An F for Failure over exams results fiasco
IT’S NOT as if they didn’t see it coming. Having closed the schools at the start of lockdown and announcing the crucial and often career and life defining A-level exams were to be cancelled this year, the Government had no less than four-and-a-half months to figure out what to do.
Yet it shamefully acted just 36 hours before the results were due – and even that was too little, too late.
So they deserved every ounce of the criticism that was dumped on them. It’s not a good look for the Government when students, parents and teachers parade on radio or TV, some in tears, complaining their studies had been pointless and their dreams dashed. Unforgivably for this government, they could well be right.
From the outset they behaved like dunces. Teachers were told to supply predicted grades for the candidates who would have taken their exams save for Covid 19. This would be an unenviable task in any circumstance but realising the hopes of hundreds of thousands of young people would be influenced by this, it seems fair to think teachers would have undertaken this task with considerable solemnity and endeavour.
But, then what did the Government decide to do with all this work? Effectively feed it into a computer and allow a bizarre and highly questionable set of algorithms to do their work. Why on earth sanction all that amount of time and effort being spent by teachers only to ignore it?
And the biggest flaw in this system was that each school’s past performance over the last three years would be factored in, to provide apparent balance.
Never mind that a young man or woman could be a modern-day Einstein with three or even four A-star grades in the offing, if they were at a school with a dismal track record in the subjects they had taken they’d face being marked down.
What about teachers who could have put in years trying to turn a school around and striving to lift the standing of the school only to see their efforts judged by results for which they weren’t even responsible?
Surely teachers know their students better than faceless, useless algorithms! How desperately unfair it is! As you leave school, kids, welcome to the real world... where all your efforts can count for nought because “the computer says nah”.
Scrabbling desperately, the Government talked up a triple lock by which pupils can use the grade they were given in the exams, or those they attained in their
THE FINDINGS of a survey about the nation’s favourite actor to have portrayed super-spy James Bond are fascinating. Going by the actors’ portrayals, first place in the Radio Times went to the violent and ceaselessly sexually active Sean Connery. He won a play-off against Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan. While Roger Moore’s languid caddishness was endearing, can we accept the current Bond, Daniel Craig – with his act of seemingly constant emotional distress, weeping in the shower and perpetual “ennui” battling his masculinity – has little appeal? We want to see Bond as a bed-hopping ruthless killer. So let’s bury the idea of a Jane Bond too.
mock exams at the start of the year, or ask to re-do the exams in the autumn.
They conveniently ignored the fact the re-sits would be after the university year had begun so would force students into a year of potential inactivity. Or that employers are unlikely to hold open a post for an additional three months while they await the necessary results.
The solution is plain. The Scottish government tried a similar exercise with their equivalent of A-levels and then watched in
horror as one in four students suffered downgrades from their predictions.
After protests on the streets, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon offered an apology and allowed all pupils to go with the assessments worked out by their teachers.
The same must now happen in England, with an inquiry launched immediately.
After all, the Government has to realise that while they might be excused for many things, you never forgive anyone who damages the chances of your children.
THE MET’S Deputy Commissioner Sir Steve House has defended the officers involved in stopping Labour MP Dawn Butler last weekend.
Noting how refreshing it is for senior coppers to back the troops on the street, surely the controversy might have ended almost before it began if the officers’ video were made public.
If those who are stopped can have it on social media in minutes, why can’t the police follow suit whenever appropriate?
AT FIRST glance, it’s the story with everything. A $40million payoff to a disgraced former whizz-kid boss that the company is now trying to reclaim in the light of allegations about sexual trysts, claims of explicit pictures and videos... as well as burgers, fries and even milkshakes.
Welcome to Mcdonald’s, where high jinks appear to be on the menu along with fiendishly hot apple pies.
Here’s the puzzle though. Mcdonald’s prides itself on its family values and says it prohibits “any kind of intimate relationship between employees in a direct or indirect reporting relationship”.
While no boss should prey on an employee, can they not accept Cupid could strike between two “equals” as they dole out the doughnuts?
Just what type of clown is to be found at Maccy D’s?
‘Surely teachers know their students’