exclude your magnificent newspaper), demanding that something be done about the ludicrous number of top grades awarded.

We teachers naturally want to do the best by our students, and we fear that other schools will exaggerate, so we will naturally do the same to compensate.

So, having said he will trust the teachers, hapless Gavin Williamson will be forced to apply some crude form of belated adjustment.

Cue once again wailing and gnashing of teeth.

From: Patrick Mosey, Coltman Street, Hull.

A FEW weeks back I wrote in The Yorkshire Post that the Government should have been overseeing a mass vaccination programme in schools. Instead, they decide to do mass testing.

Schools have started going back and some SAGE experts are predicting a surge in positive Covid tests.

No surprise there. What are the ministerial advisers getting paid for?

The general public have a better way out of all this than them.

Vaccinating children would mean no obvious chance of schools being locked down again.