Pandemic pupils deserve praise for staying the course
IT’S A-level results time, with GSCEs to follow on Thursday. Traditionally that means many column inches devoted to two key themes. First, “grade inflation”: the idea that it’s becoming easier to get a good grade. In other words, an A grade today is not as difficult to get as it used to be. It’s a perennial theme, with some merit.
In recent years that’s been joined by a second theme – that too many students are going to university. It is, the argument goes, unnecessary for many students to incur the debts that come with three years at university. They go because it’s expected of them, rather than because they really need to.
There is some evidence to support both of these ideas and we’ll come to why they matter in a moment. But today should be different.
Whatever one’s view of the trend in A-level grades and of the need to go to university, today the imperative is to recognise that teachers and especially pupils have endured a truly terrible time and deserve praise, not criticism.
Yes, some schools coped better than others with remote learning. Some failed their pupils while others managed to turn a disaster into an opportunity for something different. And lessons need to be learnt from those different experiences. But today, the focus should be on the pupils.
FOR all the flaws inherent in exams, they are a far better and fairer way to decide a pupil’s grade than assessment by teachers. But the pandemic has meant that’s all we have to rely on this year, as it was last year, and it’s entirely pointless moaning about that and devaluing the grades that have been awarded.
It’s not the pupils’ fault that their time at school, and their opportunities to learn and demonstrate what they have learned, have been ruined by the pandemic. Because of these awful circumstances, we should treat this generation of children with empathy and do everything in our power to give them the opportunities that the pandemic might otherwise deny them.
If this means, after last year’s debacle when grades had to be reassessed, that those awarded today are more generous than might normally be the case, let’s remember why. And let’s pause those usual arguments of grade inflation and university access.
This year and last – and even assuming exams return, in 2022 as well – are clearly exceptionally unusual cohorts. To put it bluntly: this generation of pupils deserve to be cut a large amount of slack.
In 1999, Tony Blair set a target that half of all school leavers should go to university. It was an understandable aim, given that there was an urgent need for more people to attend university. In 1980, just 15 per cent stayed in any kind of education after school.
By 1990 that had risen to 25 per cent, but it was clear that not enough young people were being intellectually stretched as the economy became increasingly knowledge-based.
BUT that figure of 50 per cent – which was reached in 2019 – became totemic and distorting. As a general principle, rather than setting targets the best way to approach university access should be that anyone who wants to go and is qualified to do so should have the chance.
But it’s no less important that we move away from the idea that everyone who is qualified to go to university should feel they have to – especially if that is driven by the desire to have a qualification that may be unnecessary for some jobs.
In that context, we need to view apprenticeships not as something for those not good enough to go to university, but as a serious alternative.
It was reported yesterday that nearly four in five A-level students getting their results today who are not planning to do a traditional degree have considered an apprenticeship including the relatively new degree apprenticeship.
As for those who do intend to go to university, the numbers applying have risen by 10 per cent this year, with the number of courses available through clearing having fallen by a third.
That’s a key statistic, as many universities have been far more cautious with offers this year, knowing they will not only have to take some students who deferred a place last year but also that many more may get a higher grade than usual.
With many students expected to achieve their grades, that fall in the number of courses at clearing could cause problems – especially as universities are less likely to accept those who narrowly miss their grades.
It’s yet another reason why, in this year of all years, we should be celebrating our A-level students, not criticising them for a problem they didn’t create.
‘Children have endured a truly terrible time and deserve praise’